For the most part the House of Representatives has finished its work for the year. They passed health care, and they’ve passed their versions of the financial and climate reforms. They don’t have anything to do with confirmations. So, other than the budget and appropriations, they’re pretty much restricted to naming post offices for the rest of the year. They did have one actual bill to discuss this week, but they had to pull it off the floor.
Democrats had labeled their COMPETES Act — a bill to increase investments in science, research and training programs — as their latest jobs bill. It was the only non-suspension bill Democrats brought up all week.
But the Republican motion to recommit the bill — a parliamentary tactic that gives the minority one final chance to amend legislation — contained language prohibiting federal funds from going “to salaries to those officially disciplined for violations regarding the viewing, downloading, or exchanging of pornography, including child pornography, on a federal computer or while performing official government duties.”
If you’ve never read David Waldman on the subject of motions to recommit, you really should. It’s geeky, but it’s the kind of thing you really ought to understand. You should also read the House rule concerning motions to recommit. If you want to totally geek-out, you can read a history (.pdf) of the rule. As a general matter, the rule was probably intended to provide an opportunity to dot an ‘i’ or cross a ‘t’ that had been overlooked by the committee that had marked up the bill. In other words, it’s always possible for someone to find some flaw in the language of a bill at the last moment and the ‘motion to recommit’ allows for last second corrections to be made. However, over time the minority in the House realized that the procedure could be used to kill a bill that could not be killed in any other way. For example, they could say that the bill is a very fine piece of legislation but it neglected to condemn child molestation and, also, to phase out the departments of Education and Commerce.
The majority party is then faced with the choice of voting in favor of child molestation or voting for the abolition of the departments of Education and Commerce. The normal response is to vote against child molestation and then pull the entire bill off the floor.
And that’s exactly what happened today.
That provision scared dozens of Democrats into voting with Republicans to approve the motion to recommit. After it became clear the GOP motion was going to pass, dozens of additional Democrats changed their votes from “no” to “yes.” In the end, 121 Democrats voted with Republicans — only four fewer than the number of Democrats who voted with their party.
But because of additional changes contained in the motion, Democrats decided to pull the bill from consideration immediately following the passage of the motion to recommit.
So, because 121 Democrats were unwilling to vote for paying federal employees to watch porn all day at work on the taxpayer’s dime, we have no investment to increase investments in science, research and training programs. Isn’t that special?
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How were they able to add that language to the bill though? They can just add it automatically?
seems crazy that they can do this
It’s an amendment, and it’s germane. So you can attempt, at least, to add it. IIRC, the Senate doesn’t even require amendments to be germane.
The whole point is to generate video for campaign ads of roll-call votes that appear to be case for porn, or whatever.
it’s not an amendment in the normal sense, however.
It’s a correction.
Imagine that the authors of a bill had accidentally dropped a zero from the text of a bill. Someone can make a motion to recommit the bill to the originating committee so that they can fix the bill by adding the zero back in. That’s the simplest way of thinking about it. A motion to recommit requires a simple majority. So, if you say that the Wall Street bill is just great but it forgot to condemn goat-fucking and (BTW) total abolition of the SEC and all other government watchdogs, then the majority has to vote for goat-fucking in order to keep the regulatory agencies in existence.
IOW, profiting from the chronic inability of the Dems to turn around even the most blatant scams from the GOP. Maybe the only way to put an end to this shit is for the Dems to do the same to Rep amendments. But that would be partisan.
This is not a pure amendment; it’s an amendment plus a motion to recommit. Democrats manage the floor; they can never be put in this position until there is a Republican Speaker of the House.
no, they had a vote on it and won. Everyone HATES porn. That’s why it’s so popular.
Let me be the first to say that someone will figure out a way to blame Obama for this by tomorrow morning.
I enjoy these kinds of stories because it’s clear how hideous the GOP is.
Well, they do love themselves some porn, and they do hate some science. It’s a win win!
So they go back and put the provision in.
In two years, Republicans will be complaining that there are folks working under federal science grants who are watching porn. Investigation shows that they are malaria researchers monitoring the sex life of mosquitoes to see if there is a way to control mosquito breeding in malaria-prone areas without using pesticides.
Or they will be research urologists or gynecologists.
It’s the old GOP two’fer.