The fight for “regular order” in the House

The fight for “regular order” in the House November 4, 2015

Remember watching “Schoolhouse Rock,” in which you were taught how a “Bill” becomes a “Law,” going through committees and all those other legislative processes until it gets passed and signed?  That’s called “regular order,” and it hasn’t been used in the House of Representatives for years.  Mostly today, bills instead are initiated, negotiated, brought to the floor–or not–by House leadership of both parties.

The “Freedom Caucus” of recently-elected conservatives is routinely accused of undermining former speaker John Boehner and creating legislative paralysis for ideological reasons.  But, as political scientist Ross K. Baker explains, what they are actually fighting for is not ideology at all, but rather a return to “regular order.”

As it is, these junior Congressional representatives are given almost no say in legislation, contrary to the wide participation and transparency made possible by the traditional “regular order.”  (Yes, the members of the Freedom Caucus are conservative, but this is because they mostly came in with the anti-Obama landslide of the last Congressional election.)  The new speaker, Paul Ryan, is said to be sympathetic to the Schoolhouse Rock approach to government, but we shall see.

From Ross K. Baker, House Freedom Caucus fights for regular order: Column, USA Today:

The revolt that took place early last month against Boehner by a group of conservative members calling themselves the Freedom Caucus featured a litany of complaints that only partially involved ideological differences between Caucus members and Boehner. It was basically a revolt of back-benchers — relatively junior members who happen to be conservatives because so many of them were elected since 2010 as anti-President Obama candidates — who called for the restoration of something called “regular order.” This is nothing new. Over the years, there have been similar insurrections by junior members who simply want to be players.

“Regular order” is a phrase you hear a lot on Capitol Hill, and it refers to the legislative process many readers will recall from watching Schoolhouse Rock — highly structured, participatory lawmaking that proceeds in an orderly manner from the introduction of a bill, through committee action, to its signing by the president. It is a transparent and inclusive process that engages the energies of all lawmakers, from the most junior to the leaders of the two major political parties.

In the struggle between Boehner and the Freedom Caucus, the insurgents’ insistence that their grievance was mostly about process was widely dismissed by commentators who tagged them as reckless rabble rousers bent on dethroning the speaker, a genial deal-maker willing to work across the aisle.

While the Freedom Caucus is dominated by GOP members elected since 2010, often with the help of the Tea Party movement, and their campaigns were fueled by hostility to Obamacare and the considerable expansion of the scope of the federal government that resulted from it, their objections go deeper. The Affordable Care Act was produced in Democratic leadership offices largely in secret. An arcane rule thwarted Republicans’ last-minute efforts to block Obamacare after the GOP won a Senate election in Massachusetts.

The centralized and often secretive manner in which Obamacare was assembled was no novelty. Well before 2010, important legislation was being snatched away from congressional committees in both the House and Senate by leaders of both parties for a variety of reasons: The committees were moving too slowly, the legislation was out of line with the party policy, or simply to exert leadership influence. Often, the loudest critics of these practices were liberals who were offended by the limited participation of the vast bulk of lawmakers in fashioning legislation.

New House Speaker Ryan has vowed to de-odorize the process. He has not yet spoken in great detail about how this might be achieved. Pessimists will, no doubt, point out that Boehner promised, after becoming speaker in 2011, to return to regular order. His ultimate downfall was, in many ways, the result of his failure to achieve it.[Keep reading. . .] 

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