Republicans Use Floor Tactics to Tweak Democratic Majority

WASHINGTON — Democrats, who took majority control of the House of Representatives this year with promises of open debates, are employing some of the restrictive tactics they once decried when Republicans held the majority.

How restrictive is a subject of dispute between the two parties.

By Democrats' count, about a third of legislation since they came to power has gone to the House floor for a vote under a "closed rule," meaning that Republicans were denied an opportunity to offer amendments.

Republicans assert that this percentage is more like 45 percent — compared to 35 percent of all bills during the dozen years of Republican control.

But even as the debate rages over whether the new House leadership is giving the minority a fair shake, Republicans have found one way around their powerless state.

Using a procedural rule that dates back to Thomas Jefferson, they are demanding votes on motions to "recommit" bills to the committees that wrote them, with instructions that are so politically sensitive that some moderate Democrats dare not reject.

Last March, when the Democratic leadership brought to the floor legislation to give voting rights to District of Columbia residents, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, effectively halted a vote by introducing a motion to send the bill back to committee with instructions to repeal D.C.'s strict gun laws.

What's more, Smith had a Democratic co-sponsor, Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas.

The Democrats, seeing a trap for members who are leery of offending gun rights advocates, yanked the bill off the floor, broke it into sections to avoid the motion and brought it back a month later, when it was overwhelmingly approved.

The Republican motions to send bills back to committees often pass, however.

Among the successful examples: a move to ban convicted felons from obtaining a federal transportation security ID card. The political message is: "Democrats voted to give convicted felons access to our ports and to board vessels entering the U.S.," say House Republican talking points issued to their lawmakers.

Others include measures to ban convicted drug dealers from public housing and deny federal contracts to colleges and universities that prohibit on-campus military recruitment. When such provisions pass, they are then adopted as part of the overall House bill.

Moreover, Democrats have multiplied the targets available to these Republican add-ons by requiring all new spending to be offset by separate pay-as-you-go provisions to raise revenue or cut spending elsewhere.

By last week, House Democratic leaders had lost their patience with the minority's tactics.

On May 16, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, a Georgia Republican and leader of a team of back-bench conservatives who have fine-tuned the art of parliamentary guerrilla action, overheard House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., tell the Republican leaders on the House floor that Democrats were planning to change the rule governing the contentious motions.

Westmoreland said he heard Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, respond that if the Democrats changed the rule, Republicans would shut down all floor action.

That's when Westmoreland said he and fellow Georgia Republican Tom Price made a decision.

"Why should we wait until after they've done it to us?" Westmoreland said they reasoned together. "Why don't we just go ahead and shut the House down now?"

They did just that. In the midst of consideration of a must-pass defense authorization bill, Westmoreland began moving for adjournment every 30 minutes, forcing the members to file to and from the chamber for votes, until Hoyer cried "uncle" and promised that no change would be made in the 200-year-old procedural rule until after Memorial Day.

"We feel like it was a victory," Westmoreland said later, adding, "We'll see for how long."

Hoyer, speaking to reporters Tuesday, dismissed the controversy as a "hullabaloo" and warned that his party would deal with what he said was the misuse of the motion to recommit.

"It has been used for political purposes — political gotcha games," Hoyer said. "As a result, I think the public can have less sympathy for the crocodile tears that are shed" over its potential loss.