Revolt!
Page 28
WHO CARES WHAT THE VOTERS THINK?
During the entire health care debate, the Democrats in Congress and in the White House simply did not care about what their constituents thought. Not for a minute.
They thought that they could just ram their health care plan through Congress, despite the obvious widespread opposition, and control the fallout later. Amazingly, they seriously believed that voters would eventually get used to it and approve it. If they liked it, we’d like it.
They were not only wrong, they were stupid. They didn’t get the revolution that had started outside their very doors. They were also arrogant. Instead of listening to their troubled constituents, who could have taught them a thing or two, they went into hiding and blissfully listened only to each other, creating a flawed but consistent echo of bad ideas.
Instead of reading the polls, they convinced themselves that they knew better than the voters, that they were not hostages of public opinion polls.
One of those who showed utter disdain for the opinions of the voters was former senator Chris Dodd, who wisely decided against running for another term because of strong—and understandable—voter animosity at home. Dodd, one of the Senate leaders on health care, was particularly clueless on just how much Americans—his constituents—abhorred the health care bill. Clueless? Or was it contemptuous?
In early March, when 53% of Americans were opposed to the legislation, Dodd told the press that he “sensed a mood change” in the country in support of the bill.8 Sensed a mood change? Was he kidding? It was just one more very clear sign of just how seriously out of touch Dodd had become.
Dodd’s “mood change” has still not materialized. By late November 2010, opposition to health care reform had increased. According to Rasmussen Reports, 57% of Americans support a repeal of the health care bill.9
No doubt Dodd is still feeling that mood change.
Fortunately, Dodd is gone, but many of his like-minded buddies are, regrettably, still around. But not all of them. Many of the supporters of Obama’s health care reform who refused to listen to the voters were voted out of office with the help of the Tea Party.
And good riddance to them.
The White House was similarly ignorant. Months after the passage, when public opinion polls showed continuing antagonism to the plan, White House officials still ignored it.
“I think that health care, over time, is going to become more popular,” said David Axelrod, Obama’s political guru in September 2010.10
Axelrod’s stellar political instincts may explain why he headed back to Chicago—and why his boss has tanked in the polls.
Consider this. For the six months immediately preceding the health care vote in the House of Representatives, the majority of Americans opposed the legislation, according to Rasmussen Reports:
* * *
PUBLIC OPINION ON HEALTH CARE “REFORM” DURING SIX MONTHS BEFORE PASSAGE
Date: Mar 19-20
Favor: 41%
Oppose: 54%
Date: Mar 17
Favor: 45%
Oppose: 52%
Date: Mar 13-14
Favor: 43%
Oppose: 53%
Date: Mar 5-6
Favor: 42%
Oppose: 53%
Date: Feb 27-28
Favor: 44%
Oppose: 52%
Date: Feb 21-22
Favor: 41%
Oppose: 56%
Date: Feb 9-10
Favor: 39%
Oppose: 58%
Date: Jan 20-21
Favor: 40%
Oppose: 58%
Date: Jan 16-17
Favor: 38%
Oppose: 56%
Date: Jan 8-9
Favor: 40%
Oppose: 55%
Date: Jan 3
Favor: 42%
Oppose: 52%
Date: Dec 29
Favor: 39%
Oppose: 58%
Date: Dec 27
Favor: 40%
Oppose: 55%
Date: Dec 18-19
Favor: 41%
Oppose: 55%
Date: Dec 12-13
Favor: 40%
Oppose: 56%
Date: Dec 4-5
Favor: 41%
Oppose: 51%
Date: Nov 29
Favor: 41%
Oppose: 53%
Date: Nov 21-22
Favor: 38%
Oppose: 56%
Date: Nov 13-14
Favor: 47%
Oppose: 49%
Date: Nov 7-8
Favor: 45%
Oppose: 52%
Date: Oct 30-31
Favor: 42%
Oppose: 54%
Date: Oct 24-25
Favor: 45%
Oppose: 51%
Date: Oct 16-17
Favor: 42%
Oppose: 54%
Date: Oct 10-11
Favor: 44%
Oppose: 50%
Date: Oct 2-3
Favor: 46%
Oppose: 50%
Date: Sep 24-25
Favor: 41%
Oppose: 56%
Date: Sep 16-17
Favor: 43%
Oppose: 56%
Source: Rasmussen Reports, March 21, 2010. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/september_2009/health_care_reform
* * *
During the week that the bill passed the House in March 2010, 54% of Americans opposed the bill, as indicated above. Yet the majority of House and Senate members completely ignored the will of the voters, and, instead, responded only to the will of their party, its leaders, and its core constituents—a minority of Americans.
What they did care about was what the health care industry unions wanted. And the health professionals pulled out all the stops to let members know and understand their positions. In 2010, the industry spent more than $66,000,000 on lobbying!11 And, according to opensecrets.org, the top recipients of campaign donations from all lobbyists were
* * *
CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS FROM LOBBYISTS, 2010
Harry Reid: $551,286
Blanche Lincoln: $399,189
Chuck Schumer: $395,584
Kristin Gillibrand: $300,721
Patty Murray: $303,355
Steny Hoyer: $172,378
James Clyburn: $87,859
Nancy Pelosi: $81,750
Source: opensecrets.org12
* * *
Many members of Congress simply feel that they know best what should be done. We, the voters, couldn’t possibly be as well informed as they, the high and mighty congressmen. No way. Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY) articulated this somewhat arrogant theory:
There are, however, issues where I seek to lead my neighbors rather than follow. There is simply no playbook for this. But [if] I feel—on a substance, gut, or ethical level—that there are some issues on which I have more information at hand than my constituents. On these issues I’ll incorporate what they’ve said to the best of my ability with my own instincts, vote accordingly, and then work as hard as I can to explain my decision to them.13
Translation: I know best.
What Weiner—and many others—didn’t seem to understand is just how much contempt voters have for people like him who are in Congress and think that they know better.
In a ranking of all American institutions in June 2010, voters had less confidence in Congress than in any other major institution.14 They had more confidence in the medical profession, banks, newspapers, and organized labor, among others.
Americans don’t think very highly at all about the work Congress is doing (or not doing)…and with good reason. Over the past years, our elected representatives in Washington proved over and over again that they weren’t looking out for our interests. Not at all. Instead, they were busy looking out for their own interests, the special interests, and Obama’s interests.
But this time, many of them didn’t get away with it. Voters understand
what they did and threw many of them out.
According to both FoxNews and Gallup polls released in March 2010, when health care reform was debated, 80% of all Americans disapproved of the job being done by Congress—and only 16% gave our senators and congressmen a positive job rating.15 To put this in perspective, the Gallup Poll in February 2009—just weeks after Obama’a inaguration—showed a 39% approval rating for Congress.16
Since then, ratings have declined even further. Immediately following the November elections, voters gave Congress a 17% job approval rating.
Congressional Job Approval, Trend Since January 2009
Do you approve or disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job?
Source: http://www.gallup.com/poll/144419/Congressional-Approval-Elections.aspx
These stunningly high negative numbers reflect the contempt that most voters now feel when they watch a body that has morphed from a do-nothing Congress into a rubber-stamp Congress. As Congress brazenly passed unpopular legislation, ramming it through in the middle of the night using arcane procedures and buying off votes with special favors, voters were understandably angry. And it’s showing in the polls. In fact, there’s been only one other time since 1974 that showed lower job approval ratings for Congress. And things are not getting better. In April 2010, the Harris poll showed a slightly higher disapproval rate of 84%.17
Those folks just can’t catch a break, can they?
The fact is that they don’t deserve one.
HELP FROM THE HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY
It’s not surprising that many of the biggest proponents of ObamaCare benefited from the largesse of the health care industry, which made massive donations in the 2010 elections, favoring incumbents and donating to more Democrats than Republicans.18 The leadership of both houses were special favorites of the industry, with Harry Reid receiving more than any other incumbent or candidate and Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer each pulling in tens of thousands of dollars.19
Former senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, who wavered on the health care vote, but ultimately supported it, received almost half a million dollars from the industry group.20
Of course, all of those contributions are dwarfed by the $11,739,231 given by the industry to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.21
Those health care professionals certainly made a good investment.
The Tea Party helped to clean out Congress.
But there are still too many left who don’t care about the voters. We still have a long way to go—and many more unresponsive and self-promoting politicians to get rid of before can begin to have a responsive federal legislature.
So let’s get to work. Let’s keep track of what our own representatives are doing. It doesn’t matter whether they’re Republicans or Democrats—they’re all incumbents and bear watching!
In order to do that, each of us needs to have access to the essential information that will enable us to make intelligent choices in the voting booth and ensure accountability in the Congress. This chapter will provide you with the tools to accomplish this.
A CITIZEN-PATRIOT’S GUIDE TO EVERYTHING
CONGRESS DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW
Let’s start with what we need to know about every candidate. The prerequisite for supporting any candidates should be a clear understanding of their position on issues that we care about—before we elect them. But there’s a lot more that we also need to know before we can possibly make an informed decision. We also need to understand:
their professional backgrounds and experience
their voting records
their financial history (and their spouse’s!)
whether they or their family have ever received federal funds
their supporters and donors
their relationship to lobbyists and special interests
any travel paid for by private organizations or the government
But it doesn’t stop there. In fact, that’s only the beginning. Once we elect our representatives and senators, we need to know more. Because the only way to ensure that the people that we send to Washington are accountable to us—their constituents—and not just lobbyists and donors is to watch everything that they do. And it’s not just what they do that matters; we also need to know and watch what they don’t do.
And when we find that they’re not doing their job or they’re not keeping their word, we need to confront them. They need to know that we’re watching them and keeping track. Every day. That’s the only way to keep them honest.
Our obligations and rights as citizens and patriots don’t end on Election Day. Yes, we’ve elected a new Republican House of Representatives. And yes, these new members are committed to change in Washington. But that’s not enough.
If we don’t make sure that they keep their promises, if we don’t make sure that they remember why we elected them, if we don’t stop them from becoming mute sheep who blindly follow their leaders, then we will have squandered the election of 2010.
But it’s not just the new members that we have to monitor. They’re on our side! We need to watch all of our individual representatives. We need to keep track of their votes, their absences, the bills that they sponsor, the people that they take money from, the lobbyists that they meet with, and the people who employ their spouses. And we have to keep in touch with them and let them know how we feel about how they’re doing their jobs.
In the information age of the twenty-first century, the data that we need is definitely available, even though Congress tries hard to make it difficult for us to access it. So let’s use it. Knowledge and information will lead us to power.
Think about it. These 535 people have the ultimate ability to control our future—our finances, our taxes, our health care choices, our businesses, our privacy, and almost every other aspect of our lives. And they do! They’ve even dictated what kind of lightbulbs we can use!
We need to keep them from encroaching any further. We need to stop them from raising taxes to pay for ridiculous programs. We need to force them to focus on how to turn around our economy.
Without knowledge, without information about what they are doing, how can we possibly make informed decisions? And how can we make sure that they keep their promises?
The answer is simple: we can’t.
Before we can cast a rational vote for any of our representatives, we need to know exactly how they’ve performed. It’s not enough for them to broadly tell us what they support and what they oppose. We need to be able to review their records and judge for ourselves how they act—in committee and on the floor. We need to see what their relationships are with the special interests. In short, we need to make them accountable and their transactions transparent and we can only do that based on information in public records.
All of that data is available. We’ll teach you how to find it and use it. It’s crucial. Yet for more than two hundred years, the American Congress has maintained a deliberate policy of limiting information on how it operates, how members vote, how members and their wives make money, and everything else that is essential to voters in making intelligent electoral choices.
And the media haven’t helped much either. Not only does the mainstream media bend over backward to try to shield liberal Democrats from criticism, but newspapers just don’t devote much space to covering Congress anymore. Too many murders and celebrity doings to cover. Very few newspapers routinely publish roll call votes. The information is available on the Internet, but there are still many people—especially the elderly—who have no access to the Internet. For years, for example, the New York Times published a weekly summary of all roll call votes by members of Congress from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut along with their vote. That practice was quietly terminated several years ago. Now they don’t even list the roll call votes on controversial or critical issues such as the expiration of the Bush tax cuts.
Even with the proliferation of political coverage on the Internet, very little space is devoted to the speci
fics of actual votes in Congress.
So we are just going to have to do this job ourselves. Don’t worry; you won’t have to become experts on parliamentary procedure. You just need to spend some time getting familiar with the public records that are most relevant.
In recent years, under pressure from voters and civic groups, Congress has made more information available, but still not nearly enough. But let’s go through what is available and learn how to access it and use it.
First, we need to routinely check voting records—for both policy positions and for attendance.
CONGRESSIONAL VOTING RECORDS
Don’t be intimidated—it’s easy. Once you do it a few times, you’ll be checking the votes every day. (Although, of course, members of Congress don’t work every day like the rest of the workforce does.)
U.S. Senate
To access voting records for the Senate, go to http://www.senate.gov.
Once you’ve opened the site, click on the Legislation and Records banner across the top.
This will bring you to the 112th Congress, First Session.
Go to the bottom right column and click on Roll Call Votes.
This will bring you to a summary of the most recent vote, but you can also scroll up and down for previous votes. (You can also access previous sessions of Congress.)
For each roll call vote, you will see columns identifying the Roll Call Vote number, the House or Senate Bill Number, and the procedural question to be considered, such as passage of the bill, a vote on an amendment, or a vote on cloture. Normally, senators may debate as long as they want on a bill and this has often led to a filibuster, a prolonged debate to deliberately delay or prevent a vote. But there is a way around that.