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CONGRESSWOMAN DIANA DEGETTE WILL BE LIVE ON SQUARESTATE.NET Tomorrow at 2:00 Mountain Time, Rep. DeGette will be here live to answer questions from the community. Please Join us tomorrow, or just post your questions for her here!
Ways and Means raises the money and Appropriations spends it. Those are the two committees in the US House of Representatives that a real power broker wants to join. If the big pile of money that is our federal government is the hill where you want to be king, then you should know that "Tax and Spend" is not just a slur from an attack ad. It is the Alpha and Omega of public policy. If you can't raise and spend the funds to make it happen, then nothing happens.
That isn't how it should be. The Constitution itself set the foundation for a committee that regulates a huge stretch of legislative landscape covered by the "commerce clause." Anything at all related to interstate commerce flows through the Commerce Committee. Telephones, marriage, highways... when the Feds want to raise penalties for dealing drugs on school property they find justification in the commerce clause. It is a sweeping mandate, and it includes one of the signature issues of the next decade; our national health care policy. The people who are serious about policy try for the Commerce Committee.
If things ever happen in Washington, that is where the action will be. Right now, with a President headed in the wrong direction prodded along by extremist religious groups, with a slim Democratic majority in Congress where every vote matters, and with a legislative body made up by lawyers driven by politics rather than scientists driven by reason, only incremental changes are possible.
How important is the Executive Branch? Even if a Democratic President were capable of nothing else, he could staff the EPA, the FDA (and its parent, the DHHS), and all the other guardians of scientific policy with actual scientists. Right now those chairs are held by a cabal bent on eliminating fact based policy with what their ideology has them convinced should be true - despite all refuting evidence.
Someday, perhaps very soon, those levers of power will be in the hands of people working in the service of sanity. The last of the dead-enders will be sent home, and in their place will be people, if no less politically self-serving, at least rational enough to realize that sane policy is smart politics. The vast majority of America is ready for something better.
Diana DeGette's highly autobiographical story takes the reader from a law school in New York, through her time in the Colorado Assembly, and right up into her career today as one of the most familiar names to Bush's veto pen. Throughout the book she is never shy about naming names and puts a spotlight on the fools both local and national. She quotes former Colorado Senator Mary Tabedo, "Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops off significantly after age twenty-five," and she quotes former US Rep. Jo Ann Davis, "We're sending the wrong message when we use taxpayer dollars to give condoms out to these kids and we don't tell them, by the way, you'll be probably dead at age twenty-four by cervical cancer. But we're giving you condoms, so go do your thing," and DeGette illustrates throughout the ignorance, belligerence, and fear mongering of the abstinence-only right wing.
These are not just people who want to stop abortion. They want to stop contraception. They even want to stop sex for certain others by just saying 'no' to them. And it is not just children, it is the poor, the people of Africa, it is anyone anywhere where they can use the leverage of Appropriations to choke off Federal dollars, no matter how unrelated and necessary for other programs, if by doing so they twist the arms of the heathens and bring them to their knees.
DeGette's individual story keeps the narrative moving forward, and gives insight into her passion and motivation to pursue American health policy. What had begun as a way to stake out a niche for herself in the House of Representatives was pushed by a family challenge into a personal crusade. She doesn't always seem to see the reasons for her victories and defeats, but emerges as a skilled negotiator and knowledgeable about the nuances of political process.
---And these paragraphs are for her, because I know that she will be visiting SquareState.net tomorrow, and her staff will no doubt do their homework. "What do you mean I don't always see..." Well, take for instance your appointment to the Commerce Committee. That was a huge coup for a freshman congresswoman. You went all out for the assignment, and put your chips on the table with Chairman Dingell. You made the case that the committee needed a woman, and it needed representation from the Mountain West. Both are very good points, and I am sure that was part of the story, but I think there was more. Dingell has been in the House since before either of us was born. He wanted a Democrat for that position who would hold it for the huge span of time needed for the power of seniority to take effect. You were thirty-nine, from a perfect safe seat in Denver, and you had the patience and temper of someone who knew what it was like to work with a Republican majority. You got the seat in part because of who you were, but you also got that seat because of who the Chairman hoped you would be in twenty years.
And now an example about a loss. Bush is surrounded by two types of people, the zealots and the greedy (and some are both.) You see the zealots and address them well in your book, but there is no indication that you see the greedy. Bush opposes stem cell research because of the zealots. Bush opposes Federal funding of laboratories because of the greedy. I believe he doesn't care if finding a cure takes an extra ten years and becomes half as likely as long as if when they are found, his friends hold the patents. His State of the Union semi-ban wasn't just political tightrope walking for the Church. It was effectively a ban on anyone but private labs. Consider your quote about when the private lab Novacell had a breakthrough, "When I learned of the discovery, I couldn't help but wonder (once again) how much farther down the road we'd be with this research if we had been able to use federal dollars to help along the way." I could be wrong, but I think that the delay wasn't an unfortunate side-effect. I think it was the plan all along.---
But that aside serves to demonstrate one of this book's great strengths. It initiates a conversation that has been too long delayed, and it invites us in by giving us the information we need. This book shows the armies arrayed against science, and it gives us hope for the future. Diana DeGette served as a co-chair on Hillary Clinton's National Health Care Advisory Board, and although the campaign did not meet Sen. Clinton's aspirations it has put us in a great position to honestly tackle stem cell research, S-CHIP, and all other health care issues. With a new administration in the White House, with Clinton in the Senate, and with DeGette in the House of Representatives, the conversation may be ready to move forward.
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