PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE:  This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

We were subjected again this week to an example of government not working very well.

The case occurred when Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson held up the U.S. Senate by demanding that clerks read every word in a 618-page bill on the new virus relief package.

He had the right to make such a request.  But it was stupid.  He was not going to win in the end anyway.

The poor reading clerks on the Senate floor had to stumble through more than 10 hours of reading a complex bill.

According to the Washington Post, it included this unintelligible paragraph:

““subsection (a)(1) of such section 314 shall be applied by substituting ‘91 per cent’ for ‘89 per cent’” and “without regard to requirements in sections 658E(c)(3)(E) or 658G of such Act (42 U.S.C. 9858c(c)(3), 9858e).”

In proposed laws, such words are always a part of adding new legal language to the law books.  Makes no sense to the untrained eye, but, still, valid.

Call what Johnson did a “stunt” because it was exactly that.

The same stupid procedure has been used on occasion at the State Capitol in Salem, Oregon.  It usually occurred when the minority party wanted to slow things down on a bill it considered controversial.  So, party leaders told the clerks, read a bill line for line.

Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman wrote the D.C. stunt this way:

“Being a United States senator comes with all kinds of privileges not afforded to lowly House members.  One is that in many instances you can force the entire chamber to submit to your idiotic whims.

“So it was that Senator Ron Johnson used his power to force Senate clerks to read every word of the 628-page Covid relief bill out loud.   As he said in a tweet, “If they’re going to add nearly $2 trillion to the national debt, at least we should know what’s in the bill.”

Like anyone else, however, Johnson was more than free to read the bill on his own time rather than forcing the clerks to perform this ritual.

Waldman went on with his trenchant, forward-looking insight:

“There’s a context for this stunt, which was meant to delay debate on the bill in a particularly exasperating way:  Republicans see it in their interest to make the legislative process appear as convoluted and ridiculous as possible.

“That’s because an inevitable part of their message for the 2022 mid-term elections — as it almost always is — will be that ‘Washington Doesn’t Work.’  It’s a bunch of squabbling, partisanship and arcane procedural nonsense that does nothing to help you and your family, so what we need to do is toss out the people in charge and put in some folks with common sense, i.e., Republicans.

“And the idea that legislation is too long is a regular Republican refrain, as though a bill’s page count proves that there must be something wrong with it.

“This (sowing government discord) will be one of the most important grounds on which politics is fought for the next few years.  Republicans will argue that under Democrats the legislative process is a mess, their bills are full of frivolous and wasteful boondoggles, and the Biden administration is mishandling implementation of everything. “

In the face of all this, my wish is that those who represent us would get back to the business of:

• Making government work better, not pulling stupid stunts like Johnson.
• Continuing to ask tough questions about the role of government, whether there should be role in the cases of some public policy issues, and, if there is a role, how should it be designed to endure solid performance – a return-on-investment to use a private business phrase.

If steps like these occurred, we’d be better off as citizens and, in fact, government would be better.  So, I’d tell Senator Johnson and his ilk to get with the “better government” program.