Paralyzed government: lessons from US case
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By Jay Kim
It can be said that the biggest difference in the parliamentary systems of Korea and the United States is the difference in the operational relations between the majority and the minority parties. In Korea, the majority or ruling party is the president’s party, regardless of the number of seats the party has in the National Assembly. In the U.S., however, the party that has a majority in Congress is the majority party, which has nothing to do with the party affiliation of the president.
Though President Obama is a Democrat, the Republican Party is the majority party in the House of Representatives because the party has a majority there. In the U.S. Congress, the chairperson of every committee and subcommittee comes from the majority party, and chairmanships are not shared with the minority party. Unlike the National Assembly of Korea, the majority party occupies every committee chair position, since the people sent to the party through election the message that it should take responsibility as the majority and lead Congress.
If Obama were a Republican, every bill would pass smoothly in Congress. However, because they belong to different parties, there are naturally frictions between the president and the House of Representatives. In particular, a clash between the president and the House on the federal budget is unavoidable; hence, there have not been many cases where the budget was passed before the deadline. The annual federal budget covers the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1 and ends on Sept. 30 next year. If a budget fails to pass in Congress, the government may operate temporarily with the budget for the previous year by passing a “continuing resolution.”
In 1995, the Republican Party held a majority in Congress while Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was president. At the time, I was in my second term as one of the Republican members of the House, and we, led by Speaker Newt Gingrich, stopped the budget submitted by Clinton at the time. The Republican Party claimed that the budgets for environmental agencies and welfare programs should be reduced further, while Clinton insisted that no more reduction was possible, since the budgets for such programs had already been cut as much as possible. Against Clinton’s refusal of cuts, Gingrich countered that the House would not increase the debt limit. Due to this conflict between the two parties, part of the federal government (non-essential government services) was shut down at midnight on Nov. 13 as the continuing resolution expired.
This was the notorious 1995 Government Shutdown. Clinton criticized Congress, claiming that the first six days of the 20-day government shutdown cost taxpayers $800 million, and barely managed to pass a budget in January the next year. Surprisingly, however, the public took the president’s side. As a result, despite being marred by sex scandals, he was successfully re-elected by beating a Republican hero, Bob Dole.
Recently in Korea, the National Assembly has been making a political issue out of the new president’s proposal for government reorganization, which aims to revive the economy for ordinary people. If the National Assembly continues to delay the process on the government reorganization bill, people will turn their backs on the National Assembly and move to the president’s side. I hope the members of the National Assembly will remember the 1995 Government Shutdown when the people turned their backs on Congress in the direct clash between Congress and president. Just like that incident, the current vacuum in the government will definitely make people turn their backs on the National Assembly that has been disabling the new president.
In the U.S., it is a common practice for Congress to let a new president, once elected by the people, reorganize the government. Of course, there are cases where, if the proposal for reorganization increases the number of government agencies or expands their budgets, depending on the methods to pay for the additional spending, Congress demands cuts or opposes the proposal. In the current situation, if the opposition party continues to refuse to hold a provisional session, the ruling party should convene one by itself. The damage that the National Assembly causes by disabling the president only goes straight to the people. Therefore, the majority party has no other choice but to push ahead.
The leadership of the ruling party should give its all so that the party can convene a provisional session to pass the reorganization plan and help the president and the government do their work. However, a major problem is that the leadership of the ruling Saenuri Party passed a strange law, the so-called National Assembly Advancement Act, last spring. This law was passed by the Saenuri members of the 18th National Assembly, whose term will end in a few days, and it made 60 percent of votes, instead of a 50 percent majority, the quorum for an important bill. This strange law that one could never find in the U.S. is the reason the ruling Saenuri Party, which has an overwhelming majority in the National Assembly, is being dragged around by the opposition party and making things difficult for the new government, rather than helping it.
Jay Kim is a former U.S. congressman. He serves as chairman of the Kim Chang Joon US-Korea Foundation. For more information, visit Kim’s website at www.jayckim.com.