Last Wednesday, I looked at the innovative but rather high-risk tactics that are apparently under consideration within the Dem House leadership for dealing on the floor with the ethics bill in the first days of the 110th Congress.
Another key element in Pelosi's 100 Hour program is a hike in the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour.
On the face of it, this is a rather simpler legislative exercise: a short bill, a couple of sections, raising the rate in one or two increments, according to the leadership's choice. Closed rule, bish, bash, bosh - and punt it over to the Senate side.
Except, to judge from the MO apparently proposed for the ethics bill, the Dems aren't going to do anything of the sort.
(I referred in Wednesday's piece to the bold statements of principle in the long New Direction for America on the subject of House floor procedures.)
Once the Dems decide on an open rule (more probably a modified open rule) for the minimum wage bill, they will be inviting an array of amendments from both sides of the aisle.
Not only putting forward different amounts for the end-state of the MW rate, but different schedules for how to get there.
(For instance, the Times today has a piece on currents of Dem economic policy which quotes Maurice Hinchey of NY:
...Hinchey, a Democrat whose New York district includes Kingston and other economically struggling cities, asserts that the federal minimum should be $10 an hour now. Going that high right away is unrealistic, he acknowledged, but in the Congressional debate over the Kennedy proposal, Mr. Hinchey will push to have the $7.25 effective no later than the spring 2008, not 2009.
"If I went out on the street in Kingston," Mr. Hinchey said, "and said to people that the minimum wage is not going up to $7.25 until 2009, they would say to me, `That is all the Democrats are going to do? Why did I vote for you?'"
I doubt whether he's alone among Dem reps in favoring an accelerated schedule.)
But that's only the start of it: as important as the headline rate is the forest of rules that fill in the detail.
The GOP will certainly have a bag of tricks designed to deliver goodies to their contributors - the ones who've been knocking themselves out shmoozing Dems over the last couple of weeks and more!
And Dems like Hinchey will not doubt be looking to insert worker-friendly amendments to the FLSA which would soften the blow of what some constituents might view as a rather disappointing monetary increase.
Now, there's no reason for the Dem leadership to lose control of the process, for all of its complexities. A modified open rule would allow all amendments, but impose a timetable on floor debates, and make in order only those amendments pre-printed in the Congressional Record.
There's another reason why the Dem leadership would shun a closed rule here: this is a bill they need to get enacted, and the Senate GOP leadership would like few things better than an early opportunity to cry procedural foul to justify a morale-boosting filibuster.
A decent length of floor debate in the House under a MOR takes that opportunity from under their noses.
One more question: have the Dems been too conciliatory too soon with their proposal for $7.25 after two years?
Since proceedings in both houses are only going to work as a negotiation, won't the GOP be expecting to work the Dems' first offer down a little?
Now, $7.25 an hour in 2009 is a pretty pitiful end-point, size-wise. There's no haggling room there, if the Dems want to make the increase credible.
I'd be a tad concerned about that.