Sauce For the Goose

Before James Cagney became an actor he was a dancer and before that a highly regarded amateur boxer, until his mother learned about it. He retained a lifelong interest in the sport. In his autobiography he opined that boxing would be a safer sport without gloves. He wrote that the most serious injuries are concussions from blows to the side of the head  and that the first such blow struck by a bare fisted boxer would be the last he threw in the fight, at least with that hand.

In my opinion Cagney’s theory applies metaphorically to the spate of recently threatened filibusters, any one of which would badly bruise the Republicans if it turned onto more than a threat.  As evidence I again submit the consequences of Newt Gingrich’s attempt to shut down the Congress in 1995 because Bill Clinton vetoed a bill cutting Medicare benefits. The intense public disapproval of the current Congress is small potatoes compared to the reaction if it shut down. For one thing there’d be nobody to appropriate money. Jim Bunnng’s charade, which ended predictably and mercifully, is a microcosm of the way things work and why they don’t. One Senator can’t sustain a filibuster. But his party is so committed to the process, for the time being, that senators who voted for the bill in question have helped Bunning delay it by speaking in his place to keep the game going, a game of chicken that the Democrats seem to be losing.

The playing field is shifting to budget reconciliation which requires a simple majority to pass the budget and related matters rather than the three fifths required to prevent a filibuster. Republicans are claiming that this tactic is foul play. But since becoming a Senate rule in l974 it has been used twenty two times, fourteen by Republicans. It was used to pass much of Reagan’s economic program, the “Patriot” Act and Bush’s tax cuts on top income which will have cost an estimated $1.7 trillion when they expire next year, at which time Republicans predictably will press for renewal. This trick would surely require reconciliation to succeed.

There are currently over 290 bills passed by this House of Representatives that have yet to be acted on by the Senate. The number of filibusters stalling legislation the first year of this Congress, is double that of any previous two year session. However they are regarded, the procedures of filibuster and budget reconciliation have equal status as Senate rules. They are legitimate and conventional means of passing and preventing legislation. “What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”