Sen. Obama got his first start in the public arena in the Illinois State Legislature. Republicans like to remind everyone of his high rate of voting "present" instead of aye or nay. The reason this type of non-vote is allowed is because sometimes legislators find themselves voting on items in which they have a conflict of interest. Voting present is intended to allow a legislator in such a position to record that he was there for the vote, but did not want to inappropriately influence the outcome of the issue. More often than not, however, it is a tool used to dodge an uncomfortable vote. So, Republicans like to show Sen. Obama's extraordinary use of this parliamentary tool (130 times) as an example of his inability to take on tough issues.
For a long time, I hadn't heard any direct response from the Obama camp on this issue - they would change the topic, or make a counter accusation on Sen. McCain...until that day (spoken of at the top of this e-mail) when I was leaning back in my chair, and I finally heard the response. During the dueling spokesmen on t.v., I heard the accusation hurled at the Obama guy. I leaned forward and listened keenly, popcorn in hand, hoping for a good response. "During his time in the Illinois State Legislature, Senator Obama co-sponsored over 60 pieces of legislation."
That's a near quote. This weak response had me "spraying diet coke from my nostrils and scattering popcorn across the carpet in great gusts of mirth" (to borrow a phrase I adore from Henry Kisor). As any keen C-SPAN junkie would know, co-sponsoring legislation means another legislator authored the legislation, and you said, "me too." That's all a co-sponsorship requires. For you to say, I support this bill too.
Disappointed at this utterly weak response that I had been waiting for, for well over 6 months, I drowned my sorrows over the poor political theater by finishing off my fictional popcorn. Since then, I've heard that lame response a couple more times, which means this is not just a random spokesperson's weak reply, but it's a campaign talking point.
Curious, as I am in the lamest ways, I wondered how many bills Sen. Obama has actually authored (in other words, sponsored) in the last 2 years of his time of the US Senate. I looked it up. 129 bills! But, before I got impressed, I took a quick look at these.
Stats: Of the 129, 11 of them are of the "Resolution" variety. Meaningless bills that, for example, honor "a pioneer in the field of organic chemistry." Members of Congress do these all the time, but they are not laws. Just statements that honor someone or something. That leaves us with 118 bills.
Of those 118 that remain, 58 are amendments to actual bills. Now, amendments can actually be significant, but in most cases, they are minor tweeks to actual bills under consideration. That leaves us 60 actual bills that Senator Obama authored in a two year period as a US Senator. That's not bad. Let's see what happened to those bills. To keep score, I'll put them in order of the legislative process:
Introduced: 60 bills
Assigned to a Committee for Hearing: 60 bills
Hearings Held: 4 bills
Floor Debate: 3 bills
Approved by Senate and referred to House: 0
Public Law: 0
None of them became public law.
Let's look at the Amendments he submitted, and their steps:
Introduction: 58
Vote: 17* (amendments don't generally go through committee)
*Unanimous Consent (UC) or "voice vote": 17
I add the "UC and voice vote" category because these types of votes are afforded to those amendments that either aren't controversial, significant, or substantial enough to actually require aye's and nay's. Translation: they were technical amendments/tweeks, not significant reforms, improvements, or proposals.
So, of the 118 attempts Sen. Obama has made to craft public law, NOTHING significant has been accomplished. ZERO are law today.
I do not take issue here with the substance he has proposed. He may have the greatest ideas in the Senate. But he has either shown no interest, or no ability to actually accomplish anything during his time in the 110th Session of the Senate. I'm sure he's co-sponsored bills that have become public law. But he hasn't written any.
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Senator John McCain vs. Earmarks. Earmarks have long been described as one of the chief evils that besets our national budget. The root problem with our national budget is that we spend more than we take in. So, as the renowned earmark fighter, Sen. McCain (and others in this particular camp), would have you believe, if these millions of dollars of pork projects went away, a large part of our national budget woes would go away.
Let me explain what an actual earmark is. This may sound elementary to many, so forgive me if I'm covering familiar ground. I've found over the years that earmarks are misunderstood by many. Most understand them to be add-ons to the budget. This is not so.
First, Congress essentially does two things: 1) write laws/programs; 2) write budgets. Before one penny can be spent, there must be a law written that says a penny can be spent for a specific purpose.
For example (and, I'm making this program up...though, there probably is a program like this out there), let's say that Congress feels it is in the national interest for the US Department of Transportation to conduct safety inspections on all bridges in the national Interstate system. Congress must first write "Authorization" for the US Department of Transportation to engage in this activity. The law would read something like this: "The US Department of Transportation (USDOT) shall conduct safety inspections of all bridges on the national interstate system. In conducting these inspections, the US Department of Transportation is authorized to spend up to $150 million."
That is the Authorization (or, the laws/programs) side of what Congress does. Now Congress has to actually fund it.
The budget writers (or, Appropriators) first look at the law that authorizes the program. How much are we allowed to give the USDOT to do this task? Answer, $150 million. But, the budget writers know they don't have $150 million to dedicate to this program. They only have $100 million. Implication? The USDOT won't be able to inspect $50 million worth of bridges. Some bridges will be left out.
Well, Senator so and so realizes that the bridge in his state will fall pretty low on USDOT's priority list, and probably won't be inspected. The people in his state realize this too. All of the voters in that state call up Senator so and so, and demand he do something about it. "Our bridge must be inspected! I want to know I am driving my children across a safe bridge!" So, Senator so and so writes a little line into the budget to make sure his bridge gets inspected. "Of the $100 million the USDOT will use to inspect bridges, they shall spend $500,000 of that on the Portland/Vancouver interstate bridge."
Quite literally, what follows is a description of what the actual language looks like in the budget bill: The program title centered on the page, followed by a brief paragraph describing the purposes of the bridge inspection program, noting the total dollar amount to be allocated to accomplishing its purposes. Following that paragraph will be a series of bullet points listing all of the earmarks, including our fictional example:
- $500,000 Portland/Vancouver I-5 Interstate Bridge
Let's say that all of the earmarks total up to be $40 million worth of earmarks. That means that $60 million is left over for the bureaucrats (not a derogative term) to determine which bridges will be inspected.
So, you see in our example that earmarks are not "add-ons" to the budget, but rather the micromanagement of where exactly the dollars get spent.
Sometime, Congress will earmark projects that would otherwise be really low on the priority list for the agencies. In those cases it could be argued that it is wasteful spending because it could have gone to a much more worthy project. But those earmarks are authorized by law, and only serve to micromanage where the agencies spend it.
Back to Sen. McCain, the earmark fighter. The wisdom of earmarks (Congress micromanaging budgets) can be argued both ways. However, one thing cannot. Eliminating earmarks does not save the US Treasury 1 penny. All the elimination of earmarks does (in a fiscal sense) is leave the detailed spending decisions entirely in the hands of the Federal Agencies (mostly located in DC) who may or may not know which bridge really needs an inspection (again, debatable).
To suggest that fighting earmarks saves us money is a really double-jointed stretch of the truth.
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The point of all this?
A pox on Obama for claiming he has accomplished anything of significance as a legislator; and a pox on McCain for claiming that stopping earmarks actually saves us real money.
Best wishes!
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