It may seem like wonky, insider talk to criticize congressional Republicans for procedural mischief, but the way GOP lawmakers run Congress says a great deal about their respect for the institution, its rules, and its power.<\/p>\n
For example, Kevin noted<\/a> this Roll Call article<\/a>, which highlights how Republicans dealt with a conference report.<\/p>\n Shortly before midnight on Sunday, the leaders agreed — after House and Senate negotiators had already signed the report and announced its details to the public — to insert controversial language that protects vaccine manufacturers from product liability claims in the event of a viral pandemic, such as one caused by avian flu.<\/p>\n Observers familiar with the procedural history of conference reports said that they were unaware of any precedent for inserting language after conferees had signed off on the report. A review of several Congressional Research Service guides to conference proceedings make no reference to any prior example.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The whole point of conference reports is that, after they’re negotiated, they’re closed. But not for this gang, which sees the rules as mere suggestions.<\/p>\n On a related note, Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, have created a scheme<\/a> to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by forcing the issue onto a defense appropriations bill (ignoring one Senate procedural rule) and overriding a filibuster on a simple majority vote (ignoring another Senate procedural rule).<\/p>\n It’s also the party that likes to hold open five-minute votes indefinitely<\/a> until the get the results they want, prevents the minority from offering amendments<\/a> (.pdf) to legislation, forbids the minority from participating in conference committees<\/a>, and shuts down committee hearings<\/a> went they start to become politically inconvenient.<\/p>\n We’ve all heard the expression about rules that are meant to be broken, but I’m afraid congressional Republicans are taking the adage a little too literally. It speaks volumes about how the GOP operates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It may seem like wonky, insider talk to criticize congressional Republicans for procedural mischief, but the way GOP lawmakers run Congress says a great deal about their respect for the institution, its rules, and its power. For example, Kevin noted this Roll Call article, which highlights how Republicans dealt with a conference report. Shortly before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}