Minority Parties in Congress

I write today against my better judgement to suspend my blog posts indefinitely to go to Washington and solve the economic crisis. The role the minority party in Congress, on the whole, often seems to take is to point out flaws (real or imagined) with whatever the majority is doing. Particularly in the House, this follows logically from the idea that representatives behave with all eyes on the next election - incumbents want to be re-elected, and they want their party to take more seats. Without the majority vote in their favor, members of the minority party can more freely take positions further from the ideological center out of personal preference or a desire to gain favor from voters in their district because the party leadership will tend to be less concerned with anything that doesn't directly involve winning the majority back. It is generally in the interest of members of Congress to draw attention to themselves, and in the interest of the minority party to rail against the majority, and the louder they can do so the better. This can be seen today with President Bush's party out of power in Congress - the blame game becomes much easier for both parties. The Republicans can blast Congress for not passing legislation that they favor, and the Democrats have to respect the power of the veto and consider their ability to override it when developing bills. Being contrarian can be a useful and popular tactic, in its own way. Representative Ron Paul of Texas is a good example of this I think. He has his beliefs, votes accordingly, and is well-liked enough in his district that he doesn't have to vote with the Republican Party or talk lovingly about his party-mates to get re-elected. He can always sit back and say he didn't vote for this or that when it's time to run for president again, and he has built a small army of like-minded people who back him.

As far as the bailout bill goes, the explanation for why it took the House two tries to pass it but not the House is due to the inherent differences between the two houses. House Representatives are all up for re-election and are forced to be more directly responsive to their districts. By contrast, only 1/3 of the Senate is up for re-election, so a full 2/3 of them are largely uninhibited by (at least immediate) electoral concerns. If they think it's good, they can vote for it. Some Representatives just can't vote for it if they still want to be in Congress in a few months...unless they have something to sell it to their constituents with. Packaging the bill with other popular tax breaks or other benefits made the bill a more viable option for certain representatives to vote in favor of when they otherwise could or would not have out of concern for their perception in the home district. Aside from individual considerations, the macro pressures of the party could also have had an effect - since the effects of the bill are unlikely to truly be felt (or even understood) by voters come Election Day, neither party desires to be the party that looked like it didn't do anything or didn't care.