And her some times loyal minion, Duke Hoyer of JP Morgan ($35,300 in donations in 2008):
A group of more than 50 House Democrats has penned a letter to Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) imploring him to “restore this institution” and see that the House returns to a “regular order” process of legislating.
The letter, signed by a large number of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition and the centrist New Democratic Coalition, has not yet been sent. Members are still gathering signatures in an effort to send the strongest signal possible to all top House Democrats that the caucus is up in arms over the top-down method of legislating employed by Democrats since late last year…
…Since last year, many senior House Democrats — many of them subcommittee chairmen — have grown overly frustrated with how only small and select bands of legislators have been responsible for writing bills, such as the $700 billion Wall Street bailout as well as much of the $819 billion economic stimulus bill.
Democratic leaders have acknowledged that the “regular order” process of methodically developing and writing bills in subcommittees and committees has been abandoned recently. But they have defended the handling of such sensitive and important legislation by only an exclusive group of leadership and senior lawmakers as a necessary tactic during exceptional times.
This is probably the result of just what has turned out to be in that Obama-Pelosi-Ried We’ll-Spend-Your-Money-You-Just-Shut-The-Heck-Up Sink the Ship of State “Stimulus” bill – had these provisions been subjected to committee hearings and votes, a lot of the worst aspects wouldn’t have made it – because with these 50 moderate Democrats coupled with a clearly united GOP minority, nothing would get passed without it being a moderate, bi-partisan bill…unless, that is, Nancy and Co took the House members out of the loop and just presented them with a bill for an up or down vote. With Obama’s seal of approval on it, it was very hard for any Democrats to muster the courage to vote against it – those eleven who did are heroes, but these 50 who are now rebelling are also being heroic.
The linked article does claim that Pelosi is soliciting advice and input from rank and file House Democrats, but I consider that to be BS – she might ask for advice, but she’s certainly not actually doing anything with it. When 20% or so of your caucus goes public with dissent, it means that you’re just giving your side eyewash.
We do have a serious crisis on our hands here. Now, I don’t think that we’ll end up doing the very right thing (think massive cuts in spending), but we can at least do the least-bad thing, and that would be a round of immediate stimulus spending and tax cuts. This would at least restore a measure of confidence and we might be able to crawl out of this morass into 1 or 2% annual GDP growth by 2011. What Obama-Pelosi-Reid propose is that which is tailor made to turn a recession into a depression – its like watching a loved one getting involved a slow motion train wreck. Anyone with any sense at all can see where Obama and Co are headed, and for the most part we sat powerless to do anything to stop it – until the House GOP stood firm, and now these 50 Democrats have also stood up to be counted.
We can work this out, boys and girls, and force through a bill which Obama will have to sign and which will if not cure our ills, at least make them manageable. Three cheers of these House Democrats, and lets hope this attitude starts to spread.
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