In the spring of 1989 I was a high school freshman who salivated at the chance to see the political process at work.
My first opportunity was watching Congressional Democrats battle President George H.W, Bush over plans to raise the minimum wage. More than two decades later, there is again a split between the Executive and at least one chamber of the Legislative branch, and my eagerness has not diminished a bit. But my enchantment with the process has. For the showdown over Obamacare is now at ten to midnight, I wish the model that led to the great compromise of ’89 would prevail.
At this point it should be all over but the shouting. Like a burning inferno, the ongoing debate over Obamacare has been heated, and is out of control. Everything from partisan warfare, constitutional crisis, one-upmanship, etc, is taking place, and it’s not the members who will suffer, but the people who rely on the essentials of government for everything from Social Security to veterans benefits, to their own paychecks.
With House Republicans having managed to push through their Congressional Resolution to keep the government running only with the contingency of defunding Obamacare, and with President Obama certain to make good on his promise to veto it, both parties are now forced to ponder where to go from here. A compromise does not seem inevitable. Both sides are deep in the process of making their points. And with no real expectation that Obamacare will be defunded, that’s the only thing this is all about. Points.
It has long been thought that by holding roll call after roll call, the Republicans simply wanted to make a statement about Obamacare. That may’ve been the case as late as last week, when all but one House Republican voted for a continuing resolution that defunded Obamacare. One former Republican Senator even said that sometimes, “Brinkmanship” is necessary in order to put focus on the issue. That’s all well and good. But at some point, the next phase of the journey has to be met. And that’s where compromise comes in. And I hearken back to the fight over what ultimately led to the federal minimum wage being raised in 1989 as a model for what should happen next.
I cite the great compromise of 1989 over what should happen next because, while it may have been the first foray into legislative politics that I can remember, it really became indicative of the way the branches should operate.
All parties (the Democratic Congress and the new President Bush) agreed that it was time to give the nation’s lowest scale workers a boost. But there were big areas of disagreements in how high it should go. The Democrats wanted to raise the wage to $4.65 while Bush was vowing to veto anything higher than $4.25. Eventually, the Democrats lowered their demand a dime and vowed to accept $4.55. Bush still wouldn’t budge and $4.25 remained his ceiling.
The Democrats, perhaps in an effort to show their core constituencies that the fight was really about them, pressed ahead with the battle. They pushed their versions through both houses of Congress (Republicans in the Senate averted a filibuster because few GOPers wanted to be seen as being against a wage increase of any kind).
Bush lived up to his promise and vetoed the bill during the one hour flight from Lincoln, Nebraska to Cheyenne, Wyoming in May of that year. It proved to be his first veto, and the last major legislative fight of then-House Speaker Jim Wright’s tenure (he resigned weeks later in the wake of controversies that stemmed from book royalties).
In the end, Democrats, lacking the votes to override Bush’s veto, compromised, which culminated with Bush getting what he had proposed initially. A raising of the wage to $4.25.
Now both sides can do math (although that’s disputable because one year later, another budget compromise that Democrats and the President ironed out went down to defeat). They knew how it would ultimately turn out. But they made the fight, got their points across, then proceeded to join together for the good of the country.
So was pushing forward in the fight an exercise in futility? Not at all. Fighting the good fight is, to some extent, how government is supposed to work. But after the rhetoric ended and the points were made, the path was cleared for a meaningful bill. And when it comes to funding the government, the time for that path is now. After all, we all now know that Ted Cruz fond of Dr. Seuss. Today, it might be more appropriate for him to invoke lines from Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy’s “48 Hours.” Because at this moment, that’s how long we are facing before a shutdown looms.
On that score, Tom Coburn recently made clear that he was opposed to Cruz’s tactics, calling them “lousy.” He acknowledged the obvious. That the way to get rid of Obamacare is to elect a new President and a new Senate. Now Coburn is one of the most recalcitrant Senators when it comes to spending on virtually anything, and his opposition to Obamacare during passage was so strong that he openly prayed on the Senate floor that a Senator would not be able to make the vote invoking cloture. So his opposition to shutting the government to defund it speaks volumes. And Coburn’s thoughts bring me to a lesson that then-Congressman Earl Pomeroy learned when he lost his House seat in 2010. Follow me here.
Pomeroy had served 18 years as a Democrat from North Dakota before he fell victim to the 2010 tsunami. In his concession, he cited a 102 year old man that he had met at the polls that day. As Pomeroy told it, the man told him that he had always liked him, and that he had done a fine job as his Representative. But he would be casting his vote for Pomeroy’s opponent. Why? Because the man simply felt Pomeroy had been around too long (the comparison will make sense in a minute).
Pomeroy told that story in his concession speech. He acknowledged that he “may not be the savviest guy that ever ran for public office. But if the 102-year-olds think you’ve been around too long, you’ve got a real problem.” That got a big applause line but it’s actually a big lesson that Cruz should heed.
Translation. Tom Coburn has made his reputation by often being the biggest thorn in the spines of not just Democrats, but many times his fellow Republicans. So when a guy like Coburn tells you it’s not working, it’s usually a sign that you might want to consider rethinking your strategy.
In short, the fight over what eventually led to the minimum wage being raised saw government work in a way that I believe the Founding Fathers envisioned. That should be the case with resolving this crisis. The consequences are too important for anything otherwise.