Teabagger Supreme Erick Erickson (the extra "c" stands for FREEDOM!!!) has emailed his list, looking for people to petition their Representatives to vote against the rule governing debate on H.R. 1, because it doesn't didn't contain a special dispensation allowing Rep. Steve King (R-IA-05) to offer his amendment to completely defund the Affordable Care Act.
Last night, the House of Representatives’ Rules Committee shut down Rep. Steve King’s ability to offer an amendment to completely defund Obamacare on the continuing resolution to fund the government through the end of the year. House Republicans are now hiding behind parliamentary rules to say that it would somehow violate what the new Republican Majority is all about.
This is just complete and utter nonsense.
Obamacare was a mix of what is called discretionary and mandatory spending. King is trying to defund the entire law, but the parliamentarians are arguing that his amendment would be out of order (i.e. against House Rules) because it attempts to mess with programs that are not strictly discretionary.
True! (Except for the "complete and utter nonsense" part, which we'll get to.)
But the thing that people need to understand about the House of Representatives is that every major bill that comes to the floor is governed by a “special rule” that sets the parameters of the debate and the amendment process for that bill. You don’t need a special rule to consider a bill, but House Rules are viewed as so inefficient and cumbersome that each bill needs its own special dispensation. And that is where the Rules Committee comes in and constructs a special rule that in essence waives House Rules. Normally, in a situation like this, the Leadership of either party, if they support what the rank and file member is trying to do, makes the amendment in order.
Also true! (Sort of. That is, except for Erickson's understanding of what a "situation like this" actually is. But we're getting there.)
Just to be clear, what Erick is was asking for here is was that the Rules of the House be waived so King can get this done. That's sometimes doable, but a tall order in this case. And at this early stage of the new Congress, in which Republicans are struggling to live up to the promises they made on the rules and transparency, it's a request that'll be considered dead on arrival. Erickson, like most people, wants what he wants. He doesn't have patience for being told "that it would somehow violate what the new Republican Majority is all about."
But procedural transparency, at its heart, is about adherence to the rules. Though it's certainly true that the rules themselves sometimes have the effect of obscuring things for the average observer, the idea here is that if you write down your rules, that makes them both available for understanding and relatively predictable in their application. Provided you adhere to them and refrain from waiving them too frequently or unnecessarily.
Governance, though, is hard. It takes patience and understanding, including an understanding of the rules. And that can be frustrating. It's frustrating Erick right now.
Is he right that the Rules Committee can pretty much just wave a magic wand and make it possible? Well, they could do it, not that it would do them much good once the bill left the House. But more importantly, there are a number of good reasons the House itself has not to try.
Remember that King's problem is that he's going after mandatory spending, using the vehicle of an appropriations bill. One of the reasons that it's problematic to do that is that it's against House Rules to legislate in an appropriations bill. That's certainly waivable, though. You could absolutely write a rule waiving the rule prohibiting that. But the reason it's both prohibited under the rules and generally disfavored for waivers is that allowing legislating -- that is, doing anything other than divvying up the money in those 302(b) allocations I was telling you about -- in an appropriations bill gives appropriators (and appropriations bills) too much power. The idea of splitting up authorizations from appropriations was twofold: 1) so that policy initiatives would stand on their own, without forcing the president to veto necessary appropriations in order to block some unrelated policy, and; 2) so that no one gang of members could by themselves raid the Treasury and just do whatever the hell they wanted. It cuts both ways. It's against the Rules to appropriate funding for an unauthorized program, too. Though that prohibition is waived with somewhat greater frequency than the opposite, which is what King is looking to get.
The Democratic amendment to H.R. 1 that seeks to end big oil company subsidies will likely run into the same barrier and meet the same fate, if you're scoring at home, since it requires amending the Internal Revenue Code, and that's legislating in an appropriations bill.
Erickson's complaints continue:
So this idea that the Rules Committee (an arm of Leadership) could not have made the amendment in order because they didn’t want to give “special treatment” to it is nonsense. If that is “regular order” then the Rules Committee should be disbanded completely, and the era of special rules be ended. That would actually be pretty good for America.
Why is it bad policy for the Rules Committee to give special treatment to amendments like this? In addition to the basic reasons why authorizations and appropriations are separated, there's also the internal politics. If you frequently make such exceptions, then when you choose not to, you end up with more threats of mini-revolts like this one. "Why should I vote for this rule that denied me the exception I wanted," members begin to think, "when they so easily gave one to Jones over there?" If the blanket rule is to deny them, you get fewer temper tantrums.
But that's not convincing Erickson:
Furthermore, Leadership put Steve King in this position by not adding the proper language to defund Obamacare in the underlying bill, notwithstanding the fact that these sorts of riders are a matter of routine on appropriations bills. What is not routine is bringing an appropriations bill to the floor of the House without having it be considered in committee where these sorts of amendments could have been more easily included.
Well, no. Legislative riders in appropriations bills are not a matter of routine. Limiting amendments are a matter of routine, but once you cross the line into mandatory spending, you're no longer talking about a limiting amendment. You're legislating. Appropriations members know this very well, and generally disfavor trying to sneak anything into the original bill, since even if they wanted to try it, they know that House rules will eventually catch up with them on the House floor anyway, and undo their work.
The plain fact of the matter is that Leadership doesn’t want a major fight to defund Obamacare on the continuing resolution and are hiding behind House Rules to save face. The continuing resolution is a must-pass bill and prime opportunity for the House to try and shut down Obamacare with its historic “power of the purse.” At least force the Democrats to use political capital to get the provision out of the bill in the Senate.
In his final complaint, Erickson outlines one of the chief arguments for the separation of authorizations and appropriations -- that a continuing resolution (though this one isn't in the form of a resolution) is a must-pass bill. As exciting as it is to try to force this kind of showdown, it's precisely the reason why the practice is typically banned. It's too easy to attach something that otherwise wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in hell to a bill that holds the whole government's operations hostage.
But he's not done yet. He squeezes one more thing in: the demand that Democrats be forced to use political capital to get the provision out of the bill in the Senate. I don't think there's much capital that would be involved. Similar points of order lie in the Senate against what King's trying to do as in the House. Adding King's language to the bill in the House would just have made that section of the bill subject to the point of order instead of his amendment. As for the Senate, there are numerous ways the provision could be removed without the expenditure of much political capital at all. For one thing, the Senate could simply move its own appropriations bill and ignore H.R. 1 entirely. For another, it could refer H.R. 1 to committee, and report it out with a complete substitute. And even if it left King's language untouched in the substitute, a point of order would lie against that section of the substitute when it was offered on the floor. Why? Legislating in an amendment to an appropriations bill. So it'd be struck from the substitute, then the substitute would be adopted, and poof! The language is gone. Would there be a vote? Sure, you could have a vote appealing the rule of the chair upholding the point of order. And if you were grasping at straws, you could portray that vote as a vote for or against the defunding provision. And that's exactly what Erickson is trying to do here, portraying the vote on the rule for H.R. 1 as a vote on defunding.
How'd he do?
Well, he got Steve King's vote. And Michele Bachmann's. Sort of. They both voted "present" on the rule. They didn't dare vote no. Not a single Republican did.
So how much "political capital" did he think was going to be at stake? It doesn't appear there was enough in there to get King to stand on principle. Even for his own amendment.
