Making Laws Isn't Easy

It just gets better and better around here! To tell you about my entire day today would take up more space than you might be willing to read, so I am going to tell you just about the highlight of today, and boy was it interesting! To preface this (and to make you as excited as I am right now) I'll tell you that I asked one of the Legislative Assistants if she had ever seen anything like it before. Said she hadn't -- and she's been here since February of 2007. OK! I went to what is called a "Committee Mark-Up" Meeting today. Do you remember that I went to a "Staff Mark-Up Meeting" on Monday? At the Monday meeting each Congressman's staff told the Head of the Committee staff each of the Amendments their Congressperson was planning to propose. At today's Committee Meeting, they proposed them.

This morning, when it was time for the "Mark-Up" meeting for the Committee on Education and Labor, I accompanied the two Legislative Assistants to the Committee Room, which was in the Rayburn Building (Congressman Altmire's office is in the Longworth Building). All of the main buildings around Capitol Hill are connected by tunnels. To get to the Rayburn Building via these tunnels, it seemed like the equivalent of going from the Owls' hallway down to Mr. Lemmo's room and then all the way back to the Owls' hallway. We had to walk down seven flights of marble spiral stairs, down two escalators, then up a few floors in an elevator, and then zig-zagging through four different hallways. We entered the room from the front of the room, so I walked by what I later found out to be Representative Dennis Kucinich's seat (yes, the same Dennis Kucinich who ran for President). It was a wide room with a huge ceiling. Along the front wall were seats for the Committee stacked in three tiers of seats. Then along the opposite wall were seats for all of the staff for each of the Congressmen and Congresswomen. There are 48 members on this Committee -- 27 Democrats and 21 Republicans. The Speaker of the House (Nancy Pelosi) chose a steering committee and this steering committee chose which members would be on the Committee. Since the Democrats currently have the majority in the House, they also have the majority on the Committee.

The Chair of the Committee, a Democrat, sits in the top tier of seats in the middle and calls on people to speak. To HIS right sits the "Ranking Member." The "Ranking Member" is the member of the opposition with the most seniority. So the Ranking Member is the most senior Republican on the Committee. Then to the Chair's left, sit all the Democrats in order of seniority. It goes outward from the Chair in the top row, then the seniority goes "inward" in order for the next two rows. So all the Democrats sit on the left and all the Republicans sit on the right, in order of seniority. From my perspective since I was looking at them, this was switched (Democrats on the right, Republicans on the left). Since Congressman Altmire is a freshman representative (this is his first term), he was seated in the front row. Between me and the Committee Members was a long table. In the middle of the table sits the Clerk, who reads each of the amendments to the bill. In front of the clerk are three little black boxes spaced along the table. These boxes have green, yellow, and red lights. Each Committee Member gets 5 minutes to speak. The yellow light comes on when there is 1 minute left. Also at this table was a woman tape recording the procedings to be transcribed, and assistants to the clerk, who pass out paper copies of each of the amendments to each of the Committee Members and their staff.

Let me explain to you the order of business for the Mark-Up Meeting and then I'll get to the exciting part. The Chair of the Committee starts off by reading an Opening Statement regarding the bill. In this case he was supporting the bill, since it was proposed by a Democratic Representative on the Committee. Then the Ranking Member read an Opening Statement. In his Opening Statement he stated that he opposed the bill. The bill under discussion today was H.R. 3289. The bill includes the Providing Resources Early for Kids Act of 2007 or the PRE-K Act which directs the Secretary of Education to award matching grants to states to enhance or improve state-funded preschool programs. The Ranking Member explained that he opposed the bill because he believes that the federal government already has the Head Start program, and that control over pre-school education should be left to the states.

Then, each member of the Committee was given a chance to speak on the bill. The first member of the Committee to speak on the bill was the Congresswoman who proposed the bill. Then other Congressmen got to speak on the bill alternating Democrats and Republicans. The Chair recognizes them to speak in order of seniority. After a few members debated the bill, they began proposing Amendments to the bill. Each time an amendment was proposed, the Clerk read the Amendment, or the reading was waived if the Amendment was too long. Then the clerk's assistants passed out copies of the Amendment to each of the Congressmen and to their staff. Then, the Amendments were debated. Each member got 5 minutes to speak. Sometimes, another Congressman said, "Will the Gentleman yield?" Then, if that Congressman said yes, the other Congressman got to use the rest of the 5 minutes. If a Congressman finished speaking early, he or she said, "I yield the balance of my time." Whenever the Chair called on someone to speak, he said "The Chair recognizes Representative (last name) from (State they are from). During the meeting, the Congressmen would keep coming and going, so not all the seats were filled at all times. You could see who was there because each seat had their name in a little holder in front of them on the table.

When each Amendment was done being debated one Congressman called for a vote on it. They did it by "Voice Vote." The Chair would say, "All those in favor say "Aye" and all those opposed say "No." Then, "All those in favor . . . (chorus of "Aye") . . . all those opposed (chorus of "No"). Then, and this was interesting to me, the Chair determined how the vote stood -- he didn't count. For example, he would say, "The 'No's' have it. Next Amendment." If a Congressman disagreed on the ruling of the Chair, he or she could call for a "Roll Call," which means they would vote again on this amendment at the end of the meeting, but they would vote one at a time while the clerk tallied the votes.

Now the EXCITING part. A Republican Congresswoman (let's call her R1) proposed an amendment which stated, "Page 9, line 7, insert the following (and redesign provisions accordingly): (3) An assurance that funds received under this Act will be used to provide services only to children who are United States citizens or aliens lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the United States." In other words, she wanted to amend the bill to make it say that the funds would only go to children who are permanent legal residents of the United States. The Congressmen then debated this amendment including one Democratic Congressman from a district with a large hispanic population. Let's call him D1. He explained that the Supreme Court has ruled that all children in the United States have access to public education, regardless of their legal status. Another Congressman, let's call him D2, then pointed out that there are people living in the United States who are legal residents but who are not permanent residents -- they are in the U.S. legally, but temporarily. Congresswoman R1 was willing to take out the word "permanent" from her amendment. However, in order to change an amendment that has already been debated, you need unanimous consent (everybody has to agree). So she called for a vote of unanimous consent. One Democrat (D3) was opposed. So another Republican Congressman (let's call him R2), asked to AMEND her AMENDMENT. This is called a "2nd Degree Amendment." A 2nd Degree Amendment does not need unanimous consent. His 2nd Degree Amendment proposed to delete the word "permanent." They did a voice vote on this which was determined as "The No's have it." Another Republican Congressman (R3) called for Roll Call on this, which means he wanted a written tally of the votes one by one.

This is where things started to go awry. Congressman R2 essentially wanted to "try again" by proposing a whole NEW amendment taking out THREE words: "for permanent residence." He did this by having one of his staff take a hand-written corrected copy of the Amendment by R1 over to the Clerk to read. However, the rules say you can't propose a new amendment that is the same as the 2nd Degree Amendment you also proposed. So essentially, things broke down at that point. The Chair and Congressman R2 started arguing (politely) about the procedures. Then the Staff Counsels, who stand behind the Chair (two for each party) got involved in figuring out what should be done. Basically, no one could figure out what had just happened and what was the correct procedural course to follow! So for five minutes, there was a flury of quiet talking by everyone in the room. It was very exciting. The Legislative Assistant next to me said he had never seen anything like this. The most exciting part -- when it looked like everything was settling down, Congressman Altmire motioned me to come up to his seat. He then handed me the paper copy of the revised amendment with the word "permanent" crossed out. He said "As a souvenir to show to your students." If you visit me next year, I will show it to you. Then they went through the roll call votes and called everyone by name, Democrats first in order of seniority, then Republicans in order of seniority, who said either "Aye" or "No". So I REALLY got to see Parliamentary Procedure at its height!

Moral of today's story: making laws isn't easy.