Koppes (2004) opines [as a snapshot of what was going on in the early 2000s] that as a scientist, especially an earth scientist versed in environmental processes, this is a particularly interesting time to be an in-house observer to the congressional process. There is an escalating battle on Capitol Hill over the use of science in the making of public policy. The debate centers on the use of "sound science" in determining federal regulatory policy and on whether sound science is an achievable standard or simply a political slogan. To say that sound science is a campaign slogan may seem absurd, but it appears to be par for the course on the Hill these days. In a contentious election year, every issue, no matter how small, turns into campaign material.
Partisanship in both houses of Congress is unusually fierce at the moment. And partisanship in a one party majority system, when both houses of Congress and the White House are dominated by the same party, tends to encourage what some would term "undemocratic" behavior, such as the predominance of party-line voting, holding open of voting times to encourage vote-switching and passage of contentious bills, or blocking of the minority party from legislative debates. These behaviors seem to occur no matter which party is in control of Congress and the executive branch, though memory appears to be extremely short when the formerly dominant patty finds itself in the down-trodden minority, and vice versa. I was quick to learn the latter aspect in my very first issue area, forest health. Congressman Jay Inslee, whom I am spending my year working for, is the ranking member f the Forest Subcommittee and last November was nominated by the House Democratic Leadership to help draft the joint conference report of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, a bill to authorize forest thinning to prevent wildfire. I was surprised to discover that the deliberation of the joint conference report was a closed process that took place between the original sponsors of the bill and the chairmen of the respective committees.
Congressman Inslee and other appointed conferees were not invited to attend any of the pre-conference deliberation, in which the main differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill were hashed out, including the quality of environmental analysis that would be needed prior to approving forest thinning projects, or the definition and proportion of authorized funds to be spent on the wildland-urban interface where forest fires have the most impact on humans. That debate took place between the Chairmen of the House Resources and Agriculture Committees, the Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and Senators Wyden and Feinstein, who co-authored the Senate bill. The actual conference was a short public affair in which votes were cast for a predeliberated report, with no discussion of amendments by the other members who were not party to the prior deliberations. Read on ....
[Full Disclosure: One of the WP Editors, Michael D. Campbell, published a geopolitical editorial in 2018 that explores more deeply some of the issues involved in today's political mix-up: http://www.i2mconsultants.com/downloads/corp/TheRussiansareComingRevised.pdf Also in 2018, Mr. Campbell, and co-authors, published an article on media bias: http://www.i2mconsultants.com/downloads/corp/JGG-1-012.pdf ].
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