Parliamentary Observations on the Bailout Bill

[kevin_standlee]

By cooincidence, I tuned in to CSPAN while eating breakfast. (Yes, I know it was way too late in the morning, but I'd been immersed in other things and lost track of time.) As some of you know, the House rejected the Bailout Bill. I, like solarbird am amazed that the leadership let the vote go off without knowing they had the votes to pass it. I note that a majority of the Republicans voted against it, rejecting a plan from their own President's administration.

Here's some of the things that interested me, as a parliamentarian, in how the vote went:

1. They held the vote open a long time -- about thirty minutes. I assume that the hubub in the chamber was attempts at last-minute arm-twisting to get people to change their votes, and I may be wrong, but I think I saw a few votes switch near the end, although at least one of them might have been a tactical switch, because of #3 below.

2. There were a lot of shouts of "order!" and "Madame Speaker!" coming from the House floor, as members tried to prod the Chair into finishing the vote (which had certainly been completed) and declaring the results. I don't watch enough CSPAN to know how common this is. It seems to me like a little bit of the customary stuffiness decorum might have broken down.

3. When a bill gets a final result in the House, there is this bit of parliamentary magic that almost always happens, which is "without objection, the motion to Reconsider is laid on the table." Reconsider is an American motion that allows a member of the prevailing side to reopen the original question. Under House rules, it takes a 2/3 vote to pull something off the table once it is laid there. (Remember that this is American usage of "table" in the sense of "set aside," not the British usage of "place before the assembly for consideration.") Because a House session lasts for a full year (as opposed to "ordinary" assemblies, where every meeting is a stand-alone session), if you didn't set Reconsider aside like that, anyone on the prevailing side could reopen the matter pretty easily.

What surprised me was that one of the members -- I missed who it was, it came quickly -- posed a parliamentary inquiry asking "I was on the prevailing side; if I were to move to Reconsider, when would the vote be taken on it?"

The Chair said that she would put the question immediately.

"Isn't that at the Chair's discretion?" was the reply.

What I liked was that a momentarily open mic on the floor caught these two bits:

-- "Are you sure you want to do that?"

-- "At least it would give us a little more ti--" [microphone cut off]

The Chair insisted that if someone moved to Reconsider, she would put it to a vote immediately.

The person on the floor withdrew his potential motion, and the Chair send the Reconsider to the table where it will stick. I assume that representative had changed his vote at the last minute in a tactical move so that he could move reconsideration if it looked like it would delay final action and give them a chance to hammer something out.

I may not know the House rules sufficiently well, but if I were one of the people pushing this proposal and if I thought I had a chance of getting it passed, I might have objected to the Reconsider being laid on the table, without actually moving it, with the idea that sometime later today or tomorrow moving reconsideration once I'd rounded up another fifteen or so votes to swing it my way.

Update, 12:30: Added a bit in #3 explaining a bit about tactically voting on the other side when you're going down in order to preserve the possibility of moving to Reconsider.

Comments

[howeird]

I'm not sure what the exact rule is for how long a vote stays open** but I know it is a fixed amount. CSPAN usually displays a timer for every vote showing how much time has elapsed and how much remaining.

Part of the chair's discretion, of course, is to hold the vote immediately. Since Pelosi is spearheading the move to defeat the administration's bill, she would want to slam-dunk a reconsideration vote if someone in her party was brazen enough to raise it.

---

**Found this on a senate web doc from May 2008:
Length of Time for Voting. Under Rule XX, clause 2(a), the minimum time for
a record vote by electronic device is 15 minutes in either the House or the Committee of
the Whole. The 15-minute period is the minimum, rather than the maximum, time
allowed for the conduct of a recorded vote. The chair has the discretion to hold the vote
open longer. A new 110th rule states that votes are not to be held open for the sole
purpose of reversing the outcome of a vote. However, this rule seems difficult to interpret
in practice. There are also occasions in the House (see Rule XX, clause 9) when the
Speaker has the discretion to reduce the voting time to not less than five minutes. The
Speaker also has the authority under Rule XX, clause 8, to postpone and cluster certain
votes. Votes in the Committee of the Whole may also be reduced to five minutes, as
noted in Rule XVIII, clause 6(f).

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't a Senate web doc have Senate rules? Those can be, at times, very different from House rules.

[howeird]

I was kind of amazed to find it there, but it was a doc educating Senators, who often visit the House for conference committees, on how things are done on the other side of the building. The original is here:
http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/98-228.pdf

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

They rarely close a vote "on time" - it technically is still open until the House is gaveled back. This allows for the arm twisting to take place. This was actually a fairly short vote for a unclear issue, in my watching.

And shouts regularly are made after the time is expired. I kinda wonder if order is called so the chair has an excuse when they finally do want to do it.