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Congress needs a “Time Out”

The ag appropriations bill is generally not one of your sexier pieces of legislation. We battle for our dollars like any other group in town, and we fight to keep goofy animal rights amendments off the bill, but overall, it’s a bit of a yawn in the great legislative scheme of things. But this past week, as the House struggled over five days to pass a bill which should have taken five hours, and in the process the bill became the poster child for House politics and process teetering on the edge of chaos.

And based on the behavior demonstrated by both sides of the aisle during the week, I figure this must be what it’s like to run a daycare center.

It started as it always does with the House Rules Committee setting the game plan for floor action. Any and all amendments would be allowed and the bill would lumber through the process as it always does. But it ended with most of the GOP staging a walk out to protest some heavy handed maneuvers by the majority party, with one member calling the parliamentary debacle a “trifecta of bad process and policy.”

The first clue this train was about to leave the tracks came during debate when one member offered an amendment to cut $50,050 from the Secretary of Ag’s budget to pay for the State Children’s Insurance Program (SCHIP), not part of ag spending no matter how you cut it. There followed several similar amendments, floor speeches, arguments, and finger pointing – all over the GOP’s frustration in SCHIP not having had hearings or a formal markup – winding up with a the Dems accusing the GOP of “filibuster by amendment” and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D, MD) yanking the bill off the floor.

At one point, a Democrat member called the GOP “liars” – a big no-no on the floor of the House — for their description of SCHIP and its process, inspiring one GOP member to escalate the exchange to where the two gentlemen discussed “taking it outside.” One veteran Hill staffer who’s now a lobbyist called this past week “embarrassing,” and while it may have been, it was what it was, and that is one of the worst examples of partisan politics and the “imperial Congress” we’ve seen in a long time.

Hoyer, like all frustrated parents, told the kids to behave or he wouldn’t let them go home for summer vacation. He also threatened to bring the bill back with a closed rule, meaning no amendments, and a congressperson in search of a spending earmark hates to hear those words.

The Majority leader was good to his word. In a Wednesday late night session of the Rules Committee, the Dems rewrote the floor rules and allowed only a limited number of amendments. They also decided to just accept other amendments without debate or votes – not uncommon after bipartisan agreement – but in this case, the “structured rule” whacked a bunch of GOP eamarks, allowed a goofy animal rights amendment to be added (horse slaughter for the 104th time), and royally hacked off the GOP.

So, as the debate resumed, it was apparent the boys and girls were cranky. The whole thing exploded in a GOP walk-out when a motion to send the bill back to committee by the Republicans looked like it was going to pass, but after serious Democrat arm-twisting, a whole bunch of “yes” votes turned to “no” votes, and the GOP walked. The Dems hung on to enough votes to pass the bill, but as one GOPer noted, “the walkout is a statement on the process.”

The House and Senate are supposed to leave this weekend for the entire month of August. This is a good thing because there’s obviously a need for a serious “time out.”