One more reason why revolution is in order:

The conservative leadership in Congress now also routinely excludes members of the minority, and even moderates in their own party, from conference committees. For example the conference committee on the energy bill, to which 58 members of Congress were formally appointed, actually consisted of private negotiations between just four members: Senator Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and Congressman Billy Tauzin (R-La.), and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Representative Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) on the tax portions of the bill. When the Senate passed a version of the energy legislation that was not to the liking of Senator Domenici, he bluntly declared, “I will rewrite the bill.” While a couple of members of the minority party were permitted to participate in committee negotiations over the Medicare legislation, those who did not see eye to eye with conservative leaders – including Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) – were excluded. The product of these secret conference negotiations – typically hundreds, if not thousands of pages long – is then sent to each chamber, often with 24-hours or less to review, for a straight up-or-down vote without prospect of amendments. Instead of providing meaningful time for amendments and debate on either bill, conservatives spent 40-hours demogaguing the issue of judicial confirmations – even though President Bush has had 98 percent of his nominees approved. The result has been not just the effective exclusion of the minority party (and the millions of citizens they represent) from any role in the legislation but also a series of poorly crafted, incoherent bills that are packed with provisions geared toward special interests at the expense of the public good. Beyond being excluded from legislative negotiations, members of the minority party face punitive retribution for taking opposing positions. In a dramatic departure from the bipartisan tradition of the appropriations committee, members of the House who voted against the education and health spending bill this summer saw funding for roads, clinics and other important projects for their home districts removed from subsequent versions of the legislation. The decision will especially hurt the poor because members opposing the bill came from 42 of the 50 poorest congressional districts. Opponents of the bill believed that the measure would have given short shrift to schools and other key priorities at a time when billions are being squandered on tax cuts for the very wealthy. It used to be that voting your conscience was praised in Congress – now it is punished. To make matters worse, the White House recently announced that it will no longer answer basic information requests from the minority party– even requests that relate to understanding how taxpayer money is spent.