Traditions of restraint like those outlined in the Wyoming Legislature’s own rules are an important element in our system of government because they protect the legislative process from our excesses of passion and allow for civil, ordered legislating. This benefits everyone.
These traditions of restraint are not always crystal clear, but the importance of them is hard to miss.
This week the Senate faced a battle over whether one of its rules (traditional restraints) should be tossed aside to revive a bill that, though popular in the chamber as a whole, had failed to clear committee. By rule, it used to take a two-thirds majority vote to move a bill from a committee and place it directly on the Senate floor. Frustrated by this deliberately high bar, senators challenged the rule, and that challenge prevailed, lowering the threshold for countermanding a committee decision to a simple majority. The Senate, in other words, chose to remove that traditional restraint from itself.
While this might seem to some a rather unimportant administrative decision, it wasn’t.
I would argue two points.
First, those who want to say this move was necessary to allow a deeply important piece of legislation to be brought back from the dead are using this argument as a red herring. Let’s call it the “very, very important bill” argument for the sake of clarity.
And second, this decision to lower the bar to a simple majority sets a precedent going forward, and will have lasting, deep and very negative implications on Wyoming’s lawmaking process in the future.
Let me explain.
To begin with, why does the “very, very important bill” argument fall flat?
Because every constituency across the state believes their bill is the most important thing ever and therefore also a worthy recipient. The argument is there to misdirect.
I would ask those who employ this red herring this: Who gets to decide in a general sense, what bill is worthy of the “very, very important bill” treatment?
And specifically, for individual lawmakers, which constituency do you mean to elevate as being more important than any of the others?
Issues including the Second Amendment, school choice, pro-life, lower taxation, parental rights, hunting and fishing projects, travel and tourism development or private property protections on the right, to increasing wilderness areas, decreasing carbon production, increasing taxes to strengthen public schools or pro-choice initiatives on the left, all have natural and passionate constituencies who can now demand their issue should receive “very, very important bill” status. The very idea is unworkable given the constitutional restraints on the amount of time our legislators have to work. Or are these folks also suggesting a full-time, career legislature?
When everything is very, very important, nothing is. Restraint is a necessary and important evil, especially in a limited, citizen legislature like Wyoming’s.
No one likes to be told no, but none of us are 5 years old.
Which brings me to my second point, that this new precedent will negatively impact the way the legislative process works for future lawmakers and their constituents.
Our Legislature, following the long tradition of other legislative bodies, systematically constrained themselves to ensure the passions of the day don’t overwhelm the deliberative nature of our lawmaking. This creates a level and fair playing field for everyone.
This is a conservative, and I would say, very correct approach. And the Senate just tossed it aside for the passions of the day.
Certainly the other side would argue that they have opened and will now close this new “very, very important bill” precedent, having never intended to use it more than once. Which is a bit like telling the game warden you simply “opened and closed” the hunting season just so you could bag that one very, very important trophy buck. It’s still wrong. And it gives no one any assurance you won’t do it again.
The Senate president put it well when he said during the debate, “If you think it’s all over when I walk out this door, when I walk out the door, once you started this behavior, you will listen to the good senator from Bates Creek (a reference to Sen. Charlie Scott) say yeah it’s been done before over and over again.”
Driskill is correct. The precedent has been set, the restraining tradition tossed out the door, and the temptation to do it again is alive and well.
If your issue can find a simple majority, it can circumnavigate the committee process and come directly to the floor. Every lobbyist at the Capitol is already making plans. They have a new, powerful tool in their toolkit.
As I have said before, the 2024 session has been a master class in the negative excesses of the human condition. These ugly debates in the Senate are instructive to that end.
Edmund Burke, considered the father of conservatism, once said, “But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.”
And perhaps even more personally fitting to the leading actors in the Senate this year, he said, “It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”
Too many senators seem unwilling to see the wisdom in asking reflectively not “can” they do this, but “should” they do it.
This lack of restraint erodes the natural, conservative rules put in place in years past by men who understood the importance of temperance.
Self restraint is never easy, but sadly it gets even harder when groups like a Legislature come together because it is easy to find ready-made protection and encouragement in the excesses of others. I hope those senators who went along with this will think long and hard about that.
Wisdom defends tradition and sees value in upholding it, even if it means going against the majority. What we have seen from this current senate majority is a desire to burn it all down to achieve the passions of the day.
Their actions this week will hopefully serve as a cautionary tale for future lawmakers, reminding us all of the old adage: Character is destiny.