Business as usual...

Maybe it's just "business as usual" in Congress, this practice of attaching pet pork projects and self-serving amendments to wholly unrelated, yet vitally important, House and Senate bills. If it is, though, it is a deplorable (and, to me, downright sneaky) way of passing legislation. It hints at issues that are too weak to withstand debate on their own, and, worse yet, sets the stage for more partisan, ad hominem attacks on those forced to oppose the larger bill because of their conscientious rejection of those parasitic amendments married to it.

A case in point is the must-pass military spending bill, scheduled for a "showdown vote" today. Two Senators, Ted "Bridge to Nowhere" Stevens of Alaska and Tennessee's Bill "Just Protecting My Pharma Stock" Frist, have managed to attach two such unrelated amendments to the defense bill, endangering the success of budget legislation necessary to fund and supply our troops. The actions of these self-centered poster boys for the "Culture of Corruption" are deplorable on two levels.

First, they threaten passage of a bill vital to our men and women in uniform. And for what? Mr. Stevens' long-standing drilling crusade that, by all informed accounts, will yield so little oil that it won't make an appreciable dent in our energy needs? An unnecessary legal shield for the bloated drug industry, which is a clear conflict of interest for Mr. Frist and other Senators who own "as much as $16 million in pharmaceutical stock"?

There are times when Senators must look out for the needs of their specific regional constituents. But there are times when these powerful officials must put the interests of the nation ahead of their personal greed. To hold the military spending bill hostage with these irrelevant amendments is simply unconscionable.

The second level on which this scenario is disgraceful is equally insidious. These amendments create a dilemma for supporters of the defense bill who, nevertheless, oppose the idea of simultaneously passing into law such obviously unrelated and far-from-settled issues as the oil and drug measures. They lay the groundwork for an attack on those rational opponents of the overall bill (as it currently stands) with the usual litany of right-wing name calling.

I can almost hear it now. Those who rightly vote against the spending bill, specifically rejecting the attachments of Messrs. Stevens and Frist, will be publicly crucified as "undermining the troops" and "aiding the terrorists" and "playing politics in a time of war." And fear of those shrill but untrue criticisms, and the drop in poll numbers that might follow, will undoubtedly blackmail otherwise rational thinkers into voting for something they know to be flawed. Sadly, this has been a familiar pattern in Washington for the past five years.

If this situation is an example of how business is routinely conducted by Congress, then it's no wonder America finds itself in the shape it's in. Let's hope that the American people remember to see the true culprits threatening to undermine our troops, and don't buy into the hype that's inevitably right around the corner. And let's make sure our Senators know that legislation by extortion is unacceptable in the future - and that these kinds of self serving amendments must withstand scrutiny on their own merit, and not be calculatingly hidden within far more important measures.