As Michael notes, hypocrisy is a well-established parliamentary procedure: 2010: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on the idea of passing health care with a self-executing rule: The House Democratic leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer, also defended the maneuver on Tuesday. “It is consistent with the rules,” Mr. Hoyer said. “It is consistent with former practice.” [...]
Norm Ornstein, the congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, says succinctly what must be said (and what others on Swampland have been saying): Hypocrisy is a well established parliamentary procedure in America. Any veteran observer of Congress is used to the rampant hypocrisy over the use of parliamentary procedures that shifts totally from one [...]
Jay, I’m a bit mystified by this assertion from former Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier in your post: Dreier, though, defended his record saying there’s a big difference between self-executing amendments and self-enacting large pieces of legislation. As I noted earlier, when the Republicans were running the House, Dreier himself was pretty aggressive with self-executing [...]
The Slaughter Solution? Another name might be the Dreier Doctrine. Don Wolfensberger, director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Congress Project (and former staff director of the House Rules Committee), took a look at this whole business of self-executing rules a few years back. He argues that it’s not at all unusual in these partisan times [...]
I’m convinced there are no new arguments in Washington; the only thing that changes is the side that is making them. As House Democratic leaders consider their options for passing the health care bill, there is going to be a lot of talk about the use of the “self-executing rule” — or, as Republicans are [...]
