Here's the thing about motions to recommit.
When Dems were in the minority, they used them with varying degrees of success to set up tough votes for the majority Republicans, forcing them to go on record voting against stuff they would ordinarily perhaps want to vote for, but couldn't because to do so would either kill the bill they were working on or create some kind of a poison pill. It was a strategy that made the most of the tools afforded to the minority, but it rarely worked in terms of making substantive changes to legislation that actually inured to the political benefit of Democrats.
It wasn't a new invention, but it was one that minority Democrats used as part of a comprehensive effort of framing differences between themselves and Republicans, with an eye toward the elections that would one day let them retake control of the House, and in that incarnation, the plan's architect was then House Democratic Caucus Chair Rahm Emanuel.
It was a fine plan for Democrats in the minority, but there was never any effort made to remind Members that things might have to change once Democrats were in the majority. In fact, what Emanuel carried over through the transition was the sense of fear that he believed motions to recommit could create in the minds of the majority. It therefore became House Democratic Caucus policy that Members in marginal districts (or who could make the case that they were otherwise endangered) would be allowed to vote with the Republicans on their motions to recommit, so as not to be "trapped" in bad votes that would lead to nasty campaign attack ads (as if those could be avoided). Perhaps a good campaign strategy, but a terrible strategy for governance.
Why? Because it gives away to the minority the power to substantively rewrite or even completely derail substantive legislation, which is something you should never give away. It's what having the majority means in Congress. The only reason to have it is because majority status confers the right to control the substance of legislation. Giving it up in order to avoid attack ads means you're surrendering the right to do anything, in order to avoid being attacked for doing things. Not only does that not work in an age when political opponents feel perfectly free to attack you whether you've done something or not, but it leads to absurd situations that cause your base to call into question just why the hell they ever voted for you in the first place. Witness the Democratic majority's collapse on FISA in 2007, or if you prefer, their inability to escape the anti-choice chokehold even on the one piece of legislation Democrats say they've been working toward for 50+ years and finally have clearly in their sights: health care.
Right now, we have to hold our collective breath and hope that House Democrats can hold together as a party rather than a loose-knit collection of freelancers just to avoid having abortion sink what's supposed to be their crowning achievement. Yes. Democrats. Abortion. You read that right.
As you know, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI-01) has been scheming to find a procedural back door to shoehorning his anti-abortion language into the health insurance reform bill. And though all reports now indicate that there will be no deal for an enrollment corrections resolution, we're still in danger of seeing the Republicans offer the Stupak language as a motion to recommit. Can we count on Democrats whose views on abortion are in sympathy with Stupak's to be Democrats first and abortion activists second? That is the question the motion will frame.
That that is even a question represents a fairly serious problem with House Democratic Caucus discipline. That it is a carryover from Democrats' days in the minority represents a fairly serious problem with transitioning to the responsibilities of governance. That it is a holdover from Rahm Emanuel's days in the House is a good illustration of why I was pleased to see him take the job of White House Chief of Staff -- meaning I was glad to see him out of the House. But most important, that this process continues to be regarded as framing substantive votes represents a fairly serious problem in the way House Democrats view the legislative process.
What I mean is this: by rule, motions to recommit are debated for a total of 10 minutes on the floor. Ten minutes!
What Democrat believes that even as a member of the majority -- and therefore supposedly connected to the wheels of real power -- they would ever get the opportunity to rewrite the substance of a bill, especially one as important as this, on ten minutes notice? Even if you're the chairman of a powerful committee, if you want to amend an important bill on the floor, you need to slog through the tedious process of a committee markup, and possibly a Rules Committee markup, plus some not-insignificant time spent debating your amendment on the floor, if it hasn't won the day at some earlier point in the process.
With a motion to recommit, however, the minority -- the out of power party! -- gets to come to the floor with an amendment that need not be printed beforehand, need not be shown to anyone, need not be carefully combed-over and debated in committee, nor subjected to any of the rigors which a member of the majority must overcome to get this privilege, and then gets a vote after just 10 minutes of trading prepared speeches on the floor, which almost no one who watches C-SPAN still thinks passes for debate.
And yet Democrats continue to shatter all records for allowing this to happen, and joining in the effort to pull the rug out from underneath their own agenda. All for what? To avoid attack ads? How's that working?
Keep in mind, by the way, that over on the Senate side -- where Democrats are even more notorious as freelancers -- Democrats (and independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont) are so far complying with the unbelievably ironic request from the leadership that they refrain from offering amendments seeking to reinsert the public option into the bill. Whether or not offering such an amendment is only so much calculated window-dressing, the point is that leadership claims that such an amendment, given the procedural posture of the legislation, endangers the ultimate passage of the program, and Democrats with every incentive not to comply regardless of these pleas are in fact falling into line for what they believe is the greater good. Meanwhile, on the House side, what do we see? Democrats who have grown all-too-comfortable with freelancing on motions to recommit possibly finding themselves unable to exhibit anything near the same control over themselves.
You don't think Bernie Sanders is dying to offer that amendment every bit as much as Stupak's allies are dying to vote for a motion to recommit that would add Stupak's language? And yet here's a guy who isn't even a Democrat putting the centerpiece of the Democratic agenda first. But we get no such loyalty from certain House Democrats.
That's an outrage.
What's worse, by going this route, Stupak's allies threaten to send a reconciliation bill to the Senate that contains an anti-abortion provision that by itself stands virtually no chance of surviving a Byrd Rule challenge, and will have numerous enemies in the Senate who'll want to see the rule enforce and the provision excised. But doing so would amend the reconciliation bill, which means that upon passage in the Senate, it'd have to head back to the House, where we'd be back at square one, and undoubtedly facing... yet another motion to recommit to add the same damn thing back in. Meaning we're stuck in an endless loop that ends only with the defeat of the motion to recommit or the engineering of 60 votes in the Senate to waive the Byrd Rule and actually accept the Stupak language -- a move that would still require at least one Republican vote.
Could the Senate find that Republican vote if necessary? Maybe. After all, allowing the Stupak language into the bill would, according to pro-choice forces, impose a very significant restriction on access to abortion services. So wouldn't Republicans want that? Sure. But if they agree to it, they pave the way for passage of the health insurance reform bill they hate more than anything. So would they make that trade? Probably not.
In other words, Senate Republicans would be put in the position of casting the "tough vote" against an anti-abortion provision if they want to preserve their ability to block the overall health care bill. That's essentially the mirror image of the position Stupak's allies will be in on the House motion to recommit, and yet everyone's expectation is that Senate Republicans will hold their line for political purposes, whereas it's a nail biter as to whether House Democrats will be able to do the same.
How sad is that?
House Democrats need to get their heads in the game, realize that as the majority you simply can't treat motions to recommit the same way you did when you were in the minority, and that "tough votes" are what being in Congress is all about. If you're really thinking that you're fighting to keep your seat in Congress, then think for a moment about what it means to fight to keep a seat from which you can't even use the power that supposedly comes with it, for fear of... eventually losing it. If you find yourself voting from this position, you've already lost your seat.
