Wednesday, January 17, 2007
703 Sen. Enzi`s quiet successes
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried. -Winston Churchill
WASHINGTON, D. C. It might be easy to assume that Congress in the national capital would just be a bigger version of our legislature in our state capital in Cheyenne. T’aint so.
I spent parts of last week in both places and it is almost as different as black and white. However, one senator is trying his best to change the way things are done back there to look more like Wyoming’s model.
U. S. Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming), who is an alumni of the Wyoming legislature, says he has been able to get some committees to change their ways to systems that worked well back in Cheyenne.
And political observers have been watching in awe at what the Wyoming senator is doing.
Congressional Quarterly recently published an article about something they called “A Partisan Senate Partnership,” referring to an unusual and unpublicized example of cooperation between senators of different parties. The profile was about the extremism in the Congress and all the bickering that has been occurring between members of the Republican and Democrat Parties.
Who are the two most extreme members of the Senate? According to CQ, the most liberal, which is pretty obvious, is Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts). The most conservative? That’s right, it is our Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming.
Surveys of the two came out as follows:
Ted Kennedy scored 98.7% in the poll as following his party’s votes more aggressively than any other Democrat in the Senate. Mike Enzi scored 97.9% as following his party’s votes more aggressively than any other Republican in the Senate.
The fact that these two could even occupy the same room boggles the imagination. And to think this “odd couple” has actually set a new standard for bi-partisan work together. – well, it is truly unbelievable.
And they are the ranking members of their parties on one of the most powerful and important committees in the senate, the one known as HELP (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions).
For some years now, Sen. Enzi was the chairman of that committee and Sen. Kennedy was the ranking member. With the big Democrat victory in the 2006 elections, their roles are now reversed.
But neither is apparently too upset when it comes to getting things done in their committee.
Senator Mike laughs when he says the public is not getting the whole picture of how Congress works. “You hear about 20 percent of the laws being discussed and not the 80 percent of proposals which make sense to both sides,” he says. As a former businessman, he is a proponent of the 80:20 rule, that is, where 20 percent of your inventory can provide 80 percent of your sales and on and on …
One of things that Sen. Enzi pioneered in his committee is getting rid of hearings and holding roundtables. “This is how we did it back in Cheyenne. Works much better.” Apparently Sen. Kennedy agrees and is planning on continuing the practice.
And despite the two men’s polar-opposite voting records, their record of working together on HELP has been sterling.
In the past two years, they passed 25 bills and had 35 bills reported out of their committee, a remarkable accomplishment. It often takes six years to get even one bill approved. Some 27 laws were signed by President Bush that originated with the HELP committee during this time. One bill they co-sponsored was limited to just two hours of debate in the Senate and then passed.
“It is not Republican. It is not Democrat. It is a third way,” is how Sen. Enzi explains it. “And when we disagree, we disagree agreeably.”
This month, the two changed roles with Sen. Kennedy now the chairman and Sen. Enzi the ranking member.
The Wyoming senator does not see much difficulty in the future. “We have a lot of important things to work on. Health insurance is a big deal to Sen. Kennedy and I want to work on making sure small businesses have access to health insurance.”
But being chairman has its benefits.
Sen. Enzi said that Wyoming would not have finally gotten the AML money (Abandoned Mine Land) of over one and a half billion dollars had he not have had the leverage he had as HELP chairman.
But despite him no longer having the chairmanship, he is looking forward to working with Sen. Kennedy in a cooperative way to make sure the people of America benefit from some new laws.
|
