HB 27-06: Congressional Reform Resolution (Passed)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

First I would like to say I would have prefered if both chambers and even the general public was involved before the Senate decided how Congress should function

The Senate has not decided how "Congress" will function, that would be unconstitutional. There is a reason our vote is only applied to a single section, ours. This is a joint resolution in appearance but it legally functions as separate resolutions and the votes of each chamber can only be applied to their respective section, as the Constitution forbids anyone but a given chamber to set its own rules. 

Needless to say if both sections are not passed then the whole procedure is a moot point. Now in hindsight a non-severability clause should have been included as that was used when Congress passed the rules for the Amendment Explanation Process, but it slipped my mind at the time. Even without that, if the House were to fail its section, repealing the Senate's would not be that difficult.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

As I understand this, a bill is passed in Senate. The House votes to pass it or debate it. I imagine the vote is majority and not unanimity. So House votes 6-3 to pass it. No debate.

I don't like it removes the right of some elected officials to give their opinions or point out problems or mistakes in the bill. It also could lead to less examinition of the bill because if it's not at the debate stage maybe people will just read rapidly or the general idea of the bill.

So I have reservations.

What you describe is legislative friction, which is a normal process that enables the kind of examination and amendment to occur, and gives the broadest sense of concern for objections of a singular representative. I am not here to guess at the motivations behind the desire for reform, but there is a lot of criticism that this process also drags things out and makes it difficult for legislation to come to fruition within a reasonable time frame. I think that underlies some of the bubbling resentment towards the current system in general.

My opinion is if the VP has a conceptualization especially limited to bills from the other chamber, I am inclined to give him the benefit of a doubt in terms of trying something different both because we have these concerns, and we have had issues with VP activity recently. I would rather see the system adapt somewhat then have it break or collapse.

That being said, it is an important dividing line between efficiency on the one hand and necessary review and consideration on the other and at some point brutally efficient legislating from a procedural standpoint means you are basically assembly lining garbage. So it is not unreasonable to be concerned thus as to the end result of this change, it is my hope that what can be achieved here will at minimum make the VP's job easier even if it isn't necessarily the proposal as currently composed.

Caveat: Everything being posted here is done so under the effects of fatigue, headache and exhaustion.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

As I understand this, a bill is passed in Senate. The House votes to pass it or debate it. I imagine the vote is majority and not unanimity. So House votes 6-3 to pass it. No debate.

I don't like it removes the right of some elected officials to give their opinions or point out problems or mistakes in the bill. It also could lead to less examinition of the bill because if it's not at the debate stage maybe people will just read rapidly or the general idea of the bill.

So I have reservations.

What you describe is legislative friction, which is a normal process that enables the kind of examination and amendment to occur, and gives the broadest sense of concern for objections of a singular representative. I am not here to guess at the motivations behind the desire for reform, but there is a lot of criticism that this process also drags things out and makes it difficult for legislation to come to fruition within a reasonable time frame. I think that underlies some of the bubbling resentment towards the current system in general.

My opinion is if the VP has a conceptualization especially limited to bills from the other chamber, I am inclined to give him the benefit of a doubt in terms of trying something different both because we have these concerns, and we have had issues with VP activity recently. I would rather see the system adapt somewhat then have it break or collapse.

That being said, it is an important dividing line between efficiency on the one hand and necessary review and consideration on the other and at some point brutally efficient legislating from a procedural standpoint means you are basically assembly lining garbage. So it is not unreasonable to be concerned thus as to the end result of this change, it is my hope that what can be achieved here will at minimum make the VP's job easier even if it isn't necessarily the proposal as currently composed.

Caveat: Everything being posted here is done so under the effects of fatigue, headache and exhaustion.

I think this is perfectly cogent Basically encapsulates my thoughts as well. The intent here is to grease the wheels a bit. However, the change this would make to "legislative friction" is a lot less dramatic than, say, a move to unicameralism. If this rule change is made, both chambers will have the same review powers they have now. They'll just have the option of expediting things if they don't think there are any problems with the legislation. Maybe I have a little too much faith in the process, but I think that generally the first chamber to consider a bill will spot most glaring errors, and if they miss some things, members of the second chamber will hit the brakes and fix what's left.

As for the issues with VP workload, I frankly didn't have that in mind when I made the proposal. No complaints on my end so far, but evidently the job has been a problem for some other people. That is certainly something to consider.

Will write up the final amendment that we've talked about tomorrow. With finals and the holidays, I've let this get away from me a bit, but I think it's still possible to wrap the rule change up in both chambers pretty soon.

It may have been a factor previously, and the more "friction" their is, the more procedural motions to be processed, the harder it is to administer a given thread.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Yes, you have stumbled into the correct position here. There is no reason to have two seperate legislative chambers.

So to avoid changing the constitution directly it was decided to implement a new political system: oneandafractioncameral system.

I think Ted's desire here is to satisfy the concerns voiced over the recent months, including those brought to me last session by Senators, pertaining to delays in consideration once their bills reach the other chamber.

The House doesn't have the flexibility of the Senate in this regards. For instance when we have backlogs, we aren't restrained by the slot assignments and thus Senators were more willing to introduce House bills directly as Senate bills to bypass any backlogs. Serial ports only displaced parallel ports because they achieved the ability to push through in a single lane more then could be broken up and pushed through several.

There also a bit of a holiday slow down overall and when you have multiple procedural steps to go through on each bill it adds up. We have had delays on our side too, but most everyone of our votes are commenced via unanimous consent and don't required the added layer of cloture votes, we had fewer amendments this time (about half the normal amount) and a lot of the bills were fairly lacking in controversial nature and the one bill that came back to us that was controversial was on its final stage and thus went to a vote directly, the vote was party line and that was that.

In no way does Ted's proposal undermine the rights of the other chamber. At the end of the day, the majority in the House or the Senate for that matter (thanks to the math) can cut off debate and amendment anytime they want under the current rules, last I checked cloture only requires 5 votes in the house unless that changed at some point (edit: well it is a bit more complicated than I originally thought, but after the first 72 hours if debate ceases it drops to five. I actually recall suggesting that cloture not be required if debate ceased for longer than a set period of time, that would really speed things up but alas that was considered "too harsh". ). Teds proposal basically just does an automatic "pre-debate cloture vote".