Reason Magazine
- reason.com
- reason.tv
- reason.org
- Donate
- Site Search:
Reason on Facebook
Reason on Twitter
Reason on YouTube
Reason RSSGet Reason E-mail Updates!
Manage your Reason e-mail list subscriptionsadvertisements
HackWatch: Nancy Pelosi
House Democrats' anger at heavy-handed Republican tactics reached a new level yesterday, with the chamber's top Democrat asking the House speaker to embrace a "Bill of Rights" for the minority, regardless which party it is.
[...]
Pelosi's document, which she vows to honor if Democrats regain the majority, says: "Too often, incivility and the heavy hand of the majority" have silenced Democrats and choked off "thoughtful debate." She called on the majority to let the minority offer meaningful amendments and substitutes to important bills; to limit roll-call votes to the normal 15 minutes rather than keeping them open to round up needed votes; and to let all appointees to House-Senate conference committees participate in meetings and decisions.
"When we are shut out, they are shutting out the great diversity of America," Pelosi said in an interview. "We want a return to civility; we want to set a higher standard."
[...]
Democrats and several analysts say recommital votes are largely meaningless. Hastert's leadership team portrays them as "procedural votes" rather than matters of policy, and unwritten parliamentary rules make it essentially treasonous for lawmakers to vote against their party's leadership on procedural matters.
The inevitable party-line vote that keeps Democrats from recommitting a Republican bill "is the whole ballgame," Ornstein said, because it prevents Democrats from having a debate and a vote on the substance of their alternative proposals.
The spirit of bipartisan cooperation didn't survive the first day of the 111th Congress as House Democrats pushed through a package of rule changes Tuesday that the furious Republican minority said trampled their traditional rights to affect legislation.
[...]
The most contentious rule change places new restrictions on motions to "recommit" a bill for new amendments to the committee that approved it. In practice, that motion often meant a lengthy or even permanent delay in passing the measure. Motions to recommit would still be possible, but the new rules allow the full House to reconsider the bill almost instantaneously.
[...]
Because of the special rules regarding budgetary legislation, Republicans argued that the new restrictions on motions to recommit will hobble their ability to challenge tax increases that are included in larger, "must-pass" bills.
Unlike in the Senate, where the threat of a filibuster gives the minority strong bargaining leverage, the minority party in the House has relatively few tools to challenge the majority's will. Mr. Dreier noted that the recommit motion had been in place for 100 years, and he rejected Democratic claims that the new rules were a minor tweak to an obscure parliamentary proceeding.
In Congress, he said, "process is substance."
It's a somewhat complicated procedural issue, but the bottom line here is that while Pelosi demanded minority rights and decried GOP procedural chicanery while her party was in the minority, she's starting the new Congress by pushing through rules changes that would make it much more difficult for Republicans to have any influence on pending legislation.
Pelosi gets a 7 out of 10 on the somewhat arbitrary Hackery Index.
HackWatch took on Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.) here, and former White House Office of Legal Counsel honcho John Yoo here. If you see an example of a pundit, politician, major blogger, or other Beltway creature who’s done a 180 on this or another issue, please send it to us, with links, and “HackWatch” in the subject line.
|1.8.09 @ 10:26AM|#
Is it "somewhat complicated" because the Democrats were never particularly obstructionist whereas the Republicans have used the motion to recommit and filibuster exponentially more than any Congress in history, most frequently to kill any bill that would tie Bush's hands in the slightest on Iraq?
|1.8.09 @ 10:33AM|#
Nancy Pelosi is the perfect villain. I almost can't believe that she's even a real person. It's the whole package, I think: hypocrite, Fairness Doctrine, plastic face...
|1.8.09 @ 10:41AM|#
Good question, Jack.
Without a lot more inside-baseball knowledge of Congressional
procedure and how it's been used than is provided here, there's no
way to tell if this actually represents a flip-flop from Pelosi and
an unreasonable restriction on the minority party, or if the
Republicans are just ginning up a phony controversy.
|1.8.09 @ 10:52AM|#
Yeah, Joe, you have to watch out for those Republicans at
Reason...
Favorite pass times: preventing your abortion, cheerfully waging
the War on Drugs, absolutely loving current U.S. foreign policy,
and voting for Sarah Palin.
...idiot.
|1.8.09 @ 10:55AM|#
Yeah, Joe, you have to watch out for those Republicans at
Reason...
No, dumbass, the Republicans in Congress, like the ones quoted in
the damn...
That whooshing sensation on your scalp? Don't worry about it,
idiot.
robc|1.8.09 @ 10:58AM|#
joe,
While it isnt surprising, the flip flop is not immediately passing
the "bill of rights" she called for in 2004.
Whether that is just playing the game or something to be concerned
about is another issue.
Personally, Im fine with the typical way things are:
In the House, the majority pretty much rules all, much like in a
parliamentary system.
In the Senate, the minority has significant powers to shut things
down.
I see both as good things. Changing either is probably a bad
idea.
robc|1.8.09 @ 10:59AM|#
Oh, and just because Pelosi is acting in the expected manner and in a manner I am okay with doesnt make her not a hack. I think 7/10 is too low a score. Her hackery clearly goes to 11. Its one higher.
|1.8.09 @ 11:00AM|#
Come on joe, this isn't as complicated as you try to make us believe. For one hundred years the minority party has had the right to offer motions to recommit, now the Democrats have abolished it. When you know you don't have a real argument to defend your sacred leaders, you try to obfuscate and imply that we don't know the whole story. Yet in this case everyone but you and partisan Jack can see what's going on.
|1.8.09 @ 11:03AM|#
Where were any Republicans quoted? I see two massive Pelosi
quotes and the argument (Pelosi's hypocrisy) isn't a Republican
one, or at least not here. It's being made by Balko.
Sorry if I missed something, though I still can't imagine what it
was.
|1.8.09 @ 11:07AM|#
Come on joe, this isn't as complicated as you try to make us
believe.
Really, James? I guess the whole issue is so simple that you
couldn't come up with a single fact not taken directly from Rod
Dreier's press release.
The Democrats have abolished the motion to recommit? Really? There
isn't going to be a "motion to recommit" procedure in the House of
Represenatives next year? No, not so much. That the Motion to
Recommit has been changed, rather than eliminated, is stated right
in the blog post.
Let me get this straight - the issue is so simple that you can't
accurately describe the change that was made.
It's such an obvious, neutral observation that you misrepresented
it in exactly the same way as the Republican leader.
But I'm the partisan here, echoing Congressional leaders.
Whatever.
|1.8.09 @ 11:09AM|#
See joe, you understood it better than you represented in your first post. Obfuscation.
|1.8.09 @ 11:09AM|#
Michael Solana,
First, the decent, honorable, and polite thing to do would be to
apologize to me for hurling an insult based entirely on your
misreading of what I wrote.
But I won't hold my breath.
Second, do you know who David Dreier is? Had you bothered to RTFA
before you spouted off at me, you would have seen his name attached
to numerous quotes, and found out that he is a high-ranking member
of the Republican House leadership.
|1.8.09 @ 11:14AM|#
See joe, you understood it better than you represented in
your first post.
No, not really. That there have been changes made tells us very
little. Are they meaningful changes which significantly impact the
ability of the minority to offer amendments and have their position
aired? I don't know; and you sure as hell don't know either, since
you didn't even realize that the Motion to Recommit wasn't being
eliminated.
It's so clear and obvious what the implications of this change are
that noted Democratic shill Radley Balko wrote It's a somewhat
complicated procedural issue, and proceeded to tell us what
the "bottom line" was, without writing up what the changes actually
were and how the legislative process would be different. But only a
partisan Democrat could consider this to be a complicated
matter.
Ho-kay.
|1.8.09 @ 11:17AM|#
"Good question, Jack.
Without a lot more inside-baseball knowledge of Congressional
procedure and how it's been used than is provided here, there's no
way to tell if this actually represents a flip-flop from Pelosi and
an unreasonable restriction on the minority party, or if the
Republicans are just ginning up a phony controversy."
"Here" ???
And I'm still waiting for those Republican quotes you
mentioned.
I stand by my comment.
|1.8.09 @ 11:19AM|#
Joe, with the full house allowed to immediatly vote on the motion, recommiting is now pointless. Eliminated? no, worthless, yes.
|1.8.09 @ 11:22AM|#
"Here" ???
Yes, here, in the blog post, or even in the stories linked
to.
And I'm still waiting for those Republican quotes you
mentioned.'
RTFA = Read The Fucking Article.
|1.8.09 @ 11:24AM|#
Michael, are you really so deterimined to put your back against the wall and refurse to back down that you're going to pretend not to know how link works?
|1.8.09 @ 11:35AM|#
Joe, with the full house allowed to immediatly vote on the
motion, recommiting is now pointless. Eliminated? no, worthless,
yes.
So I read a little about this rules change. Let's keep in mind what
a motion to recommit actually is: a bill gets voted out of
committee, after already having been debated internally and brought
to a form that gets it sent to the whole House. A Motion to
Recommit is then filed to send the bill back to committee, with
some changes. Whether to send the bill back to the committee with
those changes or not is then voted on by the House in short order,
rather than there necessarily being a days- or weeks-long period of
debate over that motion.
I agree, this makes the use of the Motion to Recommit useless as a
delaying tactic. If a poison pill or de minimus change is proposed,
the House will be able to dispose of it quickly. On the other hand,
amendments can still be offered on the floor, and amendments that
have enough support to win a motion to recommit will be sent back
to the committee.
The only change I can see here is that motions to recommit that are
doomed to fail will fail in short order, rather than there being an
extended waiting period before they fail.
Ska|1.8.09 @ 11:41AM|#
Well, like all "good" rule changes, when the majority swings back Republican the Dems can curse Pelosi and the House Dems of this Congress, while crying fake ass tears.
LurkerBold|1.8.09 @ 11:41AM|#
Distractions from joe aside, the real issue here is Reason's attack on successful women.
|1.8.09 @ 11:42AM|#
James Ard,
I'm hardly and expert on this stuff, though. What is the danger you
see in shortening the time for voting on Motions to Recommit?
Can't all of the debate on the whole-House floor over a certain
amendment take place when an amendment is offer to the bill on the
floor?
Elemenope|1.8.09 @ 11:48AM|#
I agree, this makes the use of the Motion to Recommit
useless as a delaying tactic. If a poison pill or de minimus change
is proposed, the House will be able to dispose of it quickly. On
the other hand, amendments can still be offered on the floor, and
amendments that have enough support to win a motion to recommit
will be sent back to the committee.
The only change I can see here is that motions to recommit that are
doomed to fail will fail in short order, rather than there being an
extended waiting period before they fail.
But one of the greatest powers of the minority is to delay. Taking
that away has the practical effect of strengthening the
majority.
Personally I'm with robc insofar as that the House is *supposed* to
be dominated by the majority, with the Senate being the fundamental
counterbalance to majoritarian rule.
|1.8.09 @ 11:49AM|#
If there wasn't an advantage to changing the rule why would Pelosi do it? Just to look mean and give Republicans something to gripe about?
|1.8.09 @ 11:53AM|#
Off topic, boy it's hard to watch Teddy Kennedy chair the Daschal hearing, knowing that if we had a single payer system he'd probably be dead by now.
Metal Messiah|1.8.09 @ 11:54AM|#
If you see an example of a pundit, politician, major
blogger, or other Beltway creature who's done a 180 on this or
another issue, please send it to us, with links, and "HackWatch" in
the subject line.
Wouldn't it be less work to just make a list of the ones who aren't
hypocrites?
|1.8.09 @ 12:07PM|#
Elemonope, James Ard,
Certainly, the effect of this change will be to reduce the minority
party's power vis a vis the majority.
I don't consider that, in and of itself, to be a sound basis on
which to judge whether it's a good idea. Even just looking at it in
terms of that one measure, we'd need to consider the amount of
power the minority wields.
But even more importantly, not all delays are created equal. It
would reduce the minority's power if debate on all bills sent to
the floor was limited to ten minutes, and I'd be aghast at that,
because such a change would actually reduce the back-and-forth and
minority input int bills.
In this case, however, I'm having trouble seeing how the proposed
change would actually reduce the amount of input the minority has
into what gets into the bills. It's purely a delaying tactic for
delay's sake, it appears to me. Everything that might get into the
bill by the committee reconsidering the bill, with the changed
language, can be hashed out before the committee sends the bill to
the floor, or in amendments offered and debated on the floor.
Elemenope|1.8.09 @ 12:10PM|#
If there wasn't an advantage to changing the rule why would
Pelosi do it? Just to look mean and give Republicans something to
gripe about?
That would actually be *brilliant* if handled correctly, because
she could use it to make the opposition sound like whiny
tools.
Not that I think she's either that capable or that savvy.
cunnivore|1.8.09 @ 12:10PM|#
Why are the Dems doing this now instead of 2 years ago? It's not like they just got a House majority yeseterday.
Elemenope|1.8.09 @ 12:15PM|#
It's purely a delaying tactic for delay's sake, it appears
to me.
Say that someone in the majority wanted to capitalize on exigent
circumstances--say, a plane was just intentionally flown into a
building, or a kid died some time after smoking some herb in the
sage family--and used the political impetus of that exigency to
cram through some legislation that might not otherwise pass under
normal conditions.
A delaying tool can neutralize the ridiculous excesses that can
proceed from such exigent circumstances by distancing the
legislative process, temporally, from the event.
Not that I believe the congressional GOP would actually, you know,
do that, but it is a legitimate reason.
|1.8.09 @ 12:16PM|#
But she is capable of attracting the attention of my 101 year old great uncle. He told me as much over the holidays.
|1.8.09 @ 12:23PM|#
Elemenope,
I understand the argument for delays, but that's certainly not the
argument Dreier makes. He argues that it will reduce the minority's
ability to debate and offer changes, cutting them off from having
substantive input into bills.
robc|1.8.09 @ 12:35PM|#
joe,
I refuse to have to rely on an idiot's arguments instead of good
ones. lmnop's argument is much better than Dreier's and is thus the
real one, even if it isnt the one being made.
The other good one is that delay allows times to rile up the public
and melt the phone lines to congress. It is a rarity, but it has
happened. That can kill a bill that would otherwise pass. If TARP
had been delayed 2-3 months, I dont think it passes.
That was under the old rules and didnt get delayed anyway, but as
an example it still stands.
Elemenope|1.8.09 @ 12:35PM|#
I understand the argument for delays, but that's certainly
not the argument Dreier makes. He argues that it will reduce the
minority's ability to debate and offer changes, cutting them off
from having substantive input into bills.
Since many legislators have shown themselves to be (incompetently?
malefactorally? psychotically?) willing to vote on bills they have
not themselves read, is it at all crazy that it might be tempting
to the majority to attempt to cram a bill *before anyone has a
chance to read it and hence know what in it one should object
to*?
I would imagine in such circumstances, without a tool for delay,
the minority would be at the absolute mercy of a majority willing
to pull such stunts.
robc|1.8.09 @ 12:42PM|#
lmnop,
That has already happened far too many times under the old rules.
At least then, the minority had the chance to delay things
somewhat.
Mad Max|1.8.09 @ 12:50PM|#
The House leadership will be judged on its ability to (a) keep
the majority in line and (b) overrule the minority as promptly as
possible.
As far as I'm concerned, the important thing for the minority is to
have a roll-call vote on its proposals. A roll-call can be demanded
by 1/5 of the members present, and then Congresscritters have to go
on record for or against the pending proposal.
The transparency benefits of a roll-call vote can be watered down
by various methods. For example, say the leadership cooks up the
Rainbows and Puppies for the Children Act, a bill providing federal
funding for burn wards in childrens' hospitals as well as allowing
the FBI to search citizens' teeth fillings without a warrant. If
the House holds only a single up-or-down vote on the bill, it can
look as if the "Nay" voters are against rainbows, puppies, and
child burn victims.
What needs to happen is for someone to offer an amendment taking
the dental-search clause out of the bill, and then to have a
roll-call vote on the proposed amendment. That creates a public
record on the warrantless dental searches proposal, without
clouding up the issues with children-and-puppies rhetoric. If the
amendment is defeated, then the supporters of the amendment can
vote against the bill as a whole, having made a record indicating
that it's the dental searches, not the children and puppies, that
they object to.
As I understand it, there will still be roll-call votes on
Republican commitment motions, but the motions will be handled
quicker. If that's so, then there is still a public record, and the
needs of transparency have been at least somewhat met.
Mad Max|1.8.09 @ 12:52PM|#
Or the minority can offer a commitment motion, ordering the committee to rewrite the rainbows-and-puppies bill to remove the dental-search clause. Same principle.
|1.8.09 @ 1:00PM|#
Elemenope, robc,
There are still all kinds of tactics the minority could use to
delay and prolong debate on bills, such as amendments on the floor
and in committee. In fact, those are BETTER methods for achieving
what you want to see, because they actually involve argument over
the substance of the bills in a public forum.
As opposed to the way the Republicans have been using motions to
commit, which involve proposing some language change, in order to
take advantage of the bill just sitting there, without debate, for
a period of time before the vote.
The way this tactic is being used is to delay the passage of bills
the Republicans don't want to have public argument
about.
|1.8.09 @ 1:04PM|#
Mad Max,
Wouldn't actually offering the amendment to reomove the dental
search clause on the floor of the House, and debating and voting on
that amendment, achieve the results you describe better than a
motion to recommit?
You seem to understand this stuff pretty well. From what I've seen,
it looks like the motion to recommit is a way to avoid that public
fight over the substantive change.
|1.8.09 @ 1:34PM|#
it's hard to watch Teddy Kennedy chair the Daschal hearing,
knowing that if we had a single payer system he'd probably be dead
by now.
Okay- I laughed out loud at that.
|1.8.09 @ 2:02PM|#
it's hard to watch Teddy Kennedy chair the Daschal hearing,
knowing that if we had a single payer system he'd probably be dead
by now.
I agree that's funny, but sad, too because the truth is there's not
a single nation on earth where the rich do not receive better
health care than everybody else; there is no single payer system or
government-supported health insurance system or whatever the hell
you want to call it, the rich are not restricted to it and as a
last resort, if they have to they can always fly somewhere else. If
Teddy lived in Canada or France or the UK or Cuba or any other
health care utopia, he'd still be able to pay for as much health
care as he wanted.
Single payer and other choice-limiting state programs fuck the poor
and middle classes, which is why the rich and ruling classes (which
are the same now, of course) have no problem with it.
DannyK|1.8.09 @ 4:46PM|#
Boehner abused the "motion to recommit" clause so heavily in the
last session of Congress, he can't be surprised to see it taken out
of his hands now.
It's fun to watch him whine, though.
Site comments/questions:
Media Inquiries and Reprint Permissions:
(310) 367-6109
Editorial & Production Offices:
3415 S. Sepulveda Blvd.
Suite 400
Los Angeles, CA 90034
(310) 391-2245