Meeting with Congressman Steven Chabot (R-Ohio), House Judiciary Committee

On Wednesday, May 4th, the members of the delegation from the Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee met with Congressman Steven Chabot (R-Ohio), Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the House Judiciary Committee.

Constitutional Committee Chairman MK Michael Eitan opened the meeting by asking Congressman Chabot to describe the activity of his subcommittee.

Congressman Chabot explained that there are some twenty standing committees of the house. The committee and each subcommittee meets at least once per week, and a quorum of 2 members of congress is required. Any issue which might be relevant to the constitution is referred by the house speaker to the full judiciary committee,[1] which may then refer it to the subcommittee on the constitution. This would include, for instance, any proposal for a constitutional amendment, such as the recent motions to allow a citizen not born in the United States to be President.

Once something has been handed to the subcommittee, they hold hearings to which they invite up to 4 witnesses, and also ask many people to submit written testimony. The rule of four is for economy of time, and the full judiciary committee can allow more; although the more panels testify, the thinner the crowd gets by the end of the day… Alternatively, a subcommittee or committee may hold more than one session in order to allow additional witnesses to testify. This happened in recent hearings on same-sex marriages.

[1] The committee – like any house committee – may exercise discretion in deciding whether to pursue an issue. It does the first selection of what bills get passed on to the floor, and may even vote not to hold hearings on a topic.

In 1996/7, Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage on a federal level as between a man and a woman. This allows the federal government, as well as any given state, to refuse to recognize a same-sex marriage sanctioned by another state. It was signed by President Bill Clinton (and had the support of roughly half of the democrats). In recent months the House Judiciary Committee heard proposals to amend the constitution to define marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman, which would then bind the states. These proposals ultimately failed, and individual state legislatures, courts or even mayors have changed local and state laws to allow same-sex marriage. DOMA has not yet reached the Supreme Court.

MK Naomi Blumenthal asked what would happen if the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage was constitutionally acceptable. Chabot replied that that would then be the law of the land. However, he predicted, it would probably inspire a great interest in a constitutional amendment. (Which requires a 2/3 vote in the house, 2/3 in the senate, and the approval of ¾ of the state legislatures).

MK Naomi Blumenthal asked Congressman Chabot what the role of the media is in American politics. Chabot replied that he and many of his colleagues think the media is left-leaning, and so the public gets a rather warped view of politics. On the other hand, he said, talk radio is generally considered right wing, so maybe it balances out. Academia is pretty liberal, while business and the military are considered conservative.

There are elections to the House of Representatives every 2 years. This means that the house is pretty responsive and radical and active relative to the senate, which Chabot says is seen by the House as old and slow. The House is in a permanent election cycle. However, a parallel problem is that 90% of the seats are fairly safe republican or democratic seats.

MK Michael Eitan asked Congressman Chabot to comment on nominations of judges, hearings on nominations in the committee, and filibusters.

Chabot explained that President Bush has recently nominated many justices to the federal circuits. In the past, filibusters have been used by the minority in congress to block legislation, but never judges. A filibuster – the process by which the minority indefinitely postpones a vote simply by keeping the debate going – can go indefinitely, and may be stopped only by a majority of 60 (out of 100). [There are currently 55 Republicans, 44 Democrats, and 1 independent in the senate]. Republicans plan to ask the chairman of the senate (Vice President Dick Cheney) to rule that judges can’t be blocked by filibusters, and to hold a vote to limit debate and move straight to a vote. Cheney, he said, plans to comply, and he will need only a 51 person majority to uphold his decision.

Members of the delegation brought up with Congressman Chabot a bill coming to a vote in the house that day allocating an additional $82 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Members of the delegation learned earlier that day (in a meeting with Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)) that included in the bill are three unrelated items, including one disallowing the courts from interfering with the completion of a wall between the United States and Mexico. Chabot said that including such additional provisions in a bill is not uncommon, and is often called “putting ornaments on the Christmas tree.” The line-item veto – a power that was recently offered to the President – was meant, according to Chabot, to allow the President to remove these “ornaments” from the bill. But democrats brought it to the court, which ruled the line-item veto unconstitutional, saying it gave the president too much power. So the power remains with the House Rules Committee to do nearly anything with the process, including allowing the lumping of entirely unrelated issues into a single bill. Every decision of the rules committee comes to the floor for a vote. Most rules committee votes on the floor are yay and nay.

Asked to describe how his subcommittee deals with proposed amendments to the constitution, Chabot recalled that some six amendments have come to the committee in the last five years. One amendment prohibiting flag burning, which came after a regular law passed on the subject was overturned by the Supreme Court, came all the way to the floor, but failed there. A balanced-budget amendment requiring the budget to be balanced every year, passed the house by a 2/3 vote, but fell one vote short in the senate. When asked whether he considered the amendment process to hard, however, Chabot emphatically disagreed. It should be hard, he said. It can sometimes be frustrating to us personally, but it should be hard to pass an amendment.

Subcommittee Chair Chabot expressed some disappointment that the Supreme Court looks around the world and is influenced by anti-death-penalty trends rather than simply being guided by America’s own constitution. There is a bill being considered, he said, to instruct the Court not to look to the European Court of Justice and its peers on these issues; but the Israelis and Chabot agreed that voting on such a law would likely be split approximately along partisan lines.

Members of Knesset expressed a keen interest and some criticism of the PATRIOT act. Committee Chairman Eitan said that Israelis feel they face a greater threat of terrorism, but that Israel strikes a more liberal balance than does the PATRIOT act, and does a better job of protecting democracy. He cited the Constitutional Committee’s recent law prohibiting funding of terrorists, which he called significantly more moderate than the American counterpart. Chabot allowed this might be correct, and that Israel may serve as a model in this regard.