It’s been an exciting couple weeks to be watching the House floor. First, there was the incident a couple weeks ago, where H.R. 2847, the Commerce/Justice/Science appropriations bill, was given a rule that required Congressional Record pre-printing for all amendments. In English, this means that while Republicans (or Democrats, for that matter) could offer any amendments to the bill that they wanted, they had to appear in the Congressional Record at least one day before the House actually considered the bill. Republicans claimed that this unfairly limited their flexibility, and 127 amendments were eventually filed for printing. While Republicans insisted that they didn’t plan on actually offering all 127 amendments, the Democratic leadership reported out a rule limiting these amendments themselves; ultimately, only 32 amendments would be offered. But Republicans were angry enough to force a vote on every single procedural question that they could come up with. Ultimately, 53 recorded votes were held on 18 June, a new daily record.
Today, the House considered H.R. 2454, the Energy and Climate Change bill. Policy differences aside, Republicans were angered this time by a 309-page manager’s amendment not published until 3:47 AM last night. While this amendment was considered adopted at the start of floor consideration, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH 8) resorted to a different protest tactic at the end of debate on the legislation. Traditionally, the Speaker and the Majority and Minority Leaders are given as much time as they wish to close debate on major bills, even though they will officially have only one or two minutes to speak. While this privilege frequently extends to speeches that are several minutes in length, Boehner used his time to begin reading from the manager’s amendment. He would eventually extend the 2½ minutes he was granted to over an hour.
It is unclear what action Democrats could have taken to stop Boehner. The only relevant precedent I could find in a brief scan of Deschler’s Precedents seemed to give all timekeeping authority to the Speaker pro tempore. In theory, the presiding officer (at the time, Ellen Tauscher (D-CA 10)) could have declared Boehner’s time to have expired, but I rather suspect the outcry from Republicans about House procedure would have dwarfed even what we’ve seen so far. Ultimately, Boehner’s mini-filibuster was to no avail anyway; H.R. 2454 passed 219-212 in the closest final passage vote we’ve seen this session.
Congress now stands in recess for the July 4th holiday. Will the partisan rancor decline after the break? I doubt it, but the House should at least remain entertaining to watch.