Please Disregard My Actual Record and Jaw-Dropping Hypocrisy, Thanks
The Missouri Democratic Party did a little digging and found that Roy Blunt and House Republicans used the "deem and pass" procedure -- a.k.a. a "self-executing rule" -- 112 times as the GOP Whip to pass legislation in the 106th, 107th and 108th Congresses.
But yesterday, Blunt told KMOX' Mark Reardon that the current discussion about using the rule to pass health care bills is "extraordinary."
I don't think it's ever been done, and if it would have ever been done, you and I would know about it. We'd know that there would have been this level of concern...Now on something that no one really was concerned about it might have happened.
Blunt plays dumb when he's talking to Missouri audiences, but it was Republicans who "set new records" for using self-executing rules.
Don Wolfensberger, former chief of staff for the House Rules Committee under Republican leadership, stated in a 2006 Roll Call column that the Republican Party "set new records" for its use of the self-executing rule in the years following Gingrich's ascension as Speaker:
Self-executing rules began innocently enough in the 1970s as a way of making technical corrections to bills. But, as the House became more partisan in the 1980s, the majority leadership was empowered by its caucus to take all necessary steps to pass the party's bills. This included a Rules Committee that was used more creatively to devise procedures to all but guarantee policy success. The self-executing rule was one such device to make substantive changes in legislation while ensuring majority passage...
When Republicans took power in 1995, they soon lost their aversion to self-executing rules and proceeded to set new records under Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). There were 38 and 52 self-executing rules in the 104th and 105th Congresses (1995-1998), making up 25 percent and 35 percent of all rules, respectively. Under Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) there were 40, 42 and 30 self-executing rules in the 106th, 107th and 108th Congresses (22 percent, 37 percent and 22 percent, respectively). Thus far in the 109th Congress, self-executing rules make up about 16 percent of all rules.
Read Wolfensberger' full Roll Call column here.
He's a straight shooter, that Roy.
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UPDATE: Ezra Klein has more. " On the deem and pass question, Democrats are wrong, but Republicans are wronger," he writes.
