GOP insurrection heats up over surveillance

Monday, Jul 22, 2013 09:56 AM CST

In an attempt to prevent Washington lawmakers from having to publicly declare their position on the National Security Administration’s mass surveillance, will congressional leaders formally snuff out one of the last embers of democracy in the U.S. House? This is one of the big questions this week in Washington, as the Republicans who control the House are resorting to brass knuckled tactics in an effort to thwart one of their own.

Before getting to that stunning story, it’s worth reviewing how the Congress actually operates.

As I learned from 4-plus years working in the Capitol’s lower chamber during President Bush’s first term, the U.S. House of Representatives runs like a politburo did in a typical Soviet satellite state. Decisions about what even gets voted on – much less passed – usually happen behind closed doors, with a handful of party leaders handing down orders to the rest of the body’s loyal apparatchiks. That means most legislative drama can’t be seen by voters, and it means congresspeople rarely have to cast public votes on anything the House Speaker doesn’t want them to vote on. By design, this system (which differs from the Senate, where all members can force votes on almost anything) deliberately protects majority party House members from having to cast embarrassing campaign-ad-worthy public votes against the minority party’s proposals.

Repressive as the House is, tradition provides lawmakers with a few ways to hack the system – that is, if they happen to know what they are doing (which most lawmakers and staff, alas, don’t). The best of these hacks is what’s known as the appropriations “rider” – or what can alternately be called the Amendment Hack.

For various reasons, any lawmaker of either party has – up until now – been permitted to go the floor of the House and offer an amendment to any annual spending bill, as long as the amendment is germane to the bill. Translated from legislativese: roughly speaking, any House member of either party can get an amendment to an appropriations bill ruled in order – and thus force a vote on it – as long as the amendment doesn’t add to the cost of the bill, and either transfers money from one program in the bill to another in the bill, or simply blocks funding for something in the bill....

Full article:
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/22/gop_civil_war_leaders_target_rising_star/singleton/