[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 46 (Thursday, March 15, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H1647-H1649]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          THE PARALYSIS THAT BESETS THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Comer). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to have the opportunity to 
share some thoughts with you during this Special Order hour at the 
request of the minority leader.
  I am a professor of constitutional law, as those of you who watch our 
proceedings here may know by now, and I would like to talk about the 
Constitution, and I will get there before this is over.
  But I want to start, Mr. Speaker, with a basic question of political 
science, which is: Why does it seem as if it is so hard for us to get 
the people's business done in Congress these days?
  Why does it seem so difficult that, even when we have a vast 
consensus on what to do about a particular issue, we still can't get it 
done?
  Why is it that the approval rating of our institution, according to 
the most recent Rasmussen poll, is at 15 percent, which I think most 
people would agree is a pretty dismal showing for the people's Congress 
and here in the people's House.
  Well, I want to talk about this problem in some historical and 
constitutional perspective, and I hope that it opens up some roots of 
thinking and feeling that might enable us to transcend some of the 
paralysis that now besets the United States Congress.
  Of course, the simple explanation that is often given colloquially is 
that everybody in Washington is just fighting, and you have got the two 
parties at each others' throats, and everybody is so divided that 
nothing happens.
  This explanation, although it turns out to be wrong, of course, has a 
long lineage to it. In fact, the Founders wrote very widely at the time 
our Constitution was adopted about the problem of faction, and they 
said, if you look at James Madison in Federalist No. 10, for example, 
he identifies faction as the central problem in the political life of a 
democracy. But he says that the latent causes of faction are sewn in 
the nature of man, and we see them everywhere.
  Madison cites a zeal for different opinions concerning religion, 
concerning government, and many other points, as well as speculation as 
a practice. He cites, also, an attachment to different leaders 
ambitiously contending for preeminence and power; and he invokes the 
human passions that have divided mankind into parties, inflaming them 
with mutual animosity.
  So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual 
animosities, Madison writes, ``that where no substantial occasion 
presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been 
sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and incite their most 
violent conflicts.''

                              {time}  1645

  In other words, even when there is not something real and big to be 
fighting about, people will find something small, trivial, and petulant 
to fight about. And those of you with little brothers and sisters might 
agree that is just the way it is. Sometimes it is in human nature for 
people to fight.
  But the Founders understood that faction was something that would 
arise in a democratic society where people have the liberty of thought 
and expression. In fact, Madison said one of the ways that you could 
deal with the problem of faction is to destroy the liberty that gives 
rise to faction, but that, of course, plunges us into authoritarianism, 
monarchy dictatorship. One way you get rid of all the different views 
is you go to one party. You create a one-party state like they have got 
in North Korea, and then there is no conflicts because everybody does 
what the one party says.
  So Madison dismisses that and says that is not going to work. We are 
not going to be able to remove the sources of faction, but why don't we 
try to control the effects of faction. And the way you do that, he 
said, is that if--in order to control the effects of a majority tyranny 
is you have a bill of rights that defends the rights of the minority so 
that people in the majority can implement their policy preferences, but 
they can't extinguish the rights of the minority, the right to speak, 
the right of press, the right to dissent, the right to vote, and so on.
  But also, Madison said, if you extend the size of the republic, if 
you create a big country, then even if you get a majority on one 
particular issue, the majorities are shifting because then you will 
have a different majority on another issue and a different majority on 
another issue and so on.
  But what happens, he says, if you have a faction that is tyrannizing 
the society, but it is not a majority faction, it is a minority 
faction? What if you have a small group that is able to hijack the 
process and prevent the majority from having its way? Well, he thought, 
there, democratic processes and Republican government would take care 
of it.
  He says this: ``If a faction consists of less than a majority''--a 
minority of people--``relief is supplied by the republican principle, 
which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular 
vote.''
  The minority ``may clog the administration, it may convulse the 
society, but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under 
the forms of the Constitution.''
  In other words, Madison is assuming that, when it comes to public 
policy, the majority will eventually get its way if the governmental 
process is working correctly.
  Now, let's fast-forward to 2018. I am taking three issues where the 
vast majority of the American people agree as to what should be done to 
deal with this serious, serious public policy problem.
  Let's start with the problem of high prescription drug prices. Now, 
Congress passed a law saying that the government could not negotiate 
for lower prescription drug prices in the Medicare program with the big 
pharmaceutical companies, and it will not surprise you to learn that 
the big pharmaceutical companies who invest a lot of money and campaign 
contributions also paid for a lot of lobbyists to go and lobby for that 
provision to be put into the law.
  So the Federal Government can negotiate for lower prescription drug 
prices

[[Page H1648]]

in the Medicaid program, it can negotiate for lower prescription drug 
prices in the VA program, but for Medicare, because this provision got 
slipped into the law, we can't negotiate; and it is costing the 
taxpayers $25 billion to $30 billion a year, and, of course, driving up 
everybody's prescription drug prices. The majority of Americans have at 
least one prescription drug, and one-fifth of Americans have four or 
more prescription drugs.
  Well, 92 percent of Americans support allowing the Federal Government 
to negotiate free-market style with the prescription drug companies for 
lower prices in Medicare--92 percent of Americans support that. All 
right. So that is case number one. Hold that in mind.
  Case number two. This is something that should be familiar to you, in 
the wake of the discussion about the Parkland massacre that took place. 
I tried not to lapse into calling it a tragedy. Romeo and Juliet, that 
is a tragedy. Hamlet, that is a tragedy. Macbeth, that is a tragedy. 
What happened in Parkland, Florida, was a massacre. It was terrorism 
that took place in a public school. It was a preventable public policy 
debacle that that young man could walk into a gun store and purchase an 
AR-15 and that AR-15s are so available that people can get them even 
when they are not qualified to possess even a handgun.
  In any event, after Parkland and after the Pulse massacre, and after 
the Las Vegas massacre, and after the San Bernardino County massacre, 
and after the Sandy Hook massacre, and after the Virginia Tech 
massacre, guess what, 95 percent of American voters--95 percent support 
a universal criminal and mental background check on all firearm 
purchases in the United States. That is more than 9 out of 10 
Americans--19 out of 20 Americans.
  If you include the margin of error, it might be 98 percent. It might 
be almost everybody except for the leadership of the NRA and the CEOs 
of gun manufacturers who support a universal background check.
  If you go to a licensed gun dealer and you can't purchase a gun 
because you failed the background check, why should you be able to go 
to a gun show and buy one? Why should you be able to go to the internet 
or the parking lot of a 7-Eleven and buy one? It doesn't make any 
sense.
  So the common sense of the American people, 95 percent of American 
voters favor universal background checks, yet nothing is happening. 
Just like with giving the government the power to lower prescription 
drug prices, despite the fact that more than, you know, 9 out of 10 
Americans support it. The President of the United States, President 
Trump, called for it in both of his two State of the Union Addresses. I 
think the vast majority of the Members of Congress would vote for it if 
it were brought up for vote, yet nothing happening. So that is case 
number two.

  Let's look at case number three. Another thing that has been very 
much on the mind of the public and in the public policy debate, 83 
percent of Americans favor continuing the DACA program and passing the 
Dream Act and allowing the Dreamers a path to citizenship in the United 
States. These, of course, are 800,000 young people who were brought to 
America with their families when they were kids, grew up here, know 
this as their country, are in the armed services, are working here, are 
in school. And we have 83 percent of the American people who say, quite 
logically, exercising their common sense, let's create a pathway for 
those people if they are in school, if they are working, if they are in 
the armed services, to stay here and to become American citizens, yet, 
again, nothing happening in Congress. Okay.
  Now, why not? What is it that is going on? So we go back to the 
problem of faction. Obviously, people are going to have different 
views. That is the oxygen of democracy. There is nothing wrong with 
that. We are not ashamed of that. We have different political parties 
here. It is much better to have two parties or more than that, than to 
have one party, a one-party system.
  You know, Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address, said: 
``We are all republicans, we are all federalists.'' Lincoln tried to 
strike the same note when he first took office, and Lincoln said: ``We 
are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion 
may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.''
  So our greatest Presidents and our greatest leaders have understood 
we fight like cats and dogs in elections. That is how it works in a 
democratic society. There is a political contest. But once we are in, 
we try to stand for the whole public, the whole common good. We try to 
remember that we are not just here to represent one party.
  Washington reminded people that the word ``party'' comes from the 
French word ``fete'', a part, one part of the whole. You represent a 
party. You are just representing a part of the whole. We have got to 
try to aspire to represent everybody. Yet, given the human condition, 
given the nature of political passions and moral passions that Madison 
discusses in Federalist 10, we know that parties are inevitable.
  Okay. We accept that in a democratic society. We cherish the fact 
that people can form political parties that articulate different 
agendas and different values. So that is not the problem. So what is 
the problem? Why is it the case that the United States Congress cannot 
even bring to a vote three measures that have overwhelming public 
support: to allow the government to negotiate for lower prescription 
drug prices; to pass a universal criminal and mental background check; 
and to pass the Dream Act to help deal with the crisis of these young 
people who have been thrown into a limbo because of President Trump's 
action last year? Why can't we do it?
  Well, there are a couple of reasons I want to identify, and then I 
want to call on all of us in Congress to try to take us to a higher 
ground. The young people who are protesting about the nightmare of gun 
violence, which makes America an absolute outlier state--in terms of 
industrialized countries, our rate of homicide and suicide by gun 
violence is simply off the charts when you compare it to other 
industrialized countries like the United Kingdom or Canada or France or 
Japan. It is not even close. We are losing tens of thousands of people 
a year.
  The point I was making here is that we have this puzzlement about why 
we can have massive popular agreement and consensus, political 
consensus as to what to do, yet a bottleneck in Congress where we get 
this paralysis and this inaction.
  The young people who have ignited a revolution across the country 
against political complacency with respect to gun massacres in public 
places like schools and movie theaters and concerts and churches and so 
on, they are focused very heavily on the problem of money and politics, 
and I think that the vast majority of the American people exercising 
their common sense would agree that money and politics distorts the 
public agenda.
  We know that the NRA has put tens of millions of dollars into our 
politics, just as we know the prescription drug manufacturers have put 
tens of millions of dollars into our politics, so I think the right to 
identify that is one strand of the problem.
  But even with that, I think here, in Congress, there is a major 
failure of political leadership, Mr. Speaker, and I think it goes to 
something that, at least, used to be called the Hastert Rule. Well, the 
former speaker has been discredited, but the rule, unfortunately, is 
still operational. And the Hastert Rule is a rule that has been adopted 
by the majority caucus, which says that no legislation will be brought 
to the floor of the House of Representatives unless it passes the 
Republican caucus first.
  Now, think about what that means. If you have got legislation like 
the Dream Act or like a universal criminal/mental background check act, 
which has unanimous support by the Democrats and substantial support by 
the Republicans, such that it would pass overwhelmingly in this body, 
it never sees the light of day on the floor of the House of 
Representatives because their rule is they won't bring it out of the 
GOP caucus to the floor for a vote unless it can get a majority within 
the caucus.
  This means that the majority will, not just of the country, but the 
majority will of this body is thwarted and frustrated by the Hastert 
Rule, which I wish Speaker Hastert had taken with him when he left the 
House of Representatives, because it is fundamentally undemocratic, and 
we are seeing right now the cost of this rule, which

[[Page H1649]]

enshrines minority preferences and minority control against majority 
public opinion.
  Now, I hasten to say, of course, we have got a bill of rights, so 
what we are talking about is not allowing the majority to trample the 
constitutional rights of the minority. What is happening here is that a 
political minority is trampling the policy rights of the majority so 
that the majority policy preferences of the American people and of 
Congress are being stymied by virtue of minority control in this body.

                              {time}  1700

  Now, this is something that our distinguished and thoughtful 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle can fix. They can say they 
are no longer going to abide by that rule. They will allow us to have a 
hearing on a universal criminal background check. They will allow us to 
have a hearing on whether the government can negotiate for lower 
prescription drug prices. They will allow us to have a hearing on the 
Dream Act, and they will allow us to have a vote on it.
  We are not saying everybody has got to agree. They have got the right 
to vote against it. But doesn't the minority at least have a right to a 
vote on those issues which reflect the massive policy preferences of 
the American people?
  Don't we think that has got something to do with the very low esteem 
within which we are held by the American people today? That, when it is 
very clear what almost all Americans want, we cannot legislate their 
preferences into law?
  Mr. Speaker, in Federalist Paper No. 10, Madison told us that the 
problem of democracy is the problem of faction. And right now we have 
got a tiny minority faction driving the entire train of government, and 
there is not enough space, there is not enough room, for the will of 
the people to govern.
  That is why America is disenchanted with the leadership of Congress 
and what is happening here. We are seeing it in election results around 
the country. We are seeing it in public opinion polls. We are seeing it 
in marches and rallies and walkouts all over the country, and that is 
good.
  Because in their wisdom, the Founders also gave us the First 
Amendment, which gave the people a right to petition for redress of 
grievances, a right to assemble, as the young people assembled 
yesterday on the lawn of the Capitol building and in front of the White 
House.
  It gives us the right of free press so we can write about what is 
actually taking place here in Congress. It gives us a right against 
establishment of religion and for free exercise of religion. It gives 
everybody the right of free speech so we can talk about what is going 
on.
  The Founders never guaranteed us perfection. Madison said, if people 
were perfect, we wouldn't need government in the first place. But they 
gave us a structure within which we could improve things, reform 
things, and make things better.
  Yet, the Members of Congress who are now in charge, in the driver's 
seat, are blocking off the hall. They are thwarting progress across the 
board on everything from prescription drug prices to the ban on assault 
weapons and a universal criminal/mental background check, and to the 
Dreamers. The American people are increasingly unsatisfied and 
frustrated with this situation.
  So I come back, finally, to the responsibility of each one of us who 
has been entrusted with the high honor and responsibility of coming to 
Congress.
  Madam Speaker, the original democratic philosophers distinguished 
between sovereignty and government. Government is just the people who 
go to do the job. Sovereignty belongs always with the people. We the 
people.
  That is why the right of free speech and protest and assembly are so 
critical. That is where the people come together and tell us what they 
want; the right to come to the town meetings, to call us up, to email 
us, and so on.
  But we have got a high responsibility. Those of us who aspire and 
attain to public office are nothing but the servants of the people. 
There are no kings here. There are no queens here. There are no titles 
of nobility in the United States of America. It is in the Constitution. 
We have no slaves here. We have no serfs here. Just equal citizens, all 
of us. Those of us who get into public office are acting as the 
servants of those people we are sent here to represent.
  Madam Speaker, our people want us to get past all of the procedural 
obstacles and choke holds that have been put up here at the behest of 
big money and big special interests, and they want us to get a job 
done.
  Let us start with these three things, which the vast overwhelming 
majority of the American people--Democrats, Republicans, Independents 
alike, everybody--agree we need:
  A universal criminal/mental background check on firearm purchases in 
America. We need to give the government the power to negotiate in 
Medicare for lower drug prices for our people so our mothers and 
fathers and grandparents can get the prescription drugs they need at 
affordable prices. We need to pass a Dream Act so we can deal with the 
crisis situation of hundreds of thousands of young people whose lives 
have been thrown into limbo over the last year.
  We can do those things. We can make that happen.
  Madam Speaker, I would invite you or any other Member of Congress to 
respond. I reach out in a spirit of openness, affection, and, as much 
as possible, transpartisanship to say: We have got to get America 
moving in the right direction again.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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