March 23, 2007 – 7:50 p.m.
It was a tiny tweak to the tax code that gave Republicans the opening they exploited to snipe the District of Columbia voting representation bill.
House Democrats exposed their own flanks to a parliamentary maneuver that scuttled the legislation as the new majority worked to follow its own budget rules.
The problem for the Democrats began when the Congressional Budget Office reported that the bill (
The House has pay-as-you-go spending rules.
Rather than try to waive those rules or risk losing a point of order against the legislation, Democrats decided to offset the cost. They did so by drafting rules for debate that, upon adoption, would counter the price of the bill with a 0.003 percentage point change to a provision of federal tax withholding law.
By adding a tax provision to the D.C. voting measure, Democrats broadened what is known as the thread of germaneness.
Rather than focusing solely on House representation for the District and Utah, the measure suddenly contained two unrelated provisions affecting the District — the voting changes and an alteration of federal tax law that applies to all taxpayers, including those in the nation’s capital.
The two D.C.-based provisions made more District-related provisions germane, according to GOP aides.
That was the opportunity that Republicans seized when writing their motion to recommit the bill. They included instructions that the motion include language repealing the District’s ban on semiautomatic weapons and prohibiting the enactment of other local gun-control laws.
Then Republicans added another twist.
They could have used a routine procedure that would allow the bill to be passed immediately even if the motion to recommit was agreed to — directing that it be reported back “forthwith.”
Instead, they wrote the motion to mandate that the bill be reported back to the House “promptly,” which in parliamentary parlance means never.
Democrats unexpectedly found themselves staring down the barrel of a politically perilous vote on a gun-rights amendment that, if adopted, would kill the underlying voting representation bill. It would have dealt a double blow to the majority party.
To dodge the gun vote, Democrats postponed further consideration of the bill to an undetermined date and time.
“We’re not sure the Democrats had figured out that they were broadening the germaneness” standard when they made the change to comport with pay-as-you-go requirements, a Republican leadership aide said.
A Democratic leadership aide insisted that the drafting was done with full knowledge of the potential consequences.
“We were aware this would make more things germane,” the aide said. “The bottom line is, if it had passed, it would have killed the bill.”
But even without the gun vote, the bill is on life support as Democratic leaders try to figure out how they can bring it back to the floor.
They could pick up where they left off and force their members to vote on a topic that divides the party, or they could write a new rule that precludes Republicans from offering a motion to recommit.
Another option would be writing another D.C. voting bill that would not be vulnerable to the same sort of motion to recommit.
Democratic leaders vowed March 22, after the bill was postponed, to pass it. But on March 23, a spokesman for Speaker
The technical two-step is the latest in a series of procedural parries the two parties have engaged in as they become accustomed to their new roles in the majority and the minority.
The role reversal has put well-trained Republican staffers in the position of agitators in the minority.
One Republican leadership aide said GOP staffers are “well-versed in issues like germaneness and recommits” because they had to “play defense on them for 12 years in the majority.”