What Goes Around . . .
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Congress | Featured Stories — Comments (10) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
From today's OpinionJournal Political Diary (subscription required), we learn what the consequences have been for the House majority given their decision to shut Republicans out of the legislative process. John Fund reports (read on):
House Republicans are finally getting their groove back in their new status as the minority party. Last week they were able to stymie Democratic plans to ram through a bill giving the District of Columbia a voting member of the House. Startled Democratic leaders pulled the bill off the floor indefinitely after discovering that GOP members were on the verge of successfully attaching language that would also overturn the ban on handgun ownership in the District.
The action marked the sixth time so far in this Congress that enough Democrats have voted for a parliamentary maneuver called a "motion to recommit" to hand Republicans a floor victory. In previous Congresses, the best any minority party was able to do is three such motions in two years.
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland has denounced the GOP tactics as "gotcha amendments" meant to force members to cast an unpopular vote or send Democratic legislation back to the committee from which it originated. Republicans say their moves are simply meant to lay down markers to tell the American people what Democratic priorities and values are.
The problem for Democrats is that many of their members are so nervous about casting sensitive votes that Democrats could find themselves tied up in legislative knots for the entire Congress. Last week, 55 Democrats voted for a GOP motion to give preference in returning to their New Orleans homes to public housing tenants who previously had held a job or were willing to perform community service. The victory was a feather in the cap of Louisiana GOP Rep. Bobby Jindal, who sponsored the motion and is now running for governor.
As for the D.C. voting rights bill, Democrats now face having it coupled with a floor vote on the popular handgun ownership issue. Democrats could respond by forcing through a new rule that would ban such motions, but that would fly in the face of Congressional tradition allowing such tactics. "They will eventually have a choice of getting a black eye for shutting off debate or constantly having to require many of their members to cast politically unpalatable votes," a House GOP leadership aide told me.
You know, this kind of thing can come to an end. All Democrats would have to do is to include Republicans more in the process and be responsive to Republican concerns. Something tells me, however, that they are going to refrain from doing that, which means that there will be more motions to recommit in our immediate future.
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What Goes Around . . . 10 Comments (0 topical, 10 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
and this is war.
That said, I simply hate that Republicans are only effective and conservative in the minority, not in the majority.
You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.
It's a real rush to be proud of the Republican Party again. They embarrassed and disappointed me when we held the majority.
Now that we are minority members perhaps we can regain the trust of the American Conservative majority.
To be fair to the Republicans in the House, they have been the only true conservatives actively trying to get things done in the past few years. For years, they sent all sorts of great bills on to the Senate, where they got watered down or killed by the RINO-dominated Republicans there. Just one example of many: drilling in ANWR. They passed that one every year, and every year it got killed in the Senate. We've always had some good people in the House, willing to fight the good fight. We're just noticing them more now because their fight is against the other guys instead of our own.
I am not an expert on Congressional parlementery procedure but isn't there a tactic that has been used in the Senate where there is a limit to how many amendments can be put on a bill which can be filled up with inane amendments by the majority if they don't want the minority to be able to change the bill?
I am just wondering why the Democrats couldn't do something like that.
Let me first establish my bona fides by saying that I'm a proud Red Stater. Whenever GOP Bloggers has a straw poll, I rate myself an 8.
So here's my question. When we had control of the House of Representatives, did we not also "shut [Democrats] out of the legislative process"? I seem to remember some complaints from Pelosi and Co. regarding not being allowed to get legislation to the floor. (Correct me where I need correcting).
So how is the way the Dems are running the show different?
The real difference, if my perception holds, is in the point you make about the success of GOP motions to recommit and not so much how the majority is treating the minority.
Be not afraid
So how is the way the Dems are running the show different?
We need between zero and one net defections from the Democratic side of the Senate in order to have effectively the ultimate say on the final form of any given bill.
Sen McConnell is earning his corn.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
This article is about the House, not the Senate.
Although Republicans in both houses are now doing a better job than they did when we were in the majority.
Historically what ever group wins the majority shades more votes to itself than the raw numbers would dictate, enough so that they can control whether legislation gets out of committee, including preventing close votes. Republicans generally didn't do that, they kept the numbers at %won +1 in most committees instead of %won + enough to close debate. So the Democrats could add motions to most bills because if they weren't able to, the bills wouldn't get out of committee. They just complained more about the ones the Republicans won, because they were use to all of their ideas being the central piece instead of them being the add-ons. In the new Congress, the Republicans haven't been able to add-on to the legislative agendas at all. So they've been forced to use these kinds of delaying tactics in hopes that eventually the Democrats will adhere to their campaign promise and let Republicans propose amendments.
More power to them, and hopefully next time they'll remember their wilderness lessons longer.
Democratic legislation ideas.
Good for the GOP.