The Democrats appeared to be up to no good in the House last night:
In a massive flare-up of partisan tensions, Republicans walked out on a House vote late Thursday night to protest what they believed to be Democratic maneuvers to reverse an unfavorable outcome for them.
The flap represents a complete breakdown in parliamentary procedure and an unprecedented low for the sometimes bitterly divided chamber.
The rancor erupted shortly before 11 p.m. as Rep. Michael R. McNulty (D-N.Y.) gaveled close the vote on a standard procedural measure with the outcome still in doubt.
Details remain fuzzy, but numerous Republicans argued afterward that they had secured a 215-213 win on their motion to bar undocumented immigrants from receiving any federal funds apportioned in the agricultural spending bill for employment or rental assistance. Democrats, however, argued the measure was deadlocked at 214-214 and failed, members and aides on both sides of the aisle said afterward.
One GOP aide saw McNulty gavel the vote to a close after receiving a signal from his leaders – but before reading the official tally. And votes continued to shift even after he closed the roll call – a strange development in itself.
Whatever the final tally, acrimony quickly exploded between lawmakers on either side of the aisle as Democratic leaders tried to plot a solution, while parliamentarians on either side argued over protocol.
Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) eventually offered a motion to reconsider, according to floor staff on either side, ostensibly giving members a chance to recast their votes. But the maneuver sparked a chorus of angry protests from the Republicans, yelling “shame” on Democrats, while they returned fire with angry volleys of their own.
I am not too sure what exactly happened, and the only links at Memeorandum are from Powerline and the like- in other words, only Greater Wingnuttia® has commented, and we know their relationship to the truth.
Regardless, how soon we forget- this is neither unprecedented nor a new low. Remember this:
The 217 to 215 vote came just after midnight, in a dramatic finish that highlighted the intensity brought by both sides to the battle. When the usual 15-minute voting period expired at 11:17 p.m., the no votes outnumbered the yes votes by 180 to 175, with dozens of members undeclared. House Republican leaders kept the voting open for another 47 minutes, furiously rounding up holdouts in their own party until they had secured just enough to ensure approval…
So while I do not approve of the Democratic behavior, it is neither unprecedented nor a new low, as the Republicans have done worse with legislation that actually mattered. I guess we can blame the Democrats for learning from DeLay.
One quick note- have you noticed these things seem to happen late at night? It seems like calmer heads always lose out in these extended sessions.
*** Update ***
It appears I am not the only one to notice the connection. Good for James Joyner. And, as he notes, there is a difference between the two:
Both are unprecedented violations of the rules. And, arguably at least, the Democrats did it out of confusion last night. Further, the Hastert fiasco came at the cost of what amounts to bribery paid for with tax dollars.
myiq2xu
Gee, the GOP kept it open until they thought they had won, then the Dems kept it open until they did win, by 2 votes, and the GOP is upset?
Pull up your big girls panties and deal with it!
Jinchi
They do record these votes, right? If the Democrats pulled a swindle and switched the vote from a 215-213 win to a 214-214 tie, then they would have had to change somebody’s vote.
Don’t you think that Representative would object when his constituents start hassling him for pandering to illegal immigrants?
Mr Furious
Key phrases in this story:
Sorry. I’m not seeing this as analogous to what the GOP did on a routine basis.
Zifnab
So, I guess this is a classic question of “Who you gonna believe?”
Hmmm… Democrats or Republicans. Who’s more trustworthy at the moment? This will take so many milliseconds to consider, I may bust a braincell.
Tuna
If the Republicans had the votes, then they should have followed through on a clean parliamentary process to recast their votes. That’s not such a big deal, it’s happened before. However, it might have been easier for the Republican Whip to walk away and cry foul instead of strong-arming his party into voting properly. (If the Dems wanted to “steal” this vote, it seems like they could have just register the 215-213 count and call it a night.)
fecapult
Anyone got video feed of this?
I’d really feel much more satisfied with our Congress if they acted more like the parliament of old and took a few swings now and again…
Don
Given this:
I don’t see how you can describe this in the same discussion as keeping a vote open an extra hour till you get the result you want. At worst – and I don’t see how we can validate this – this is an attempt at sleaze which was quickly backed down from with no real impact. At best it’s a goof at an hour when I, at least, have stopped thinking clearly over an hour prior.
The Other Steve
A caning I say! This Congress needs a good old fashioned caning!
RandyH
You should be careful of what you use a a source article. That one with all of the “unclear” bits in it, quoting how Republicans felt about it was from the (did we tell you John Edwards got a $400 haircut?) right-wing gossip rag known as The Politico.
I was not up that late last night and wouldn’t have thought to watch it, but this morning C-Span did re-run the whole fiasco after they started up the house, got into another massive squabble and recessed. What happened is the presiding speaker called the vote (with the gavel) at 214-214. The vote would have failed. But then several Republicans raced to the vote machines and changed their votes AFTER it had been called. Then several Democrats did the same, still after it had been called. Anything after the 214-214 should have been disregarded. But mass confusion and fake outrage ensued. By the way, the vote at the time was on a motion to recommit (send bill back to committee and not vote on final passage now) because the Republicans wanted language added to the farm bill that you must prove citizenship of your entire family to receive food stamps, which has never been in the law before and was not included this time either because if you are in this country there is no reason for your kids or anyone else’s to go to sleep hungry regardless of your legal status.
Anyhoo, the Republicans raised a stink and the Dem leadership asked to vote to reconsider and re-vote on that motion to recommit, but the Republicans decided they could get more mileage out of this by turning it into a scandal and walked out. At least 100 of them walked out. The House continued on and passed the Farm Bill without them.
Today, the Republicans have their PR strategy together have taken several contentious debate issues from the whole week, over several bills and have rolled them all into one. Their argument goes something like this: “The Democrat Leadership has broken every rule in the book and given up on all semblance of good faith to make sure that we take away Medicare Advantage from senior citizens to make sure we feed, clothe, house and provide free health care to Illegal Immigrants. We Republicans are fighting for the American people who don’t want to give away welfare and free health care to illegal immigrants when so many senior citizens will have to pay more for their health care and struggling, hard-working Americans don’t qualify for welfare but them freeloadin’ Brown People get all the benefits and y’all get stuck with the bill.”
You get the picture. This major blow-up the day before they go home to their districts for a month. I wonder if this wasn’t a set-up to create a fake scandal. The Republicans did not have the votes and they are PISSED about how the SCHIP bill (unless it’s vetoed) pretty much killed the “Medicare Advantage” (HMO alternative to plan for seniors) program by stopping the practice of paying the extra 12% or whatever it is to HMOs than they pay to private practice doctors per procedure under regular Medicare. It was about time the for-profit insurance companies got kicked out because they don’t provide care as efficiently as the government-run Medicare program does. But the most important constituents to the Republicans (the insurance and Pharmaceutical industries) got stepped on so they had to find something to declare war with.
bird
RandyH is right on i watched the whole thing.
The gaveling was a mistake. The dems offered a do-over, the pugs got their panties in a hypocritical wad and now are trying to change the focus on c-span.
BTW – when did Tom Delay or Denny Hastert (who reportedly almost got physical with Hoyer last night) ever apologize for holding votes for hours while twisting arms?
And of course that little munchkin Mc Henry was one of the biggest loudmouths so you can judge on how much any of this has to do with principle.
dslak
Never blame on conspiracy what can be attributed to incompetence. It is solely this principle which keeps the Bush administration from being not merely a candidate for worst presidency ever, but also in the running for worst collection of human beings ever.
ThymeZone
First, this kind of thing is not that unusual in legislative bodies. This is why they tell you not to watch em make laws, or sausage. It’s ugly.
Second, we elected a government that rose to power by declaring war on half of its own country. WTF did you expect to happen? To turn on C-Span and see Congress singing like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir?
Third, I am really tired of hearing that the Democrats were “elected to change/end/fix” anything. The country elected a razor-thin Dem majority in congress for the first time in years, and congress is, properly, set up to prevent a thin majority from wielding a lot of power. That’s the way it is supposed to work.
Meanwhile, late night circuses are going to happen. It’s all part of the deal. If you like stability, you can always find some Saddam relatives to take over and establish order and predictability in your government.
There’s nothing to see here, just move along.
ThymeZone
And can’t we fix this crummy website? The hung posts and constant crashes are really getting on peoples’ nerves.
Who administers this thing? Fire that person, and get somebody who knows what they are doing. Is this a PJ problem, or …?
Leah
I can’t even tell what the “Democratic behavior” was from the confused reporting being done by Politico, which tells us much more about Politico than about Democrats.
To whose behavior does the characterization of a “complete breakdown in parliamentary procedure and an unprecedented low for the sometimes bitterly divided chamber” refer?
Republicans objected and Democrats took their objections under advisement to find a parliamentary solution, weirdly framed as trying to “plot” somethihg, until a Republican decided to stage a walk-out of sorts.
Please, this is reporting? The entire piece has a Republican frame. What? Our intrepid reporter didn’t think for a minute that the walkout might have been “arranged,” so he didn’t ask any questions about how that happened, but decided he had enough “fuzzy details” to run with the story.
Records of proceedings in both houses of congress are open to revision. It is quite possible that there is no record of the vote because there is a disagreement as to what the official count finally was. That notion that Democrats were trying to erase the record is absurd. If nothing else, C-Span will have a video record of the vote. Plus, there is a stenographic record kept of every word said on the floor of the House.
Oh, and that telltale detail produced by a crack reporter about the House official website; Mr. O’Connor didn’t see fit to tell us, did he, whether or not votes are automatically posted on the website, and unless that is the case, did he really think that looking there at 1:00 AM, after an eleventh hour dustup, had any factual value?
This has been a week of unprecedented accomplishment for the Democratic congress, with the help of Republican votes, let us remember, but Mr. O’Connor can’t even imagine there might have been any context to the Republican walkout on an issue like illegals receiving state aid, other than some kind of generalized both-sides-of-the-aisle-partisan rancor.
Rudi
ThymeZone – The problem is a combination of WordPress, MySQL and the administrator. ModerateVoice is experiencing similar problem after switching to WordPress and a new site design. It seems to be mostly a WP problem, I haven’t seen the crashing at other sites or with blogger services.
I applaud the Republicans. They are showing our Iraqis Sunnis brethren how Wilsonian democrat government works. Stage a silly vote and then walk out for recess. The surge is working, the Iraqis have taken on our broken legislative government. W gazed into Maliki’s eyes and saw Harriet Miers…
Tax Analyst
Ah…”Thoze awfull Demorats man-nipple-layted teh voat.” Others have already pointed out just how fatuous it is for the Republicans to be making that charge now. Once again they are trying to form an equivalency of a minor instance that most likely occurred from Democrat confusion to a constant and repeated pattern of abuse and manipulation the Republicans engaged in for 6 years. I’m already tired of it. John, I know you still harbor significant distrust of the Democrats…there are certainly some good reasons to keep your eyes wide open and subject them to sharp scrutiny, but I think it would be wiser to look a little more carefully before leaping to the type of conclusion you posited in your thread post. From what’s coming out now it doesn’t look at all like any sort of “dirty trick”…at least not from the Dem’s. It sort of looks like the larger deception is coming from the Republican’s…misrepresenting what actually happened so they can feed a heaping shovel full of Pachyderm Poop to their constituents back home. Again, “What’s new?”. As TZ said:
RandyH
They’re continuing to do it again today. If you don’t normally watch C-Span, today would be an entretaining day to do it. Right now they just recessed because the electronic voting computer on the House floor isn’t working right (not diplaying votes on their board or to C-Span, but it’s counting the votes.) Republicans were furious about this and accusing the Democrats of trying to cheat. The Dem’s didn’t like it either and asked the techies what’s wrong. The techies said they have to restart the system, vacating the current vote (a motion to adjourn that ain’t gonna happen by a long shot.)
Playing ignorant and refusing to look at his own computer screen, Dreir (R-Closet) insisted that his number might not be the same as Hoyers computer screen. More than half an hour wasted deciding if the techies can reboot the machine… Uggh. But entertaining. Just like last night, with all the fury of the infamous “Brooks Brothers Riot” with Republicans jumping up crying foul, reading House Rules, etc. Simple question: can we vacate this vote so the technicians can do their jobs or are we just going to complain all day? Finally they agreed.
It should get more entertaining as the day goes on.
carpeicthus
Politico isn’t worth the paper it’s not written on.
ether
John: you’ve devolved into nothing short of a partisan hit whore.
You have no principles whatsoever.
Earn your blogad $.
Keep serving up your tripe At this point you offer nothing to this site. At least Tim F. is a principled liberal. You’re just willing to take any position that you believe will make you seem the contrarian.
You’re in a deluded class all your own.
daveinboca
The degenerates on the fever-swamp fringe of the ultra-left are suddenly activated and believe they can do a Hail Mary pass that will drag the US into the fever-bogs the EU is stuck in. Even a centrist DLC publication like the New Republic isn’t immune.
Let’s remember that the new Managing Editor of TNR, Franklin Foer, is the degenerate spawn of one of the farthest left “historians” on the fake-history bash-the-USA academicide front. Papa Foer has won many historical prizes for consistently unmaksing the evils in America, especially during the Reconstruction, and still presides at Columbia U., where “left” means “centrist” and “centrists” don’t exist. Foer hates America as much as his Daddy did. Peretz should fire Franklin Foer’s ass, before more hate-America spew stains TNR.
Evil Poppa begets evil son who enables evil chronicler. Just connect the dots. No fault on the left, as Mark Rudd told me decades ago when I was a deluded SDS volunteer. He smoked my dope & left me with the advice, “Dare to cheat, dare to win.” Could be Columbia U’s motto! At least when CSJ hands out Pulitzers!
Can you imagine what kind of mischief the Foers of the left will inflict on American policy if the Kossacks carry the field?