After House Republicans bumbled a vote on a pro-LGBT amendment last week (it almost passed!), Speaker Paul Ryan is working to ensure his caucus won't be blindsided by other progressive measures down the road. Erica Werner reports:
Ryan told House Republicans Tuesday that in the future, such amendments will have to be printed ahead of time. Current rules can allow amendments to be written and voted on in real time when spending bills are up for debate.
It's a procedural change that could allow the GOP majority to better manage politically problematic votes.
"You don't like to have surprises," said Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., as he exited the closed-door GOP meeting where Ryan announced the planned change. "If you want to play tricks and games that's fine. If you're interested in doing legislation you ought to have thought it through."
Translation: Damn those Democrats and their tricky pro-LGBT amendments! That's precious given that Ryan actually gave on-the-fly amendments more room to breathe because the GOP’s crazy caucus didn't want to be controlled from on high, as he explained last week.
“If we're going to have open rules in appropriations, which we have, which is regular order, people are going to have to take tough votes, and I think people are acknowledging this,” Ryan said at a press conference last Thursday...
During consideration of a funding bill last week, those "open rules" allowed Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney to introduce a measure seeking to preserve nondiscrimination protections for LGBT employees of federal contractors. Republicans barely managed to defeat the amendment with a last-minute round of arm twisting that left the measure one vote shy of passage.
GOP lawmakers and aides said Maloney's amendment caught them by surprise and they had to take quick action against it in order to salvage the underlying legislation, a spending bill to pay for popular veterans and military construction projects.
They had to take "quick action" lest a measure that would have affirmed LGBT rights succeed. Translation: If the pro-LGBT provision had been included in the funding bill, Republicans never could have voted for it. Isn’t that special.