The House Republican leader’s short answer to that question is “malarkey.”
I’ll warn you that the following memo from House Majority Leader Paul Stam, R-Wake, is heavy on descriptions of legislative process. If you’ve not endured a legislative debate, some of the references might make little sense. (If you have experienced a legislative debate, Stam’s account might inspire unwanted flashbacks. Beware!)
The bottom line of Stam’s argument is that rules set out for the 2011 legislative session offered much more opportunity than in the past for the minority party to question and debate major pieces of legislation. In essence, Stam argues that the rules governing the previous Democratic-led House did more to silence debate than any overt actions Republicans took during this year’s session.
Earlier this year, Carolina Journal detailed legislative efforts to improve the House rules.
You’ll find the bulk of Stam’s memo below:
At the end of June the House Democratic Caucus was circulating a memo to the press claiming its voice was silenced 32 times in contrast to 4 times previously. Yesterday they repeated this claim. Malarkey.
First, let’s set the context. Under House Democrats the rules were rigged so that no amendment was in order that did not fit the long title of the bill. Sometimes the long title would be as long as the bill itself. Even on very important bills the long title would be so tight that no amendments were in order at all. You could talk but it was pointless. For example, see SB 461, the so called Racial Justice Act. On a bill concerning the death penalty the title admitted to no amendments and the Democrats even called the question on third reading before allowing the Minority Leader to speak.
In contrast the 2011 rules of the House have no such limitations on amendments. Germane amendments are in order whether they change the title or not. In addition the effect of the call for the previous question is totally different. It does not end debate but rather allows the Minority Leader, former Speaker Hackney, and the Majority Leader to each speak for 3 minutes summing up the positions of the sides and making clear which way a vote leads. The effect of a call for the previous question in 2011 was completely different than such a call in the sessions of 2007 to 2010 when Speaker Hackney set the rules.
Many of the calls for the previous question this session were after long debate, generally much longer debate on the part of the minority than the majority. For example, yesterday’s 40 minute debate on Voter ID. … Many times even members of the minority were begging the Rules Chair to move the previous question.
Many of the calls for the previous question were on local bills involving trivial amounts of money compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars affected by other bills still to be reached later on the calendar. A sense of proportionality is required. …
A series of calls of the previous question were made on local bills affecting community colleges. But this was only after hours of debate on precisely the same question on a statewide bill – HB 7 that the Governor vetoed.
To put this wild claim in further context, attached is a list of 7 times that the Democrats, under Speaker Hackney, closed off bills with no debate in the 2007 session, including bills affecting $19 billion in appropriations, the death penalty and $120 million in incentives and tax policy.
House Democrats must think that reporters have no memories. House Democrats did reduce their use of the no debate ploy in 2009 – 2010 when they perfected their title strategy, that is, making all controversial substantive amendments out of order by lengthening and specifying the title.
The reality is that most of the talk on the House floor in 2011 came from Democrats.