August 04, 2010 03:07 AM UTC

Bennet criticizes Senate's glacial pace, rules in New Yorker article

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• by: CastleMan

Michael F. Bennet is not happy with the way the U.S. Senate does business.

Colorado’s incumbent junior senator, in fact, seems either dismayed or disappointed about the reality of life in “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”

So things appear if the reporting of George Packer in today’s New Yorker is any indication.

Packer’s examination of today’s Senate, where unprecedented partisan bickering and skyrocketing use of the filibuster and “holds” to block action are now the norm, is a disturbing look at a legislative body that has never been known for its responsiveness to the public will.

Bennet’s comments are blunt and indicate that at least some freshman senators are nearing the end of their patience.

Talking about the experience of sitting in the presiding officer’s chair, Bennet says it’s rare to see too much happening:

Sit and watch us for seven days-just watch the floor. You know what you’ll see happening? Nothing. When I’m in the chair, I sit there thinking, I wonder what they’re doing in China right now?

Bennet also expresses frustration at the Senate’s inability to even discuss, let alone help solve, the nation’s problems. Packer quoted him as follows in the context of several big challenges, including the national debt, the financial sector meltdown, and America’s addiction to oil and coal:

We find ourselves at a moment in our history when the questions are huge ones, not small ones, and where things have been put off for a really long period of time. Yet you have a Senate that’s designed not to advance change but to slow it.

For all of the insight this article gives me into Michael Bennet’s view of the job – and it does provide some surprising hints – the part I found the most disheartening was Sen. Jeff Merkley’s commentary on the Senate’s reputation as the “world’s greatest deliberative body”:

“That is a phrase that I wince each time I hear it, because the amount of real deliberation, in terms of exchange of ideas, is so limited.” Merkley could remember witnessing only one moment of floor debate between a Republican and a Democrat. “The memory I took with me was: ‘Wow, that’s unusual-there’s a conversation occurring in which they’re making point and counterpoint and challenging each other.’ And yet nobody else was in the chamber.”

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