Calling your opponents derisive names is common in politics, and one of the names currently in vogue is “hostage-taker”. Notice how it does and doesn’t get applied.
For instance, in the recent debt ceiling debate, Republicans (in particular, those sympathetic to the Tea Party movement) refused to vote for a raise in the federal debt ceiling unless federal spending was also cut. They insisted that spending be cut by an amount equal or greater to the increase in the debt ceiling, so that savings from the former would cover the latter.
A failure to raise the debt ceiling would have caused more than a few problems (though how many and how severe is a matter of debate). So Democrats routinely described Republicans as “holding the country hostage” in order to get the spending cuts that they wanted, saying the GOP was putting the country at risk of all sorts of bad consequences.
Similarly, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) has recently been called a hostage-taker by Democrats for insisting that disaster aid be offset with budget cuts. Aiding victims of Hurricane Irene has broad support, so it should just be passed on its own, Democrats say. To put conditions on it means taking something good and “holding it hostage” for some further, less popular end.
But, of course, Republicans and Tea Party members weren’t the only ones putting conditions on a debt ceiling deal. President Barack Obama said he wouldn’t sign a deal unless it carried the government through 2012. And, as a senator, Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling. Is it fair to say he was “holding the country hostage” in either of those situations?
We could ask the same when it comes to immigration reform. There are many aspects of immigration reform that have broad enough support to pass Congress — enhanced border security, changes in visa criteria, etc. — but Democrats won’t pass them unless they’re in a bill that that also provides legalization and a path to citizenship (AKA “amnesty”) for illegal immigrants. Democrats don’t refer to this as holding border security hostage, though; they refer to it as “comprehensive” immigration reform.
The fact is, politicians on both sides of the aisle often hitch unpopular attachments to popular legislation — say, to a defense bill — so that they can pass something that likely wouldn’t pass on its own. Should legislators vote for bills with attachments like that, or should they insist on a “clean” bill? I’d say it depends. Legislators should make their own judgment about how egregious the attachment is compared to how important of the rest of the bill is. This is to say nothing more than that they should weigh the good against the bad, and — no surprise — different legislators will likely come to different conclusions. If we disagree with their judgment, we can always vote them out.
It would be nice, in a way, to only have votes on bills without unrelated attachments (e.g., Obama’s recent request for a clean transportation bill). But we should also realize that such attachments are a venue for compromise, which is an important element in representative government.
Naturally, though, Obama and Democrats aren’t going to deride their own position on immigration reform as “hostage-taking” any more than they’re going to dignify Republican positions on the debt ceiling and disaster relief as “comprehensive”. And Republicans will employ similar double-standards to the disadvantage of Democrats.
So, instead of having politicians defend their views on what compromises they will or won’t accept, we instead have representatives who use amending legislation as yet another forum for double-standards and name-calling.