cross-posted from Main Street Insider

We’re back with the Season 2 Premiere! This season will have double the suspense, double the hilarity, and it just might move you to tears… Okay, not really. Our 90 Second Summaries will be what they always were, a clean and simple set of legislative summaries designed to help folks on Main Street keep up.

To kick off the new season, we are going to roll out a couple summaries of the more interesting provisions of the new Adopting Rules Package of the 112th Congress (then we will take a couple weeks off to evaluate new legislation before us). This week, we are looking at the transparency provisions of the new rules. These provisions are important to understand, if only because it will require pressure to ensure that they are followed properly. Without further ado, we present Season 2, Episode 1:

As always, you'll find the one-pager below the fold...

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For a long while I've tried to debunk the myth that the Democrats are not running a significantly more open House of Representatives than did the Republicans when they were in office. Whenever Republicans were able to inject this false meme into the media, I have tried to rebut it with facts, such as the fact that the Democrats, already in February, had allowed more open rules than the Republicans had during the entirety of the 109th Congress. Now it looks like The Politico, which had previously peddled this trash, is somewhat inadvertently undercutting the GOP contention. Check out the 15th paragraph of an article posted today by Martin Kady II on the culture of the current Congress (which he says, despite his reporting on House rules, is not entirely different from that of the previous Republican Congress).

Statistically speaking, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has given Republicans a stronger voice in the minority -- allowing more amendments under so-called "open rules" on the House floor than her GOP predecessors did. Midway through the 2007 session, Democrats had allowed eight open rules compared with two under Republicans last year. And the majority allowed 60 GOP amendments, compared with 51 Democratic amendments authorized by Republicans halfway through last year.

The Republicans, both in the House and the Senate, are playing extremely poorly, not only falsely complaining about Democrats abusing the rules but also themselves abusing the rules of both chambers. Whether it is Republicans increasingly desperate attempts at delaying progress in the House or the Senate GOP's destruction of all records in terms of filibusters, the Republicans have done all they can to make Congress not work.

Congressional Democrats, however, have been affording the GOP more opportunities than the GOP ever gave the Democrats. Perhaps there's a partisan argument that the Democrats should be running a more closed Congress in able to ram through their agenda. But this is certainly not what they are doing. They have been able to pass a great deal of their platform in remarkably quick order even as the Republicans have abused the system. So Kady, and others, may argue that the current Congress is being run no different than previous Republican Congresses, which set records for partisan excesses, the fact is the Democrats are running a tight, but fair ship and should be given significant credit for doing so.

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As youmay have noticed, I'm someone who is fairly interested in the rules by which the House of Representatives goes about its business. This interest stems at least in part from Republican claims, which have been picked up by some in the media, that the Democrats are not following through with their promise to run a more open House -- even though the Democrats are clearly running a more open House than the Republicans did in recent Congresses. For this reason, I jumped at the opportunity last week to talk about rules with the source on the subject, House Rules Committee chair Louise Slaughter.

On the afternoon of Monday, June 18, 2007, I had the opportunity to sit down with the New York Democrat to talk rules, touching on a number of the most pressing issues facing the House today, including the war in Iraq. You can listen to the interview in the player below, download the audio as a very large .mp3 here or read the rush transcript below.

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Jonathan Singer: Let's talk about rules. I like talking about rules.

Louise Slaughter: Most people don't.

Singer: I actually find it interesting. I'm one of the few. So in 1910 there was the rebellion that separated the Speaker from the Rules Committee.

Slaughter: Right.

Singer: And there really was more separation. Do you think today that revolution is still ongoing?

Slaughter: Absolutely.

Singer: Do you feel that you have the power, if you strongly disagree with the Speaker, to go against her on a rule?

Slaughter: Not without talking with her, but absolutely. There have been a couple of instances where, one I think we were doing the rules on the floor last year and Nancy was coming down and I said, "We've got to do away with these corporate jets. We can't carry that. We've got to cut out flights on corporate jets." She says, "It's gone."

She's probably the best politician I've seen in my entire life. We were elected about the same time. She came in about six or eight months after I did. Of course she fulfilled Sala Burton's term.

But, no, Nancy's not only very approachable, but she's in control of the House. There's no question about that. But I think she respects me enough - I know she does. She's put me on the leadership committee and so I'm in on every discussion that they have.

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The Politico, the new Capitol Hill newspaper-cum-website-cum-multimedia-new s-organization, may only be about a month old, but it's already getting into the business of running half-rate hits on the Democratic leadership. Currently, one of the lead news items on the site (and I'd imagine one of the front page stories in the paper edition out in the morning) penned by Daniel W. Reilly and Jim VandeHei proclaims from its headline, "Pelosi Falls Short On Election Promises". Among other things, the article snipes at the new Democratic Speaker for the following:

• Holding only one five-day work week since Congress has been in session;
  
• Allowing just one open rule on a piece of legislation on the floor; and
  
• Seating Bill Jefferson on the homeland security panel.

Taking the second smear first, it is one that I smacked down not even three weeks ago on this site. Republicans have indeed complained that they have not been able to offer up their own alternatives to Democratic legislation and resolutions, a complaint that, on its surface, seems quite fair. But a deeper look at the issue, as I attempted earlier this month, shows that the Democrats one open rule less than a month into the current Congress matched the total number of open rules on non-appropriations legislation allowed by the Republican leadership over the entire course of the previous Congress. What's more, The Hill's Jim Snyder reports in Tuesday's edition that "a measure to update the rules governing the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) [...] is expected to come to the floor under an open rule" after having been passed by House Republicans using a closed rule last year. So not only are House Democrats allowing open rules on the same issues upon which Republicans used closed rules just one year ago, they are also on track to double the number of open rules on non-appropriations legislation that the GOP House allowed -- with well over 20 months remaining in the Congress.

The other two attacks mentioned by Reilly and VandeHei in slamming Pelosi -- that the Congress has only had one five-day work week and that she seated Rep. Jefferson on a committee -- are likewise off base. To my knowledge, the Democratic House has already put in more five-day work weeks than the previous Republican House, which tended to put in about a one and a half day work week. And on the issue of "Dollar" Bill Jefferson, Reilly and VandeHei fail to mention that Pelosi stripped the Louisianian of his far more powerful and important position on the House Appropriations Committee during the last Congress, a fact that should certainly bear mentioning in any discussion about decisions about his committee placement (and he indeed needed to be placed on at least some committees, certainly in the absence of an indictment for his alleged improprieties).

And not only are these attacks largely off-base, they also are not resonating with the American public. The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll released today shows Speaker Pelosi's approval rating at 50 percent, with 31 percent disapproving. This is a slight decline for Pelosi from last month, when her approval spread was 54-25, but her current numbers are nonetheless significantly better than those currently held by President Bush (36 percent approve, 62 percent disapprove) and even the highest marks ever held by the last well-known Speaker, Newt Gingrich, whose top rating of 41 percent approval with 44 percent disapproval was achieved twice in 1998.

Yet for how important and meaningful these numbers are -- and they indeed are significant, both historically and currently -- measures of Pelosi's wide popularity within the American public are somewhat off topic. The fact is that this highly opinionated piece belongs not in the news section of a paper but rather in the Op-Ed section and, moreover, it might be warranted coming from a Republican member of Congress or a GOP activist but certainly not two reporters who profess to be non-partisan and unbiased.

Update [2007-2-27 1:10:17 by Jonathan Singer]: Of course I might also mention that Pelosi did follow through with her most notable campaign promises: passing the broad "Six for '06" agenda within the first 100 hours of the Congress.

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Having wholly failed at attempts to block or stall the Democrats' 100 Hours agenda in the House -- even, in fact, failing to maintain the semblance of unity within their own caucus in early House votes -- House Republicans have turned to decrying the tactics used by the new Democratic majority in the chamber to help pass their widely popular agenda in a prompt manner. The Hill's Jackie Kucinich has a good run down of the Republican complaints.

During the first month of the Democratic-controlled Congress, Republicans held numerous press conferences on Capitol Hill to vent their frustration over being locked out of the legislative process. Many accused Democrats of violating House rules to push their legislation through.

[...]

In order to get the GOP message out, [GOP Rep. John Campbell said], members must break down information to communicate clearly how the process impacts constituents and their pocketbooks.

[...]

[House Republican Conference spokesman Ed] Patru acknowledged that Republicans are likely to lose the inside-the-Beltway debate because of the heavy Democratic majority. But outside Washington, he said, Republicans have an advantage because of their ability translate the debate into understandable analogies.

To begin, it's clear that the Republicans have been extremely ineffective at making an issue about the House Democrats' use of the chamber's rules to speed their top legislative priorities to votes on the floor. The latest Gallup Poll, for instance, finds Congress' approval rating to be 37 percent, with 55 percent disapproving -- not great numbers, certainly, but higher than they have been in the poll in close to two years and up 16 points since late December. What's more, despite almost continuous attacks on Speaker Nancy Pelosi for being a "San Francisco liberal", her approval rating is sky high at around 50 percent, trumping both that of George W. Bush and that of Newt Gingrich at any point in his speakership.

But not only have these lines of attacks not hurt the Democrats whatsoever in the first month of the 110th Congress, both as a result of the popularity of the Democratic platform and the fact that process attacks are generally too abstract to matter to voters (at least this early in the game), they are extremely disengenuous -- and Republicans know it.

The House GOP has spent quite a bit of effort highlighting the fact that Democrats did not allow open rules during the debate over 100 Hours legislation, which could have allowed seemingly endless amendments that could have changed the essence of the Democratic bills. But what the Republicans fail to mention in these tirades is the fact that they allowed only one open rule -- only one -- on a non-appropriations bill during the 109th Congress. That's right. Of the 22 open rules allowed by the GOP majority in the House last Congress, which accounted for just 16 percent of all rules (meaning 84 percent of all rules were closed), just one, H.R. 255 (Federal Deposit Insurance Reform), was not an appropriations bill, which traditionally come to the floor with open rules.

Now the Democrats are already allowing their first open rule on legislation, just six weeks into their reign over the House. With the open rule agreed to today for H.R. 547 (Advanced Fuels Infrastructure Research and Development Act), the House Democrats have already matched the number of open rules on non-appropriations legislation that the Republicans allowed during the previous Congress. It will be pretty difficult for the GOP to argue with that.

In short, complaints about House rules aren't likely to help the Republicans swing the momentum away from the Democratic majority any time soon, not only because the Democrats' agenda is so popular and that voters don't tend to care about the internal rules of Congress, in general, but also because the Republican attacks on the Democrats' use of rules simply have no merity whatsoever.

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