There are many things about the American political system that are strange by world standards. The most interesting, I think, is the degree to which the out-party has the power to restrain majorities from enacting laws it stridently opposes. First, surly committee chairs can bottle up almost anything in committee, preventing bills from reaching the floor. In the Senate, the presence of the filibuster means that to enact anything meaningful, you need almost a super-majority of support, 60 votes. If there is disagreement on a piece of legislation between the House and Senate, lots of laws which have broad support in both chambers never emerge from conference committees. And of course, if one party occupies Congress and the other party occupies the Presidency, nothing of consequence gets done unless you can muster the super-majority necessary to override a veto.
So, it's fair to say that getting anything at all done in Congress is difficult. With a two-vote majority in the Senate and about a 30-vote majority in the House, it's unlikely that many of the policies I advocate for are ever going to get enacted. I know this very well. But with the majority, things you don't want to happen almost never happen. Anything that the majority of the majority opposes, even if it is supported by a floor majority, will never get a vote on the floor of either house of Congress.
It dawned on me in a tangible way yesterday why the Democrats' victory in November was so important. I was reading this article in the Nation when this quote jumped out at me:
"...Going from a Congressional leadership that marched in lockstep with Bush to one led by Pelosi and Reid will mean that debates no longer start with proposals that would take us backward," says Anna Aurilio, legislative director of USPIRG. "We won't have to keep fighting to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; ANWR is safe now. Instead, we'll have an opportunity to bring forward policies that could actually solve the problems we face."
It's all pretty much right in that quote. No longer do I have to worry about the Bush Administration slashing the EPA budget. No longer do I have to worry about a "Clear Skies" initiative that relaxes emissions standards on polluters; no longer do I have to worry about a "Healthy Forests" initiative that increases logging on federal land; no longer do I have to worry about stepped-up drilling and mining in Colorado's Front Range; no more do I have to fight to protect caribou in ANWR from oil drilling.
Granted, I'm probably not going to get carbon dioxide added to the list of pollutants regulated by the Clean Air Act. But, for at least the next two years, I will not have to fight so hard to prevent things that I passionately disagree with from being shoved down my throat. It's been so long since that's been the case that I don't even know how to conceive of non-threatening politics. Democrats have felt as if we were bunkered down under continuous assault for six years now, and I think we're all starting to realize how wonderful it is to have the negative agenda-setting power that holding the majority provides. You can practically feel it in the air -- the cloud is breaking up and shell-shocked Democrats are emerging from their battered shelters, sniffing the air. The fear, the frustration, the anger, and the endless irritation -- it just floats away.
For a little while, at least. Then it's back to business.