The conservatives strike back: House floor fight imperils popular bills

In some ways, the GOP’s tactics are an escalation of how hard-line conservatives have exercised their power for years — making it more painful for those in the majority to operate, whether it’s Democrats or their own party in charge. But Democrats warn that this latest gambit from the right could erode one of the last vestiges of bipartisanship in the House, where relationships have already deteriorated in the wake of the deadly Jan. 6 riot.

Democrats argue that attempting to force House votes late into the night for little purpose other than agitation could dramatically slow the chamber’s work for years to come.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy are in talks about finding a path forward and spoke Tuesday afternoon on the issue. Hoyer also spoke with Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a conservative who has become a master of procedural delays on the floor.

“He’s working on it,” Hoyer said of McCarthy, noting they both want to ensure that the House has a way to pass what are known as suspension bills — popular measures that can be fast-tracked on the floor.

Asked if Democrats are considering changing the chamber’s rules to prevent further disruption, the Maryland Democrat didn’t rule out that possibility if GOP leaders can’t reach an agreement with their members.

“Not yet. At some point in time, if this continues, we’ll have to deal with it,” Hoyer said.

While rank-and-file Republicans are spearheading the latest effort to torpedo the floor schedule — which has claimed some of the GOP’s own bills, including a measure to award a Congressional Gold Medal to the Capitol Police after the insurrection — even some GOP leaders say they empathize with the overall mission.

Top Republicans are particularly incensed that Democrats altered the House’s “motion to recommit,” one of the few procedural tools that the chamber’s minority can wield. The GOP used that motion successfully a number of times in the last Congress to force last-minute changes to legislation on the House floor.

“I think it’s a legitimate approach for members of the minority to take,” said GOP Conference Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.). “The majority needs to understand we are not interested in a situation where they have taken away so many rights of the minority and they expect things are going to operate smoothly.”

“It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that this is going on,” she added.

Yet some Republicans, while sharing their colleagues’ frustrations, are reluctant to use bipartisan bills as leverage in a procedural showdown. Hoyer said that “there’s a lot of disagreement and anger and disappointment on both sides” with the GOP’s delay tactics. And House Minority Whip Steve Scalise made clear Tuesday that the plan to object to routine votes did not come from Republican leadership.

”It’s a bipartisan tool to fast-track bills without a vote while every other tool in the House to debate and vote on critical issues has been completely shut down as we cower behind fences and razor wire,” Roy said. “It’s a joke.”

Roy was among the Republicans who threatened to force recorded votes on 13 suspension bills Monday evening, which would have taken all night given the House’s new pandemic-era procedures — which are themselves another source of frustration among the GOP. Hoyer was forced to pull the bills from consideration under suspension, a process that requires two-thirds support to pass the House. The majority of those bills also didn’t go through the committee process.

“Right now, this place is completely dysfunctional,” Roy said. “Why are we pretending like we’re greasing the skids here to help anybody move these bills on one particular day or another? We need to have a serious conversation about the things that are fundamentally broken about the institution.”

Republicans are still weighing whether to continue Monday night’s protest, forcing the chamber to convene for even the most mundane bills and potentially turning all floor proceedings into a Senate-like slog. The ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus held a virtual meeting Monday evening to discuss their strategy on the matter; Republicans also discussed it during a conference meeting Tuesday morning.

Later on Tuesday, dozens of GOP lawmakers mounted another disruption by lining up on the House floor to seek unanimous consent on a bill requiring schools to have a reopening plan if they receive federal pandemic aid. That move briefly delayed a procedural vote on the coronavirus relief package.

“There’s a lot of frustration in the conference to see the 45-minute votes that turn into hour-long votes,” said Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), a member of the Freedom Caucus. “We should be leading the way towards how to go back to full functionality. Instead, they’re still dragging.”

Democrats, meanwhile, argue that they hold the majority — albeit, a slim one — and have every right to run the House as they see fit, especially amid the pandemic. Conservative complaints about the House’s lack of transparency or open process long predate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s reclamation of the speaker’s gavel in 2019.

Many Democrats also point out that the current floor stunt follows their decision to strip controversial Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) of her committees for her record of incendiary comments. Her involvement in the current GOP maneuver on the floor strikes those lawmakers as little more than attention-seeking.

“She needs to find a hobby other than engaging in unproductive activity and miring herself in conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries told reporters, referring to Greene. Jeffries warned that Republicans’ tactics would only end up delaying bipartisan bills they support: “My grandmother used to say to me, ‘be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.’”

With tensions still high in the Capitol, Republicans aren’t alone in threatening to take down suspension bills.

One Democrat, Illinois Rep. Sean Casten, angered Democratic leaders late last month by forcing a roll-call vote on a non-controversial bill to rename a post office. Casten argued that its author, Rep. Trent Kelly (R-Miss.), had failed to condemn the violence on Jan. 6 and therefore Democrats should oppose the measure. Democrats have also threatened to blackball other Republicans who voted to challenge certification of the election results.

But Pelosi and her leadership team quickly put out the fire in their caucus, convincing the vast majority of members to support the Kelly-backed bill.

Despite Cheney’s empathy for the objectors’ frustrations, GOP leadership hasn’t exactly endorsed the anti-suspension strategy either: “I don’t want to see any hostages,” Scalise said, but “I want to see an open process.”

The issue is difficult to resolve, Democrats said, in part because Roy and Greene are deploying the procedural tactics for different reasons.

Roy has called for “regular order” and more debate, something that Democrats said they could get behind. But they view Greene as motivated by little besides an urge to disrupt, leaving no obvious solution on the table.

Even some Republicans have privately grumbled about Greene’s participation in the current floor uprising after she used motions to object to bills such as an LGBTQ rights bill that three in their party supported.

“The issue had lost some steam until MTG’s threat yesterday,” said one Democrat who has worked behind the scenes to try to resolve the procedural snag, abbreviating Greene’s name. “Now it’s front and center.”

Heather Caygle contributed to this report.