Perspective from the 19^th Hole 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 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.

In all the to-ing and fro-ing (there, one of my favorite phrases again) of the effort in Congress to avert a government shutdown, consider this unheralded fact:

As Members of Congress move to reach, eventually, a decision on a compromise, someone – or probably more than one “someones” – had to sit in room in the depths of the Capitol and the new proposed laws into words.

How many?

The original bill was 1,547 pages long.   It was slimmed down to 116 pages for Thursday’s vote and grew slightly to 118 pages on Friday.

It is true that lawyers working for Congress must write all the words into each piece of legislation.  Of course, that’s what they are paid to do.  But it also takes a lot of time in the writing dungeon.

It is the same in the Oregon Legislature where I worked as a lobbyist for 25 years. 

Every piece of legislation under consideration by lawmakers – hundreds of “bills” in every legislative session – must be drafted by attorneys who work for what’s called the “Legislative Counsel Office.”

In effect, the office is a law firm for legislators.

In the category of more than you may want to know, lobbyists like me must secure what’s called “a note from mother” to be able to talk to attorneys in the Counsel’s Office.  That’s because the attorneys work for the Legislature, not for lobbyists.

The “note from mother” is simply a note from a legislator that it is acceptable for a lobbyist to talk with a bill-drafting attorney.

So, the bottom line in any legislative session in Oregon is that all bills are drafted by attorneys.  It is an often not well understood fact in Oregon legislative processes because some observers of the Legislature believe that lawmakers or lobbyists write bills. 

They don’t.

The same is true in Congress.

So, with all the national media attention on the “to’ing and fro’ing” in Congress (or how Elon Musk and Donald Trump – perhaps that is the right order – are giving orders in the process), just realize that certain poor souls are working in the depths of the Nation’s Capitol putting all the words on paper.

Regardless of the substance, they should get credit for the process.