You need two-thirds of the House to pass a bill under a suspension of the rules. Speaker Boehner tried and failed to get two-thirds for an extension of expiring provisions of the Patriot Act. The roll call is interesting. There are some small glimmers of hope that concern for civil liberties is not completely dead in the GOP. There’s also plenty of evidence that Democrats representing communities that lost people on 9/11 were afraid to oppose anything that might make us more secure.
The Speaker of the House uses the suspension of the rules to pass uncontroversial legislation in a hurry. No amendments are in order and debate is limited to 40 minutes. Fortunately, it turns out that the Patriot Act isn’t uncontroversial.
Face-palm.
They’ll be able to pass the bill, but they’ll have to allow some amendments and more time for debate.
Why did this fail? I don’t get it. Don’t the Republicans care about keeping us safe? Did they do this thinking it’ll make the President look bad? It makes Orange Julius look bad instead.
Well, Calvin, it’s funny. I was going to write a story this morning but my wonderful child wouldn’t cooperate. I was going to advise the House Dems to cast just enough votes against this to kill it and embarrass Orange Julius. Just for the hell of it, mind you. Just to send a message that we can be petty assholes, too, if that’s how the Republicans want to operate 100% of the time.
Turns out, the Dems didn’t need my advice. They knew what to do.
Big picture: it will still pass, and with most of its most problematic aspects effectively unchanged.
It’s been interesting reading foreign press on this. Plenty of folks contrasting US platitudes in favor of political openness in Egypt with our willingness to trade freedom for security ourselves at the first glimmer of threat.
Bedwetters, indeed.
Yeah, we started out with Russ Feingold as the one in a 99-1 vote authorizing the Patriot Act. Now we have substantial bipartisan opposition to reauthorizing some of the less controversial parts of the bill.
I really have such a low opinion of our political culture that I must come off as naive when I point to signs of hope. It’s not naivete; it’s a really deep level of cynicism and incredibly low expectations.
That’s where I operate. The upside is that I know how to recognize progress and am unafraid to celebrate it. See health care reform/Wall Street reform.
I don’t think you have enough cynicism – the Republicans are voting against it because it’s a Democratic administration that is currently in charge of implementing it. If Bush or some other Republican were running the administration most of them wouldn’t be in opposition (a few would, but because they represent districts that really do mistrust the gubmint, not just liberals).
That’s all this is. There was no room for dissent when Bush was in charge and there will be no room for dissent when the next Republican is in charge. This is also why all of those cries of “you’re giving this power to Bush but what happens when a Democrat becomes President and he has those powers too” fall on deaf ears – they can always change their mind and never see the hypocrisy of it all.
you’re largely correct.
However, you might remember that Ron Paul didn’t vote in lock-step, and there are a lot of new members whose views are closer to Paul’s than to Bush’s.
Suspension of the rules !!!! Shouldn’t everyone be up in arms about trying to pass things by suspension of the rules? When Pelosi did this we heard how the speaker was trying to cram something down the people’s collective throat. Turns out, suspension of the rules is a pretty regular event, and everyone should know that. The Dems have a terrible spin machine — in that it is sensible and realistic with the Republicans are all alarmist all the time.
Well, I think you might be conflating two different things.
In the House every bill has to have a rule that lays out how many amendments are in order and how long each side has to debate. And the Rules Committee is in charge of that. Unlike other committees, the membership isn’t evenly split. Right now it is split 8-4. What Pelosi did was have the Rules Committee pass rules that severely restricted or completely ruled out any Republican amendments, and she limited debate time. This is normal, but it prevents the opposition from having much input. That is generally what the Republicans complained about.
However, there is a way around the need to make a rule, and that is to suspend the rules. If you do that, you need a supermajority of two-thirds to pass the bill. For this reason, you don’t use it cram things through. You use it to expedite bills that are going to pass overwhelmingly and that, therefore, don’t require debate or amendment. I don’t really remember the GOP complaining about the suspension of the rules. I know they defeated a couple of bills just to slow things down, and maybe they made up some crap about why they were doing it. It wouldn’t surprise me.
Isn’t that also what Gingrich, Hastert and clowns used back when the Pukes were in charge of the House last time? Since they could always count on Blue Dogs going along with some stuff?
Not really.
If you have the majority in the House you can pass almost anything you want, and if you can pass something with two-thirds, you can certainly pass it with 50+1. There’s no need to suspend the rules except to speed things up and deny the opposition the opportunity to offer pesky amendments.
It’s really the amendment process that is the crux of the matter. The GOP would want to offer embarrassing amendments and would complain when they were denied that opportunity. But the bills passed under suspension were passed with huge bipartisan support, so they were not, in themselves, very controversial. Gingrich and Hastert didn’t really operate any differently than Pelosi in this regard.
Perhaps Boehner & Cantor should be reminded of Congress 101…count the votes before the vote.
The Dems are laughing at Boehner.