Americans should recognize need for shared sacrifice

The light from the street lamps brightly streamed onto the broad sidewalks of Washington DC but dimly oozed into the sharp corners where the pathway intersected buildings. The man in the long, tan overcoat with the upturned collar stood in these corners avoiding the veritable spotlights overhead. Adjusting his fedora to obscure his face more effectively, he walked alongside the white building, each footstep clicking like a tick from a bomb. Reaching the metal doors, the man turned to the plaque at his right to be sure he was at the right place and read "Russell Senate Office Building."

With a brief extension of his lips too quick to be called a smile, the man casually looked around to be certain he was unobserved, took the special key given him by the senator, unlocked the doors, and entered the dark building. Now inside, all pretense of stealth vanished; quickly reaching the staircase, the man climbed to the senator's floor, and went to Senator ------'s office. The second key he had been given fit neatly into the lock, and this time a true grin reached his face, though on his face the smile seemed more an unusual malignancy than an expression of pleasure. Entering the office in front of him, the man removed a manila envelope with the words "Instructions for Senator ---- from Special Interest ------." His task accomplished, the man left the building--and business as usual continued . . .

It's easy to think of special interests as cadres of evil men crossing the capital looking to advance their cause at the expense of honest American citizens. In Ross Perot fashion, we'd like to view government as a series of easy decisions made difficult by the rich lobbyists' and special interests' subversion of democracy. Without such influences, the easy theory of government goes, good decisions would be made quickly with little discord. Proponents of this theory decry the "business as usual" mentality that pervades Washington.

"Business as usual" speaks to the seemingly interminable governmental gridlock and the apparently excessive influence wielded by special interests. It is a target for outsider politicians looking to get on the inside and a claim of unfairness by the losing side in a legislative battle. When the Republicans effectively stymied the President's stimulus package, Democratic accusations rang forth claiming the principled opposition was nothing more than gridlock, business as usual. Conversely, when the President's budget passed, Republicans sallied forth to decry the genuine Democratic effort noting the President's concessions to powerful senators and called the whole process business as usual.

In a democratic system, "business as usual" does indeed mean that the legislative process moves at times with the alacrity of a tired snail and seems moved by the gusting force of powerful concerns. Conceptually, democracy invites slow decisions. When we vitiate the tortuous route of legislation and its imperfect result, we often forget the most obvious of maxims--potentially, there are as many valid opinions as there are voices.

This June, while working for the Senate Budget Committee, I heard some of these voices while doing what hundreds of other interns were doing--the mail. The number of letters was surely magnified by the season (the budget battle would conclude the day before I left) and the fact that I was helping with the mail for one of the senators on the Budget Committee. In the letters, I discovered an "everybody but me" attitude. Some people wrote in calling for across the board cuts but most were similar to the following: "Dear Senator, cut spending first before raising taxes. Don't cut Social Security, though, the elderly shouldn't have to pay any more." Or, "Dear Senator, I support the idea of shared sacrifice to fix the country's economic problems, but the proposed BTU tax would unfairly target truckers. The tax is a good idea, but please exempt truckers."

In the end, we all know the final result. Intense public disapproval scrapped the BTU tax and many other provisions of the budget reconciliation, even the infamous mohair subsidy, were left in the final package.

Many people have suggested reasonable solutions to the current financial crisis, and pundits and outsiders claim that the "business as usual" Congress lacks the political will to make the right decisions. In the current "everybody but me" climate, do we have the right to deny the mohair herders their own selfish interests when we are not willing to sacrifice our own? No one likes to consider himself an evil skulker unfairly trying to manipulate legislators, yet letters sent to elected officials urging one course of action over another are no different in principle than a lobbyist sent to influence legislators by the NRA, the AMA, NARAL or any number of other lobbying groups. When we recognize that for the most part, "business as usual" in Washington is nothing more than democracy, we will move from "everybody but me" to "everyone, without exception." Until then, business as usual. . . .