ONE QUESTION that members of Congress constantly hear is: “Why can’t you people get anything done?!’’ It is a query for all seasons and ages, but responding can be tricky. You can’t just blurt out “We just passed a big fat transportation bill!’’ to a voter, who might be a fiscal conservative waiting to pounce. And an honest response may be even more awkward. Truth is, there are all kinds of reasons Congress can’t get anything done: politics, disagreements about substance, even the physical process of writing bills.
For many people, it defies common sense that these obstacles can’t be overcome, but the Senate is about to demonstrate why not. For the past several weeks, the wheels have been grinding on cybersecurity legislation, which, in an ideal world, would protect the nation from computer hackers. The Senate is a wonderful and unique place, but when things come together just right, no institution expends more energy getting nothing done.
Congress has a special talent for taking a sensible goal like cybersecurity and turning it into an all-consuming effort to remake major pieces of our regulatory infrastructure. Joe Lieberman, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, kicked things off two weeks ago when he rolled out what Politico called “a doorstop of a bill.’’ Most significantly, the legislation gives power to the Department of Homeland Security to write new regulations for industries operating “critical infrastructure.’’ Unfortunately, that could mean just about anything.
Put the prefix “cyber’’ in front of anything, and it sounds important, dangerous, and exciting (at least compared with most Senate hearing topics). But the list of potential hacking targets - the power grid, banks, stock exchanges, telecommunications, railroads, and more - quickly adds up to a lot of regulatory power over a huge swath of the economy. With so much at stake, the turf battles abound. Every committee wants a piece of the action: Commerce, Energy, Homeland Security, and Armed Services just for starters.
John McCain, the ranking Republican on Senate Armed Services, finds himself on the opposite side of his friend Joe Lieberman. He argues that legal restrictions that keep businesses and government from sharing information and technology pose the biggest obstacle to improving cybersecurity. Businesses, after all, have as much interest as government in protecting themselves from hackers, foreign espionage, or worse. So McCain’s bill authorizes much greater coordination and updates existing laws on information security and computer fraud.
On top of that genuine difference in philosophy comes tension created by a murky process for bringing a bill to the Senate floor. As majority leader, Harry Reid has signaled his determination to start debate on a basic bill in the next couple of weeks. But no one knows exactly when that might be, or even what that bill might contain. He could start with Lieberman’s “doorstop’’ or offer something else; he might try to cut off amendments, or he could allow an open process to take its natural course.
In a normal year, these obstacles would slow things down; in an election year, political opportunism could encourage Reid to speed things up so they can reach their natural conclusion: failure and finger pointing. Just as Democrats feel they’ve “taken’’ the tax issue by pushing payroll tax cuts, they see a chance for political gains on security by pushing a bill - even if it comes crashing down.
Of course, the inconvenience of public sentiment could also derail the train. When the entertainment industry recently tried to push for new online piracy laws, a coalition of civil libertarians, website operators, and public-interest groups spoke up with a ferocity that left congressional heads spinning and the legislation lying in a heap. A cybersecurity bill built around a “super-regulator’’ at Homeland Security could ignite a similar public reaction. Lieberman has already felt that heat once. An early version of his bill allowed the president to disable Internet communication in an emergency. The senator firmly insisted there was no such “Internet kill switch’’ - and then he removed the offending language.
So if the bill comes out badly, or not at all, it’s not because of a conspiracy of “obstruction,’’ just a bunch of very real obstacles: honest differences about how to address the problem, a vaguely defined subject, disagreements about jurisdiction, weak leadership in an unruly Senate, and, always, politics.
Still, politicians’ urge to “do something’’ is strong, though it often gives us policies whose benefits are questionable. If Homeland Security ever wins responsibility for cybersecurity, consider yourself forewarned. This is the agency that has given us ever more sophisticated and expensive airport scanning technology - which still gets confused if you are wearing a belt.
John E. Sununu, a regular Globe contributor, is a former US senator from New Hampshire.