Amend the tyranny of the minority

Congress passed a measure last week to broaden the definition of hate crimes — which currently covers crimes motivated by race, color, religion or national origin — to include crimes motivated by the victim's gender, gender identity or sexual orientation. President Obama is expected to sign this much-needed measure into law.

Nonetheless, something fishy is at play.

This measure was an amendment to a national defense authorization bill for the 2010 fiscal year. Republicans have rightly pointed out that hate crimes have little in common with military spending and that the Democrats have thus forced their hand.

While I support the broadened definition of hate crimes and the penalties that come with it, I find this tactic deplorable. Both Republicans and Democrats utilize this fishy tactic of adding off-topic, or non-germane, amendments in order to enact measures that otherwise may not be passed.

In the House, amendments must be germane to the bill, but in the Senate, no such requirement exists. The historical motivation for this dichotomy has been the House's deliberate bend toward the majority (seen in the Speaker's role) as opposed to the Senate's deliberate bend towards the minority, which is seen in the filibuster. Therefore, the Senate doesn't require germane amendments as a means for valid minority viewpoints to bypass the traditional committee process and gain the support of majority members.

Practically, this aspect causes troublesome results. It leads to additional pork so sponsors can win votes and some fishy amendments so the minority can kill the bill. Democrats remember the D.C. Voting Rights Act, which would have given Washington D.C. residents representation in the House. Republicans killed that effort this past summer by adding an amendment that effectively negated a majority of the city's gun control laws.

In this way, non-germane amendments force senators to choose between separate, if not opposing, priorities. Instead of representing their constituents on each individual issue, senators must arbitrarily choose a priority, compromise their vote and their constituents' voice, and hope that the "good" of either the bill or the amendment is not outweighed by the "bad" of the other.

That's not how the U.S. government should be running.

Of course, "good" amendments, such as civil rights and the aforementioned hate crimes measures, have come out of this process. It is easy to imagine that, for every such success, there have been as many failures, either in terms of additional pork or fishy amendments designed to "kill the bill."

Given that both parties are hurt by non-germane amendments, it is surprising that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have taken action to limit them. Possibly, they value the ability of non-germane amendments to bypass the traditional committee process. But that doesn't explain why senators don't establish another method that bypasses this process without compromising their votes.

After all, it is important that valid minority viewpoints receive an appropriate forum without being choked up in committee. But non-germane amendments give these minority viewpoints an undue advantage within that forum. If these amendments are attached to crucial bills, they're often passed based on the merits of the bills to which they're attached instead of their own. Such an arrangement can potentially damage not only people's perceptions of these amendments' legitimacy but also their willingness to enforce the amendments and their faith in the government.

Ultimately, non-germane amendments are maintained as a means to promote the minority voice by bypassing the traditional committee process and by pressuring the majority to agree. Simply because one aspect is useful, the other should not be tolerated.