In My Opinion: Who Voted for One-Party Government?

Despite controversy surrounding the 2000 presidential election, most Americans were willing to accept the legitimacy of the new president and to take him at his word: that he was a "compassionate" man rather than a hard-line rightist, and that he was "a uniter, not a divider."

Wrong on both counts.

Recently the White House has teamed with congressional ideologues to use the most heavy-handed of partisan tactics to thwart the clear will of the American people - and of Congress itself - on several critical issues.

• On the Medicare drug benefit vote, House Democrats and Republican moderates prevailed by 218-216 in knocking down the feeble drug plan favored by the drug and insurance companies and HMOs. However, in an unprecedented move, GOP leaders held the supposedly 15-minute roll call open for three hours while the White House twisted arms and finally succeeded in getting two members to switch their votes and reverse the tally.

• Both the House and Senate decisively voted to kill the Labor Department's scheme to remove overtime pay eligibility from 8 million workers. However, through backroom maneuvering and a Bush veto threat during budget deal-making sessions, Republicans still managed to ram home the Department's cutback of overtime coverage (see GOP Threats Derail Overtime Amendment but Not Unions' Resolve).

• The House and Senate also voted to restrain expansion of the media giants - reflecting overwhelming public sentiment - only to see their actions once again reversed through partisan procedural tactics. Again threatening to veto a budget bill, potentially shutting down the government, the White House forced an increase of the limit on network ownership of local TV stations, from 35 percent to 39 percent of the national TV market.

GOP hard-liners went so far as to offer a bribe to one congressman to switch his vote on the Medicare drug bill, according to columnist Robert Novak, as they sought to impose the drug industry's bill instead of the Democratic version that was favored by most seniors.

Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) is retiring next year and his son Brad is seeking to fill his seat. "On the House floor, Nick Smith was told business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for his father's vote," wrote Novak. "After Nick Smith voted no and the bill passed, Duke Cunningham of California and other Republicans taunted him that his son was dead meat," according to the columnist.

Afterward, House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer charged that the Republicans "stole this vote," stating: "In 22 years of service in this body, I have never seen such an undemocratic subversion of the will of the House."

After reversing the initial House vote on Medicare, GOP leaders then shut the Democratic leadership in the Senate completely out of the conference process, where secret negotiations guaranteed a final drug bill pleasing to the drug and insurance industries.

In the end, the real losers are seniors - 78 percent of whom correctly believe the Republican bill is a sham that doesn't do enough to protect retirees, despite its $400 billion price tag, while it enriches drug makers and HMOs, according to a Peter D. Hart survey in November.

Among its features, the bill steers millions of seniors and disabled into private HMOs, and actually will drive up Medicare premiums, deductibles and co-payments for some 32.5 million beneficiaries - for many the increase will even exceed their current drug costs - according to the AFL-CIO and others.

For the drug industry, which has spent $44 million in political contributions since 1999, mainly to Republicans, the bill means a $139 billion profit windfall over eight years. Most shocking of all, the bill prohibits the government from negotiating with the drug companies to obtain the best prices.

Corporate America likewise reaped a bonanza from the cutting of overtime pay for millions of workers and from increasing big media's monopoly of the TV market. In both cases, Congress had voted for the public interest in the bright light of the Senate and House chambers, but later yielded to the narrow interest of big business in the murky conference back rooms where the secret deals get made.

The running theme here is the subversion of democratic processes through trickery and power politics. Gaming the system to favor corporations and the overprivileged, at the expense of average families, seems to be a trademark of the Bush administration. Perhaps that's not surprising for an administration that was born under a cloud of election chicanery and Supreme Court cronyism.

No matter whom Americans believe to have actually won the 2000 election, I don't think anyone thought he or she was voting for a one-party government.