CQ TODAY PRINT EDITION
– CONGRESSIONAL AFFAIRS
May 13, 2008 – 9:23 p.m.
Majority Leader Hoyer Calls Democrats’ Extended Vote Rule Unenforceable
By Molly K. Hooper, CQ Staff
One of the dramatic changes Democrats imposed to show they had ended a “culture of corruption” now is on the rocks.
The No. 2 leader in the House, Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, said Tuesday that he wouldn’t mind revising or tossing out one of the new rules his party put into place with great fanfare at the start of the 110th Congress.
The rule banning extra-long voting periods “for the sole purpose of reversing the outcome” has turned out to be unenforceable, Hoyer told a special bipartisan panel that has spent nine months examining one such extended vote.
Indeed, holding votes open while latecomers register or others switch their position is just as common now as before the rule, and minority party members suspect that good-old-fashioned arm-twisting is happening under Democrats just as it did when the Republicans were in power.
Rep. Bill Delahunt , D-Mass., chairman of the Select Committee to Investigate Roll Call 814, said the new rule was “enacted with noble intent, to curb other abuses,” but hasn’t brought predictability and peace to the floor. He called it “a rule that is at best difficult to enforce and at worst the catalyst for the raw anger we observed” on the night of Aug. 2, 2007, when a held-open vote resulted in a dispute over which side won and whether every vote was accurately registered.
Delahunt’s panel may come out with recommendations that include a rule change.
But any such recommendation would not be imposed at this stage in the two-year session. “We’ll deal with any rules changes at the beginning of the 111th Congress,” said Brendan Daly, spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif.
The new rule will be debated more when the investigative hearing continues on Wednesday.
The panel also is scheduled to hear from one of the Speaker’s point people on the floor, Catlin O’Neill.
After that will come the recommendations resulting from the unusual investigation. The panel has been allotted nearly half a million dollars to produce its report before Sept. 30.
The first day of testimony went into fine detail about the August night when standard voting procedures were not followed. “There was so much going on,” said Kevin Hanrahan, a senior House clerk. “We simply stopped — we weren’t doing anything.”
‘No Ill Intent On My Part’
Democrats were switching votes to try to defeat a GOP motion to recommit an appropriations bill (
Majority Leader Hoyer Calls Democrats’ Extended Vote Rule Unenforceable
Speaker Pro Tem Michael R. McNulty , D-N.Y., paused for several minutes before cracking the gavel. During that lull, “The noise in that place was deafening,” McNulty said.
McNulty testified that he was “not aware of” Majority Leader Hoyer shouting that the vote should be stopped as soon as Democrats pulled ahead, and in fact was unable to hear much over the din in the chamber.
When the gavel finally did fall, some members were still trying to change votes or get their votes registered, and an official tally slip had not yet been handed to McNulty.
“While I erred, there was no ill intent on my part,” McNulty told the committee.
Indiana Republican Mike Pence , one of the six panel members, chided his colleague, saying he “sidestepped a long-standing procedural safeguard designed to ensure the integrity of the vote on the floor of the House.”
Had Republicans won that night, it would have been a morale-booster and a rare political victory in a chamber where the minority party has few opportunities to force votes on tough issues — in this case to deny food stamps to illegal aliens.
Instead, that night became a talking point of a different sort — used repeatedly to make the partisan point that Democrats don’t follow their own rule.
That new rule was imposed by Democrats to demonstrate their determination to run things differently than former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas (1985-2006), who famously kept one vote open for three hours while GOP leaders fought to nail down the votes to pass legislation creating the Medicare prescription drug benefit (PL 108-173) in 2003.
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