In the House, courtesy of the Office of the Democratic Whip:
On Tuesday, the House will meet at 2:00 p.m. for legislative business with votes postponed until 6:30 p.m.
"One Minutes"
Suspensions (2 Bills)
- S.Con.Res. 2 - A concurrent resolution authorizing the use of the rotunda of the Capitol for an event marking the 50th anniversary of the inaugural address of President John F. Kennedy (Sen. Kerry - House Administration)
- H.R. 292 - Stop the OverPrinting (STOP) Act (Rep. Lee (NY) - House Administration)
Begin Consideration of H.R. 2 – Patient’s Rights Repeal Act (7 Hours of Debate) (Rep. Cantor - Education and the Workforce/Energy and Commerce/Ways and Means)
The Senate is not in session today.
Not much in the way of floor activity today. At least not in terms of voting. But that doesn't necessarily mean there's nothing interesting going on. Most of the day will be taken up with "debate" over the "already litigated" health insurance reform law, as we know.
But before we even get to that, there are two suspensions lined up, as you can see. We're used to seeing the House occupy its time with suspensions when there's not much substantive work to get to, but it's too early in the session even for the non-controversial bills that'll eventually come to the floor under suspension of the rules to have cleared committee for floor action. So today, we'll see just the STOP Act, and a concurrent resolution authorizing the use of the Capitol Rotunda for an event marking the 50th anniversary of the inaugural address of President John F. Kennedy.
What's the STOP Act?
Well, it's not Rep. Gerry Connolly's (D-VA-11) H.R. 54, the "Stand by Your Oil Pollution Act." And it's not Rep. John Fleming's (R-LA-04) H.R. 118, the charmingly-named "Stop the Federal Exchanges from Destroying States Act" or the "STOP the FEDS Act." Nor is it a reintroduction from the last Congress of H.R. 979, the "Stop Taxpayer-Offensive Practices Act," or H.R. 2304, the "Soldiers Targeted by Offensive Profiteering Act," or S. 1588, the "Stop Tax-breaks for Oil Profiteering Act," or H.R. 5178, the "Smuggled Tobacco Prevention Act," or H.R. 6241, the "Sober Truth on Preventing Underage Drinking Act," or even H.R. 485, the "Security through Termination Of Proliferation Act."
No, it's H.R. 292, the "Stop the OverPrinting Act." Hallelujah!
What's it do? Why, it stops OverPrinting, of course! How? By requiring the Public Printer to make bills and resolutions available only in electronic format. Unless a committee wants some printed copies, in which case they can get up to 75 of them printed. Or unless a Member of Congress requests some, in which case the printer shall print... however many the Member of Congress asks for.
This sounds like a reasonable enough idea. Current law (44 USC Sec. 706) requires 625 copies be printed of every bill and joint resolution, but only 260 copies of simple and concurrent resolutions. Before the days of electronic distribution and on-demand printing, this was probably relatively reasonable and cost-efficient, since it was actually quite costly to have to do multiple print runs of particular bills at some later date. So perhaps we'll save a little money with this new system.
Just out of curiosity, though, I took a peek at Rep. Lee's recital of constitutional authority for his bill, and it was kind of interesting:
By Mr. LEE of New York:
H.R. 292.
Congress has the power to enact this legislation pursuant to the following:
Article 1, Section 5, Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings.
See, what's interesting here is that he's citing the House's right to determine its own rules of proceeding. Except that this doesn't appear to be a Rule of the House, it's a statutory requirement. So I don't think Art. I, Sec. 5 has much to do with it. What's the rule on what happens to a bill that's got an incorrect citation of constitutional authority? Well, all the new rule said was what would happen if someone tried to introduce a bill without citing any authority at all. In that case, according to the new rule, the bill "may not be introduced." And yet, this one not only has been introduced, it's scheduled for floor action on Tuesday.
In addition, a change to the Rules of the House would ordinarily be introduced as a simple House Resolution, not as a bill. But it is a bill, probably because the House's Office of the Legislative Counsel, which puts bills and resolutions into legislative language for Members, knows very well that the goal Rep. Lee gave them required a statutory change, not a rules change. So it's a bill and not a resolution.
If it really is a rules change they need, that'd also be pretty ironic, since that would mean they'd need a resolution, which only requires 260 copies to be printed. Mistakenly introducing it as a bill currently requires printing another 365 copies. But the bigger problem, really, is that the constitutional authority cited for this bill is probably inaccurate. Now, they'll probably answer that since the bill is coming to the floor under suspension of the rules, then the rule requiring constitutional authority won't apply. And that would be fine if the rule would otherwise prohibit its consideration. But this rule actually purports to prohibit at bill's introduction, so really there shouldn't even be an opportunity to move to suspend the rules in the first place, because there shouldn't even be a bill about which to make the motion.
I wonder what they'll do about it. My guess is, nothing. Not only because it creates a bigger problem than they'd really be able to solve smoothly, but also because they don't really care about this rule -- or the Constitution -- like they said they did. It was all for show. And apparently, it was a comedy show at that, because the first bill they're passing has screwed it all up.
No, seriously. That bears repeating. The very first bill brought to the floor under the new rule requiring a citation of constitutional authority in order to be introduced has screwed it all up.
Hahaha! They're in charge of running the House of Representatives, but they don't even understand the Constitution or their own rules! I mean, boo-hoo-hoo! They're in charge of running the House of Representatives, but they don't even understand the Constitution or their own rules!
Oh, well. We'll still subsidize their health care, anyway, God love 'em.