From Drudge Report
Quote:
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.
The Democratic Leadership is threatening to change the current House Rules regarding the Republican right to the Motion to Recommit or the test of germaneness on the motion to recommit. This would be the first change to the germaneness rule since 1822.
In protest, the House Republicans are going to call procedural motions every half hour.
As the admittedly partisan Redstate.com notes:
Quote:
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.
The motion to recommit had been put into place in a Parliamentary Rulebook laid out by Thomas Jefferson. He explains:
Quote:
"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."
(source)
Due to the Republican counter-campaign the Democrats have been forced to abandon their efforts for today.
(additional source)
16 May 2007, 6:21 pm
