A conservative defense of Congress

A conservative defense
of Congress
MICKEY EDWARDS
T ASSIGNMENT was simple:
would I please attempt to write a conservative defense of Congress?
I can almost hear the laughter. Rut this was to be an entire issue of
The Public Interest devoted to a single topic—an examination of
the United States Congress—and there had to be some balance,
after all. Surely, I could think of something….
This is not supposed to be a philosophical piece, but permit me
first the briefest of words about what I perceive the issue to be and
why I do, in fact, believe the Congress to be the single most important element in the American political system.
The one essential ingredient of the conservative theory of government—the very essence of our political philosophy—is that tlf
greatest threat to man’s liberty is the accrual of power by those
who govern him. If man is to preserve his freedom, then the 1
power of government must be hmited both in scope and reach. /
Government power is best circumscribed when it is diffused. Thg/
intellectuals who estabhshed this unique American system of government—men who incorporated both the advances of European
81
82 THE PUBLIC INTEREST
liberalism and the harsh lessons that they had drawn from their
own experiences with centralized and unchecked power—held as
their central goal the creation of a framework in which power
would be divided among competing forces. The branches were
meant to hold each other in check; it is supposed to be difficult to
change the laws that so directly affect peoples’ lives.
Just as the Founding Fathers agreed to set aside their doubts and
to incorporate into the Constitution a provision for a presidential
veto because they had confidence in George Washington, it is easy
for Republicans today to take comfort in the presence of “our” people in the White House. But we need to forget for a moment, or at
least to place in historical context, the nine years of Reagan and
Bush and remember that just since World War II we have had
twenty years of Democratic presidencies. The fact is, the laws and
taxes and regulations that so bedevil us exist not because there was
too little cooperation between the branches but because there was
too much.
It was not by chance that the Framers of the Constitution
placed the power of the purse, the establishment of domestic priorities, the approval of treaties, the regulation of commerce, the
declaration of war, the confirmation of judges, even the authority
to hmit the jurisdiction of the courts, in the hands of the people’s
elected representatives, nor that the establishment of the Congress
and the enumeration of its assigned powers is the first decision
announced in the Constitution: article one, section one, line one,
sentence one, phrase one, point one, I
This, by the way, is not lost on the rest of the world. WheiKpeoX
pie take to the streets to demand their freedoms, when they face
tanks and machine guns, when they look to America as a model of
liberty, it is not the presidency that inspires them. The world has
no shortage of strong executives; what it lacks are chambers of ^
people’s representatives who are freely chosen and who exercise
real power. Executive power was born in the caves of prehistory;
legislative power, born in the Magna Carta and the French Assembly, is the heart and soul of the modern liberal tradition (which
today’s “conservatives” are left to defend, while misnamed “liberals” defend the centralized power of the cave).
From all over Europe, newly free citizens flock to Washington
to look at the White House and to study Congress, One prominent
conservative member of Congress has told of seeing visiting Soviet
deputies with tears in their eyes as they sat in the chair of the
A CONSERVATIVE DEFENSE OF CONCRESS 83
Speaker in a chamber in which the people hold the real power. As
Lech Walesa said in a powerful address to Congress last year, the
Congress “for many people in the world, oppressed and stripped of
their rights, is a beacon of freedom and a bulwark of human
rights.” It is, in fact, the Congress, not the presidency, that symbolizes America’s commitment to government “of the people, by the
people.”
Maintaining the conservative legacy
I will not, and cannot, defend many of the current (and
changeable) practices of the current (and temporary) leadership of
the current (and replaceable) Congress. But the liberal control of
the Congress is largely the fault of conservatives—we often field
second-rate candidates and insist on talking about things that the
voters in Dubuque and Peoria don’t really care about, like the gold
standard and corruption in Newark. It would be far better to work a
little harder (and smarter) at winning elections than to surrender
our conservative legacy by jumping on the bandwagon of centralized, “efficient” governmental power.
The Congress is changeable. Although a large percentage of incumbents who seek reelection are successful, that has always been
the case in American politics; more than 80 percent were being reelected a hundred years ago, too. But there is not, as some people
charge, a permanent Congress. Approximately two-thirds of the
people who were serving in the Congress a dozen years ago have
been replaced; almost all committee chairmanships have turned
over at least once, and often twice, in the past ten years. In many
state delegations there is not a single member of Congress who was
in office when I was first elected fourteen years ago. The Congress
is, in fact, a constantly changing body, with a much higher rate of
turnover than is found in business, academia, or most significant
institutions.
Yet there are increasingly those in the conservative community
who, frustrated, apparently find it easier to curse the darkness of
the current congressional leadership than to light the candles of intelligent political involvement that are available in a free society. I
have written frequently about the dangers inherent in the campaign for a line-item presidential veto, a substantial power that
many Republicans support in a bold gamble that no Republican
nominee for president will ever lose to some future Michael Dukakis or Walter Mondale. I have had it pointed out to me in rebuttal.
84 THE PUBLIC INTEREST
as though it were a telling point, that even such prominent liberals
as Senator Edward Kennedy and Senator Paul Simon support the
line-item veto. To this argument I can only shrug and reply: “Of
course; but we already knew that they believe in centralized
power.”
It is helpful, sometimes, to attempt to see ourselves through the
lens of historical perspective. What a tragedy it would be if we, the
heirs to the single most important pohtical innovation of modern
times—the separation of powers, in combination with a careful
system of checks and balances—were to surrender that great
legacy, almost without debate, in a fit of frustration.
Congress as an institution
Let us not confuse two very different things. The current
management of the Congress is faulty; many of the current
practices and procedures in the Congress are terrible; the current
Congress is inefficient, unresponsive, and undemocratic. But the
Congress as an institution is the very center of the democratic
experiment—and potentially the most important defender of conservative values.
This raises three questions:
1. Can the Congress be fixed?
2. Is the doctrine of separated powers suitable to this fastmoving modern age?
3. Is the Congress still important to conservatives as a check
on executive power?
The answers are: yes, yes, yes.
In response to the first question. Republicans can regain control
of Congress by simply learning again how to win elections. There
are no shortcuts in politics. Recruit better candidates, identify the
concerns of the voters in each congressional district, apply conservative solutions to real problems of real people, stop writing off
large blocs of voters—that’s how elections are won. I’ve written extensively on each of these points and I won’t attempt to do so again
here, but Democratic control of the Congress is not due to evil
forces or the juxtaposition of the moon and the stars. We can
change it. Those who would lead us in a frantic search for transcendent national issues that will serve as magic arrows to slay the
liberal dragon ignore the fundamental lessons of local politics. It is
far better to relearn the art of winning elections than to transform
our political system, centralizing power even as the people of East-
A CONSERVATIVE DEFENSE OF CONGRESS 85
em Europe undertake to hreak up the centers of power in their
own governments.
Many of the current problems with Congress would be resolved
if the President and others of influence were to add their voices to
the campaign for serious congressional reform—demanding the
right of the people to have issues debated and voted upon, without
restrictive rules of debate (structured by the majority) that block
consideration of many proposed amendments; prohibiting the
bundling of unrelated spending bills into massive appropriations
that defy presidential vetoes; eliminating the power of committee
chairmen to announce other members’ votes by proxy; extending
to the Senate the House’s prohibition on unrelated “riders” to legislation, I have introduced a package of such reforms on behalf of
the House Republican leadership, and they should remain on the
table as a part of any future budget negotiations.
As for the second question, few domestic issues require responses more urgent than Congress is able to provide. Federal
agencies charged with dealing with emergencies, whether tornadoes or bank failures, have adequate ability to respond rapidly. The
greater problem arises in the international arena. But even though
the Constitution divides between the president and the Congress
the major responsibilities in foreign affairs, and reserves to the
Congress the power to declare war, the War Powers Act delegates
to the president the authority to move rapidly and unilaterally in
the event of an international emergency, subject to later review by
the Congress,
Defending congressional prerogatives
This leads, finally, to the question of whether the restraining
power of the Congress—the check against the authority of the executive—is, in fact, important to conservatives, V^hile it is tempting to remind one’s readers of such matters as the conservative
role in the adoption of the 22nd Amendment, which hmits presidential succession; in the promotion of the Bricker Amendment,
which would have limited presidential use of executive agreements;
and in the congressional resistance to Franklin Roosevelt’s effort
to pack the Supreme Court with supporters of his New Deal, it is
not necessary to resort to these examples from what the modern
mind undoubtedly considers to be “ancient history,” A few more
recent examples may also make the point.
In my first term as a member of Congress—which coincided
86 THE PUBLIC INTEREST
with the beginning of the Carter presidency—I found myself
deeply enmeshed in a nationwide struggle by conservative activists
to block the implementation of the treaties by means of which the
new President proposed to surrender control of the Panama Canal
to Omar Torrijos and his most powerful ally, Manuel Noriega.
Civen the current conservative tendency to argue that foreign policy is properly the domain of the chief executive, and that the
Congress ought to keep its micromanaging nose out of the way, it
might be supposed that we held to that same principle during the
controversy surrounding the Panama Canal treaties. In fact, the
opposite was true: Congress was the last hope of conservatives
opposed to the actions of the President. On behalf of conservatives
in Congress, I filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the President’s right to surrender federal property without the consent of
the House of Representatives. The decision by an appellate court to
dismiss the suit on the grounds that individual members of Congress lacked sufficient standing does not dilute the central point: in
an attempt to block an action by a liberal president—in a matter of
foreign policy, no less—conservatives turned to the Congress and
the courts.
It is helpful to continue with examples from the Carter presidency, since many who now disparage the Congress and would invest new powers in the presidency seem reluctant to remember
how recently a liberal president sat in the White House.
In 1977 President Carter proposed to stimulate the economy by
providing a $50 rebate to each family. It was the Congress that
killed the plan: when liberals barely defeated a motion by Representative Rarber Conable to substitute instead a tax cut, the rebate
scheme was dropped.
In 1978 President Carter attempted to create a new Consumer
Protection Agency. It was killed by conservatives in the Congress.
In 1978 the Carter administration announced that it would terminate the Mutual Defense Treaty that the United States had
maintained with the Republic of China on Taiwan. Conservatives
turned to the Congress to ensure continued U.S. protection of Taiwan. The result, in March 1979, was a decision to continue the
U.S.-Taiwan relationship unofficially, with continued security guarantees.
In 1979 President Carter proposed a Hospital Cost Containment
Rill that would have greatly increased federal regulation of medical
care. The plan was killed by conservatives in the Congress.
A CONSERVATIVE DEFENSE OF CONCRESS 87
In 1979 the Carter administration proposed a cumbersome
emergency rationing plan. Customers would need coupons tq buy
gas, and gas stations would have to redeem the coupons to purchase
more gasoline. The initial cost was projected to be $346 million.
Annual administrative costs were estimated at more than $1.6
billion. Conservatives killed the plan in Congress.
In 1980 President Carter proposed a gift of $75 miUion to the
new Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The Congress nearly
defeated the aid package and forced Carter to accept sharp restrictions on the use of the money.
In 1980 conservatives used the Congress to defeat President
Carter’s proposal to create a new Energy Mobihzation Roard that
would have had the authority to waive state and local laws.
Even when Carter won, it was often over the stiff opposition of
conservatives who turned to the Congress to resist presidential
power. Carter’s narrow victory in imposing a windfall-profits tax on
the domestic oil industry is one example. Another is the attempt by
congressional conservatives to prohibit the World Rank from
lending money to governments in Cuba, Laos, Mozambique, Cambodia, Angola, Uganda and Vietnam. Ultimately, the resistance to
this plan in Congress forced Carter to accept a compromise that
required U.S. representatives to various international lending
institutions to “oppose and vote against” loans to the seven countries.
Such battles do not occur only when Democrats occupy the
White House. Last year, during the Rush presidency, conservatives
in Congress repealed catastrophic-illness health-care legislation
and section 89 of the tax code (a provision that would have imposed
burdensome regulations on small businesses), despite both provisions having been signed into law by a Republican president
(Reagan), and despite the Rush administration’s support for them.
The current year began with conservatives rallying to use the Congress in an attempt to keep Chinese students from having to return
to the control of the government that had used its guns in
Tiananmen Square.
Retaining a historical perspective
Despite the persistent (and false) contentions that the Congress
is a place of permanent residence, 106 of the 176 Republicans in
the House—and most of the conservative Democrats, as well—
have served for nine years or fewer. Very few served during a
88 THE PUBLIC INTEREST
Democratic presidency, and it is easy to understand how they could
think of the world only in terms of the relatively brief BeaganBush period in the White House, It is important, however, to retain
a historical perspective. Trite as the expression now seems, it is
nonetheless true that if we fail to remember the past, we are pretty
likely to repeat it,
I am, as my young son likes to remind me, two years past half a
century. Age has its virtues, among them memory, perspective,
and context. For more than half of my life. Democrats have held
the White House, For more than half of my life, conservatives
have had to turn to the Congress in an attempt to prevent liberal
presidents from expanding the size, scope, cost, and power of the
federal government, I spent my own early years in Congress working with conservatives throughout the country to oppose presidential initiatives in both foreign policy and domestic policy, beginning, in my first year in the Congress, with a concerted campaign
to block the Panama Canal treaties. Before we undertake to denigrate the Congress, it would be helpful to look back at recent history. When it comes to the establishment or defense of political
institutions, memory is important.
Defend the Congress? The Congress of the United States needs
no defense: it is the focal point of the Founders’ determination to
put the people in charge of their own destinies. Like my colleagues
in the conservative community, I am frustrated by continued liberal domination of the Congress and by the authoritarian means
that the majority uses to stifle debate and to ignore the public will.
But there was a reason why wits of earlier ages cautioned us not to
toss out the babies when we dump the bath water. Let us reform
the Congress, but let us hold it dear as the guardian of our liberties
against the centralization of power.

Article Summary

For this assignment, each student will create a summary of the assigned unit journal article. Upon completion, the student should be able to:
-Understand the content of the article
-Utilize the content within other areas of unit 3
-Determine the central theme for unit 3

The summary should answer the following questions:
-What is the author’s purpose for writing the article?
-What is the central question for the reading?
-What methods (research) did the author use to address this question?
-What results (answers) did the author receive?

Each submission should contain:
-A 1-page maximum summary (the summary should be no longer than a page).
-Double spaced
-12 point
-Times New Roman
-Submitted within eCampus

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