There is perhaps no time during any given session of the House of Representatives at which the members are more open to charges of hypocrisy than when a new majority undertakes the adoption of its new rules package. That's because it's the time of the transition from the role of rules victim/complainer to the role of rules maker. It's a time when all the evils supposedly visited upon you by the outgoing dictatorial majority suddenly prove rather attractive as instruments of your newfound power. Or put another way, because turnabout is supposed to be fair play.
There's certainly nothing particularly unusual about that, and maybe not anything necessarily all that evil, either. The minority always delights in pointing out inconsistencies in the words and deeds of the majority. In the House, that's your bread and butter, since there's virtually no other power left to you. And yes, the majority can always point the same out about the minority -- sometimes even on the very same subject being targeted by the other side -- but for the most part, no one cares that much about what the party that can't really do anything might be being hypocritical about.
An example: the new majority's treatment of the rules on our old friend, the motion to recommit.
When the MTR rules were last revisited at the beginning of the 111th Congress, Democrats made a change that still ensured the minority would have a chance to offer last minute changes to a bill, but would abolish a type of motion designed essentially to kill a bill rather than actually amend it. Here's how I wrote it up at the time:
A quick primer: a motion to recommit a bill to committee with instructions to report back a proposed amendment "forthwith" means the bill stays on the floor and is amended immediately, whereas instructions to report back "promptly" actually sends the bill off the floor and back to committee, where it usually dies.
The MTR with instructions to report back "promptly" is a stupid option to even have on the books. If you want the chance to change legislation, then vote to change it. If you want the chance to kill it, then wait five minutes and vote against the bill.
The need to change this rule may be our own fault for allowing Democrats to break ranks on motions to recommit, but there was never any real utility to the "promptly" instruction except as a way to kill a bill while looking like you're not killing it. How was the public ever to guess that "promptly" really meant "never?" The "promptly" instruction is a bullshit trick, and it deserves to die.
But of course, the ability to send a bill back to committee to die was an awfully attractive option for the Republican minority. So naturally, they cast its elimination by Democrats in apocalyptic terms.
Here's incoming Rules Committee Chairman, Rep. David Dreier (R-CA- 26) decrying the change in January 2009:
[T]he Democratic leadership is no longer content to shut down debate on an ad hoc basis. They are making it official with this rules package. The underlying resolution contains a host of new procedural gimmicks to stifle debate and to perpetuate partisanship. This resolution changes the rules of the House to formally limit, to formally limit, the motion to recommit. This limitation prevents any bill from being returned to committee for further deliberation. It restricts Members' ability to strip out tax increases. Apparently, the Democratic majority believes tax increases are sacred, but open debate is not sacred.
Hmm. Dreier the Decrier. That has a ring to it.
Here's how Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL-21) described the change:
Mr. Speaker, for 100 years, the motion to recommit has really been sacrosanct in this House, and the essence of representative democracy is, yes, rule by the majority with respect to the rights of the minority.
Today, history will record that in this rules package by the majority, the severe limitation of the right of the minority to offer an alternative in legislation, this severe limitation of the motion to recommit, is a sad, unfortunate, and wholly unnecessary step that takes a very strong, a very significant step toward unaccountability.
So it is really a sad day for this House, that the House, the leadership, the majority leadership, would commence this Congress by retrogression, by taking such a significant and unfortunate step towards unaccountability, severely limiting the option, the ability of the minority to offer an alternative known for 100 years and respected in this House as the motion to recommit.
Mr. Speaker, congressional Democrats have proposed changing House rules on motions to recommit. These changes are not about some arcane rule. They are about a pattern of behavior on the part of the Democrats that stifles democracy.
This abuse of power has become a habit with the Democrats. The Democrats brought legislation to the floor under closed rules 64 times in the last 2 years. This means there was no opportunity to offer amendments; 61 bills were brought to the floor with less than 24 hours to review the bill text. This breaks the Democrats' commitment to allow legislation to be reviewed for 24 hours before a vote.
House Democrats are discarding one of the Republican minority's only tools to help improve bills and promote better legislation, the motion to recommit bills promptly. This type of motion to recommit allows a majority of the House to say that a bill should be sent back to committee for more work.
For example, last year Republicans used this tool to guarantee second amendment rights for the people of the District of Columbia. A majority of Members supported this motion and voted to send the bill back to committee.
Why would the Democrats in the future want to ignore the views of a majority of House Members?
Mr. Speaker, changing House rules in a way that silences the voice of the people's elected representatives strangles democracy. Democrats should reconsider these undemocratic changes to House rules.
You get the idea, right? The change killed the right to open debate. It was "a very significant step toward unaccountability." It "silence[d] the voice of the people's elected representatives, strangle[d] democracy," and was an "undemocratic" change that Democrats "should reconsider."
Well, Wednesday's the day the change can be reconsidered, and it can be done by the very people (with the exception of Diaz-Balart, who has retired) who made these statements.
But... surprise! It won't be reconsidered by them at all! What a shock!
Why not? Well, for one thing, because nobody gives back power. (Or not usually, anyway. Not that that stopped Democrats from doing so in 2007, when they passed a rule aimed at prohibiting the use of the reconciliation process to pass tax cuts that increased the deficit -- only to see those rules rescinded in the House... by Republicans, in Wednesday's vote!)
For another thing, it was actually not a bad change, and Republicans at the time knew that very well. But the politics of rules changes pretty much dictate that the minority is supposed to cry that everything the majority is doing is dictatorial. That's what minorities do. You'll see it on the Senate side coming from Republicans if the rules get changed there, and you'll no doubt see it on the House side from Democrats on Wednesday. Some of it will ring true (like, perhaps, the return of "Demon Pass"), and some of it ring hollow. Nobody cares much, because hardly anyone ever looks back at what was said in the opening hours of a new Congress, and few opportunities exist for doing so in the context of a change in majorities.
But for pure sport, there's nothing like it!