"And we're hopeful...that eventually the Democrats will decide...to move aside and let Republicans govern in the way that President Bush has led us to do."

-Senator Rick Santorum
Chairman, Senate Republican Conference

The framers of the Constitution believed that the success of the American experiment would depend in large part on whether our system of checks and balances, including the separation of powers, was successful in limiting abuses of power and promoting sound decision-making by government. During the Bush Administration, however, Congressional Republicans have led us down a path of peril. As the result of excessive partisanship, Republicans have endangered the status of Congress as a co-equal branch of government by becoming little more than a rubber stamp for the President. In so doing, these "rubber-stamp Republicans" have undermined our bedrock founding principles, made abuses of power more likely, and diminished the quality of our domestic and foreign policies. The extent of this rubber-stampism is alarming:

• No need for vetoes. The Republican Congress has been so efficient in "rubber stamping" President Bush's agenda that he is the first president since James Garfield (who served for only six months in 1881) to not exercise his veto power.
  
  
• Near unanimity on judicial nominations. Republican Senators have not been overburdened by their constitutional duty to give "advice and consent" on Bush judicial nominations. There have been only 2 "nay" votes by Republican Senators out of a total of 7,231 votes cast by Republicans during the 150 roll call votes on or in relation to Bush judicial nominees.
  
  
• The partisan herd. According to VoteTracker.com, an online service that monitors Congressional votes, the Republican Leader in the Senate, Majority Leader Frist, has voted for the President's position 97 percent of the time during the 108th Congress. The second- and third-ranking Senate Republicans, Senators McConnell and Santorum, have agreed with President Bush 98 and 99 percent of the time respectively. And the average Republican Senator has voted with the President 95 percent of the time.
  
  
• No oversight. Congressional Republicans have refused to conduct investigations or hold hearings on the following issues (among many others): the Administration's mistaken pre-war assumptions about Iraq; the use of pre-war intelligence; Iraqi contracting abuses; the role the Vice President's office played in awarding no-bid contracts to his former company, Halliburton; the leak of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame; the refusal to allow the Medicare actuary, Richard Foster, to release cost estimates to Congress; Vice President Cheney's secret energy task force meetings with special interests; and the Administration's policies and practices on the use of torture as a means of obtaining information from detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
  
  
• No accountability. Congressional Republicans have stood by as the President rushed to war without a plan to win the peace; mismanaged the occupation in Iraq; lost 1.9 million private sector jobs; ran up the largest deficit in the history of the country; raided the entire Social Security trust fund; and failed to respond to skyrocketing health care and gasoline prices. The negative effects of the Bush Administration's flawed policies and poor management of our national and economic security are multiplying because there has been no accountability - not from the Bush Administration and not from the Republican-controlled Congress.
  
  

In contrast, Democrats believe that Congress has a Constitutional duty to conduct oversight, demand accountability, and serve as a check against abuses of power and bad decision-making by the Executive branch.