There's no doubt about it. In the last several years the tone of political discourse in this country has been a lot like the job market, and it just keeps getting worse. Beyond the usual attack politics in campaigning, officials have even lost any civility once they're elected.
There was a major incident in the U.S. House of Representatives over the summer when Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, R-Calif., tried to have the Democrats on his committee evicted from the room to stop them from bothering him during a spending bill debate and later voting on the bill.
Wisconsin had its own little incident a week ago, when state Sen. Bob Welch, R-Redgranite, cut off Sen. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee, during debate. What happened next was a shouting match during a roll call vote that included Welch, Moore, Sen. Mike Ellis, R-Neenah, and Sen. Tim Carpenter, D-Milwaukee. It got so bad that Ellis yelled out at Carpenter \Go back to the Assembly!"" and all the legislators had to publicly apologize the next day. Now the state Senate has to come up with a solution to an awful problem before it starts looking less gentlemanly and more like the infamous British Parliament.
One has to ask, though, if the solution they have come up with is actually worse than the problem itself. The Senate voted on party lines to give the state Senate president, in this case Alan Lasee, R-De Pere, the power to eject any senator from the floor for a day. The Senate president would simply have to state that the member was acting in a disorderly fashion. There would not be any actual means of overriding the decision, and the member's constituents would be effectively disenfranchised for the day. Democrats proposed an alternative allowing the Senate to eject a rowdy member on a bipartisan supermajority which could preserve the members' voting rights, but that was defeated on a party-line vote.
Granted, interruptions and shouting matches on the floor are bad things, but is giving a single member in a chamber the power to remove someone if they don't like the tone of their voice a better thing? Democratic Leader Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton, raised a great point. ""Imagine the abuse this rule invites ... in the midst of a veto override needing just a single vote, the tone of the argument may trump the argument itself should the president of the senate decide to have an impassioned Senator removed."" In other words, considering how many of Gov. Jim Doyle's vetoes have been upheld on a one-vote margin, imagine if Republicans decide to just suddenly get to two-thirds of voting members by kicking some Democrats out of the room?
State Sen. Chuck Chvala, D-Madison, a former Majority Leader, denounced the new rule as ""undemocratic,"" and he's right. No single legislator should have the power to unilaterally eject another member in the middle of a close debate. If anybody should be able to take Chuck Chvala out of the Senate, it's not Alan Lasee; it's Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard and District 4 Judge Paul Higginbotham.
Republicans assure us that the abuses feared by the Democrats won't happen. Even assuming we believe them, is it still a good idea to give one legislator that kind of power? Imagine if the Senate became Democratic again. Would Republicans be comfortable giving Erpenbach and company the same power they just gave themselves? Having established that this power exists, the next stage is to abuse it, and then the next stage is for it to be accepted as common practice. The state Senate could simply become a forum where majority rules by denying key opponents the right to speak or vote on critical measures.
And so here we are, with a new power granted to the leader of the Wisconsin State Senate: the power to quash debate by quashing the debaters. Will it be abused? Will the power still exist in two years? Will any veto override votes suddenly see a few Democrats ejected? Either way, the Wisconsin state Senate has found a worse thing than a sinking political discourse. They've created the possibility that debate could do more than just degrade; it could disappear.
Eric Kleefeld is a senior majoring in political science. You can reach at opinion@dailycardinal.com
