John Boehner on Crossfire, January 4, 1995 (Nexis)
JOHN BOEHNER: Mike, understand that we are committed to having a much more open House, and you're going to see, over the course of this year, most of the legislation brought to the floor of the House under an open rule. That was the commitment we made to the American people, and we intend to keep it.
GOP House leadership now:
As I noted here yesterday, Rep. Peter Welch and other Democrats are hoping to introduce amendments to the GOP's health repeal bill that would exempt specific provisions in the Affordable Care Act from the GOP's repeal measure....
Eric Cantor suggested to reporters today that the GOP will not allow what's known as an "open rule," which would allow Dems to introduce amendments such as the ones mentioned above:'
Cantor was asked whether there would be an open rule on the short repeal bill, the text of which Republicans made public last night. Under an open rule, Democrats would be allowed to propose amendments. Cantor strongly implied that this wouldn't happen. "It's a straightforward document," he said. "It reflect what most people inside the beltway and outside the beltway want."
Several more questions about the strategy for the vote were answered the same way. "This was litigated in the last election," said Cantor. He repeated that a few minutes later: "Most people out there believe that this health care bill has been litigated."
This isn't quite conclusive, but a GOP aide involved in the discussions confirms this means Republicans are unlikely to allow any amendments.
At least they aren't pretending any more.
Dems had been planning to bring amendments to the floor to the repeal debate (and have I mentioned what they're calling the repeal bill? Repeal The Job-Killing Health Care Law Act. Subtle, aren't they?). Thse amendments would have forced GOP votes on exempting specific, popular provisions in the Affordable Care Act--closing the donut hole, the pre-existing conditions ban, etc. They can't do that now, but that doesn't leave them without means of embarrassing Republicans on their hypocrisy (yeah, I know, Republicans are beyond embarrassment over such a simple thing as hypocrisy, but bear with me).
You remember the motion to recommit, right? The procedural tool that's been the bain of David Waldman's existence for, well, ever? Or since he wrote this in the fall of 2007:
As even the short version makes clear, the motion to recommit is generally the prerogative of the minority, meaning that in the current House these motions are offered by Republicans. They come at the end of debate on a bill, and are supposed to be the minority's last chance to get an up or down vote on their own version of the bill, or some key amendment that they believe belongs in it.
In practice, the Republicans have become quite skilled at using such motions to devise wedge issue votes designed to put Democrats on the spot, forcing them to go on the record over just the sorts of issues you might have thought winning majority control of the House would have "protected" Democrats from having to deal with. The condemnation of MoveOn.org, for instance, was presented in the House using a motion to recommit following consideration of the must-pass "continuing resolution" (definition), which enabled the government to continue functioning in the absence of the regular appropriations bills, the federal fiscal year having ended on September 30th.
Reverse the parties now, (and see the update here). The CBO estimated back in August, in response to a politically motivated question by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID), that repealing the Affordable Care Act would add about $455 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years. Some enterprising Dem House staffer could come up with an amendment for a motion to recommit to force the Republicans to vote on where they want that $455 billion to come from.
It would be nice to think you could maybe get some coverage about the Republicans voting to do something that will hurt millions of people, but you won't. Nobody seems to care about whether or not actual people get hurt by the actions of our government (see Iraq debacle). But the deficit, now that's something you can get the media worked up about. Force the Republicans to reveal that they want to blow a $455 hole in he deficit over the next ten years, and maybe the fact that Republicans actually couldn't care less about the deficit will start to take hold.
