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?
