The Limits of American Democracy

Anyone seeking evidence of the limits of American democracy need do nothing more than take a close look at the newly passed healthcare reform legislation. It reveals what passes for political decision making in Washington, from lobbies and their money to the almost endless palaver and other parliamentary tricks designed to bring the legislative process to a halt and on to the political opinion shapers and their telephone surveys and polls.

Opponents of healthcare reform devised templates used by activists to apply telephonic “pressure” on those in favor of reform. The list included the claim that government was meddling unjustifiably in individual freedom, that it would result in a cost explosion and finally included a purported “danger to the unborn.” All the argument templates also included the threat that those supporting reform would pay a huge electoral price for their support in the coming congressional elections next November.

On the other side, “telephone activists” were also employed by those in favor of the reforms with many representatives supplementing their offices with temporary interns to handle the increase in telephone traffic.

The so-called filibuster has a paralyzing effect when Senators try to prevent anything from coming to a vote by delivering long, drawn out speeches on the Senate floor. Filibustering is even possible if the opposing side has a super-majority in the Senate.

If there is no super-majority, however, there are other procedural tricks to get to a majority determination. The “reconciliation process” can be used whereby changes to the bill may be approved by a simple Senate majority. While that procedure may be successful in getting the legislation through, the law isn’t seen as having the same legitimacy.

Making passage of legislation even more difficult is the fact that small and sparsely populated states have the same voice as larger and more heavily populated states. Thus Idaho and Rhode Island have power equal to California, Texas or Pennsylvania. Also noteworthy is the fact that citizens of Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital city, have no voice in the Senate.

The murky role played by lobbyists has seldom been so openly discussed. Democratic representatives accused their Republican counterparts of selling out to the health insurance industry. The health sector in the United States is a 100 percent for-profit business. It is also the most expensive system in the industrialized world. The private health insurance sector will also profit from the new legislation because they will get access to millions of new customers getting government assistance to purchase health insurance. They are also guaranteed that they don’t have to finance the risk factors posed by pensioners, families and the poor.