Grace Norton explains SMC accomplishments. Grace Norton Friday Two days ago an ad thanking Shelley Capito for co-sponsoring a health care bill that would have modified the Affordable Care Act appeared on my Facebook “Home” page. I’ll spare people the rant on my dislike of these ads that pop up because I suspect everyone else feels pretty much the same way I do about them. But this ad, in particular, got me wondering why anyone would thank a legislator for being a “co-sponsor” of a bill. It occurred to me that perhaps the problem is that people other than nerds and policy wonks like me don’t really understand what “co-sponsoring” a bill generally means. All bills presented to legislatures must have “sponsors” who are actual members of the legislative body. These are sometimes the people who actually wrote the bills, but today they are more likely to be legislators who have agreed to present bills actually written by lobbyists, special interest groups, and groups like the Koch-sponsored American Legislative Exchange Committee (ALEC), which is a group of businessmen and state legislators who meet from time to time to generate (generally conservative, pro-business) model bills members will try to get passed in as many states as possible. “Sponsors” of bills have to take responsibility on themselves to drum up legislative support for their bills in the committees to which they are referred, in their own house when it comes to a floor vote, and often with the public. “Co-sponsors” are quite different. They are members of a legislative body who agree in advance to vote for the bill if it comes before a committee they sit on and to vote for it if it ever gets to the floor of their house. “Co-sponsorship” is PRETEND WORK. “Co-sponsors” do not often even help the actual sponsors round up other legislators’ votes or help to drum up public support if it is likely to be needed. The major reason people “co-sponsor” is so that they can make it appear to their constituents or some significant segment of their base that they are actually doing something to earn their pay when in reality the only work they did was to pick up the phone and ask someone to add their name. In short, “co-sponsorship” is a mechanism by which a legislator can claim credit for someone else’s work. Most of Shelley Capito’s legislative “accomplishments” in her 17 years in the House of Representatives are “co-sponsorships.” She “sponsors” a small bill or two in some years, but she appears to be incapable of doing the work required to get them passed. Her bills almost never garner even a single “co-sponsor.” Only one of her bills in the past several years have even got a single hearing from a single House committee; most of her bills are determined by the chairs of the committees that receive them to be “dead on arrival.” None of Shelley’s bills in the past several years have been approved by the committees they were sent to–a prerequisite for getting a vote by the full House. Shelley lacks the respect, the skill, and/or the willingness to work that is necessary to get her bills through the legislative process. It is important for West Virginians to realize this because her shortcomings as a member of the House will become even more glaring in the much smaller, much more visible Senate where she is asking us to send her. It is not in our best interest to saddle ourselves with a Senator we already know is not an effective legislator because West Virginia needs for the government to do certain things to benefit our state. We need an effective Senator--one who will do more than collect $174,000 a year for PRETENDING to work.
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 19:03:18 +0000