The cable network
C-SPAN provides an important service, one that is unavailable in many other
states and governments. C-SPAN, founded in 1979, provides an extensive amount of coverage of the day-to-day activities
of the House of Representatives and the Senate via cable television. It airs entire House and
Senate sessions, giving the American people the opportunity to fully witness
how these parts of the government operate on a public stage. C-SPAN affords the
American people an unprecedented amount of access, and the C-SPAN Archives,
available online and free to anyone who wishes to access them, provides an
incredible amount of historical content, dating back to the inception and debut
of C-SPAN. By looking through the C-SPAN Archives, anyone interested in the
workings of Congress can learn a lot about how the American government
operates. To illustrate this, I have chosen three clips that
showcase three important concepts within Congress.
My first clip is of a one-minute speech, which is a
typical part of the day during a House session. Speeches are obviously
important to members of Congress: they provide an opportunity for the member of
Congress to present his or her ideas and opinions, and speeches also show constituents that their Representative or Senator is relaying the
messages that they want to be heard throughout the halls of
Congress. One-minute speeches are a
normal part of almost any day in the House, and the frequency and importance of
one-minute speeches has significantly risen since the advent of C-SPAN. As
quoted in the book The Televised Congress,
“One-minute speeches became a staple of the members trying to score points with
other members, their leaders, the press, and their local constituency” (Browning).
This video clip that I have made from the House session on November 30, 2011, shows
how one-minute speeches are typically given. Each session in the House begins
with the Speaker calling the House to order, and then the Speaker, Representative John Boehner from Ohio, announces that the
chair will “entertain up to fifteen requests for one-minute speeches.” This
obviously means that only fifteen Representatives will be afforded the
opportunity to give one-minute speeches, on a topic that the Speaker himself
has to approve of being relevant. Without this limit, one could easily surmise
that an inordinate amount of Representatives would attempt to give a speech,
and that nothing within the House would ever actually get done.
In
this clip, Representative Joe Wilson, who is a Republican from the 2nd
district of North Carolina, seeks permission from Speaker Boehner to “address
the house for one minute and extend my remarks,” which is granted.
Representative Wilson proceeds to give a brief speech about something referring
to the National Labor Relations Board. More specifically, he urges his
colleagues within the House to vote for a bill that he supports regarding this issue. We can assume
that this matter holds some importance to Representative Wilson, or to his
constituencies, or to both. Thus, Wilson utilizes the opportunity of the
one-minute speech to address something that is beneficial to him in every way.
Another notable part of the one-minute speech occurs at the end, when the Representative
giving the speech gives a quick statement that operates as a kind of signoff.
At the end of this speech, and at the end of every one-minute speech that
Wilson gives, the Representative says “In conclusion, God bless our troops, and
we will never forget September 11th, and the global war on
terrorism.” Many Representative choose to end their one-minute speeches with a
signoff like the one that Wilson uses; it’s not a particularly important part
of the speech, more like a quirk that caught on amongst the Representatives,
but it does underline something that is
clearly important to the Representative.
My
second clip is of the immediate aftermath of some remarks that former
Representative Robert Torricelli, of New Jersey, made in the House session of
May 9th, 1990. Torricelli was reprimanded for saying something
uncivil and out-of-line with regards to the President at the time, George H.W.
Bush. Torricelli stated the following about Bush: “It isn't, Mr. Speaker, that
the President is intellectually dishonest, though indeed in the last election
he was.” This statement was ruled to be out-of-order, as it implied dishonesty
on the part of the President, and this moment within Congressional history
raises questions about the civility of the Congress, and also brings up the
question of what can and cannot be said about the President.
After
Torricelli states his remarks, he is interrupted and the Chair proceeds to
state his disapproval of Torricelli, saying that what Torricelli said
“transgresses the bounds of proper debate.” Furthermore, it is determined that
statements regarding to the President are allowed to contain opinions and
criticisms, but not personal abuse; Torricelli’s claim that Bush is an
intellectually dishonest individual was considering by the chair to be a
personal attack on Bush’s character. The Chair reminds Torricelli of his
misconduct, but allows him to proceed; however, other Representatives ask for a
vote of whether or not Torricelli is allowed to proceed with his remarks.
Clearly,
the admonishing that Torricelli received for his comments about the President
shows how insinuating or incriminating statements about the President were not tolerated
during these times. Throughout this moment of the Bush administration, the
Democrats held the majority in the House, and yet statements of such incivility
were still treated with disdain and were interrupted and rebuked. Yet
incivility has been a persistent and unavoidable problem for the House
throughout the 90s, the 00s, and today. With the advent of C-SPAN and the
televised Congress, certain outbursts of incivility, as shown with Torricelli’s
inappropriate and disrespectful statement, have grown. According to The Televised Congress, recent
incivility was at its worst “before Republican majority in 1995 and peaked
during that time. It fell off after that time and rose again when the Democrats
reassumed the majority in 2007” (Browning). It is difficult to put all the blame on C-SPAN
and television, however, because it is obviously impossible to exactly tell if
this incivility is a product of our modern mores of decorum and propriety—or,
to be frank, lack thereof—or if the self-aggrandizing that nonstop coverage
offers is truly the real culprit.
My last video clip is of a hearing that is being held by the Senate Judiciary Committee, in February 2nd, 2011. Committee work is an incredibly important part of being a Congressman; former president Woodrow Wilson famously said that “Congress in Session is Congress on public exhibition, whilst Congress in its committee-rooms is Congress at work.” Committees divide up and organize the substantial workload that Congress has to complete, and serve several important functions on a vast variety of issues. On C-SPAN, we can watch hearings held by committees. Committees hold hearings to gather information about a particular issue, to carefully analyze and change legislation, and to examine the actions of the legislative branch and review them to find any sort of oversight. I have chosen a clip from a hearing concerning the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.
The
committee that is being showcased in this clip is the Senate Judiciary
Committee. It is focusing this particular
session on the question of the constitutionality of the health care law, in
response to a decision made by a Judge in Florida that struck down the law on constitutional grounds. The goal of this hearing is to
garner information about this decision, and the committee has gathered several
witnesses that will provide testimony and information concerning if the
Affordable Care Act is constitutional or not. During these kind of hearings,
both sides invite witnesses that are chosen depending on their ideological
stance on whatever is being discussed; this is especially true for this
hearing, since the issue of the Affordable Care Act is one that brews a
significant amount of division and partisanship. The clip that I have spliced
from the entire two-plus hour hearing is just of the opening statement, made by
Senator Dick Durbin, who was the acting judiciary committee chairman for this
particular session, and who is a Democrat from Illinois. Not all committee
hearings of this sort contain opening statements, as they are sometimes passed
over in favor of immediately interviewing the witnesses; this time, the opening
statements were not eschewed.
Naturally,
as Senator Durbin is a staunch Democrat, he has a very partisan stance on the Affordable Care Act, one that
lines up perfectly with his party's agenda, and the Senator does not waste time in
his opening statement before expressing his views. Durbin claims that the
opposition that the Affordable Care Act has faced from these different judges
from a constitutional perspective is fleeting and not worthy of distress, and
he compares the Affordable Care Act with other important decisions—like the
Civil Rights Act—that also faced obstacles like judicial opposition and
partisanship before becoming mainstays of American society. Here, we can see
how the position of the Chair or the ranking member does not necessarily imply
objectivity. Durbin is using his position to state his party’s stance on the
this particular issue, and the minority ranking member, who follows Durbin’s
opening statement with his own, also uses this opportunity to state his own
party’s stance. Both use this opportunity to freely speak to the committee, and
to try to influence those in attendance.
C-SPAN
is an important historical and educational resource, and by perusing the C-SPAN
archives, anyone interested in the complicated workings of Congress can
understand how important decisions, ones that have lasting implications for
many American citizens, are made. Through my three chosen clips, I was able to
learn about how Congressmen appeal to their constituents, regulate its codes of
conduct, and influence committees on important decisions. By analyzing the
Congresses of yesterday and today via the C-SPAN archives, we can understand
how the Congresses of tomorrow will operate.
SOURCES
House Session. John
Boehner (Speaker), Joe Wilson (Speech). C-SPAN, Washington, D.C. 30 Nov. 2011.
House Session.
C-SPAN, Washington, D.C. 9 May 1990.
Constitutionality of
Health Care Law. Richard “Dick” J. Durbin (Opening
Statement). C-SPAN, Washington, D.C. 12 Feb. 2011.
Browning,
Robert X. The Televised Congress.
National Cable Satellite Corporation d/b/a C-SPAN, 2013. Web.
<www.televisedcongress.org>.
