Redstate

By RS Insider Posted in Congress | Culture of Corruption — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

The RS Insider can add a bit of meat to the story Drudge is reporting about Nancy Pelosi’s decision to revoke minority rights…

After losing a string of embarrassing votes on the House floor because of procedural maneuvering, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has decided to change the current House Rules to completely shut down the floor to the minority.

This happened today after the Democrats changed a rule to prevent Republicans from offering a motion to recommit on the PAYGO provisions of their legislation. The bottom line: Democrats don’t want their members to have to vote on the tax increases that they are trying to slide into bills, and Republican motions-to-commit put them in the awkward position of having to actually cast those votes and go on the record.

This is ironic, because in 2006, Nancy Pelosi promised to do the exact opposite.  Excerpts:

• “Minority Leader Pelosi says a Democratic majority next year would place a heavy emphasis on bipartisanship -- and would offer the Republicans minority rights often denied Democrats now.”

• "[I would like] to come as close as you can in the political reality to a bipartisan management of the House"

• “Pelosi…intends to stand by a proposal she offered House Speaker Hastert two years ago to enact a Minority Bill of Rights.”

• “It includes … a commitment to moving legislation through regular order…”

• “"I would consider the role to be speaker of the House, not speaker of the Democrats" [Pelosi] said.”

• “Pelosi said her time as minority leader has been spent "learning in the minority how you don't want to be treated, and that's how we would not want them to be treated."”

• “In perhaps the biggest break from the current practices of GOP leaders, Pelosi said she would be willing to lose votes on the floor.”

• "I certainly would not say that we can't bring things to the floor because we'll lose…”

The Motion to Recommit rule has been on the books and unchanged since 1822.   The Rules Committee website says “The motion to recommit is the prerogative of the Minority party.”  Thomas Jefferson prepared a rules manual for his own use as President of the Senate, and the House still uses it for guidance.   At the beginning of Jefferson's Manual he quotes the Speaker of the House of Commons from 1728 to 1761:

"It was a maxim he had often heard when he was a young man, from old and experienced Members, that nothing tended more to throw power into the hands of administration, and those who acted with the majority of the House of Commons, than a neglect of, or departure from, the rules of proceeding; that these forms, as instituted by our ancestors, operated as a check and control on the actions of the majority, and that they were, in many instances, a shelter and protection to the minority, against the attempts of power."

The rules of the House are there to protect the Minority from the tyranny of the Majority.  But Nancy Pelosi is in charge now, and the Rules are being eliminated.  You do the math.