The House of Representatives may soon be required to publicize all legislation at least 72 hours before considering a final debate on the bill. Current House Rules include no such thing, but as we all know, Obama campaigned on "political transparency" in Washington, and allowing the American people the opportunity to read bills prior to consideration, as well as televising on C-SPAN key floor debates and conference committees.
The most likely of these to pass, (H.Res 554), was introduced last June by Brian Baird, a Democrat from Washington. Since its initial introduction into the House, the proposed resolution has received 215 co-sponsors, from both sides of the aisle.
By definition, this bill has bi-partisan support. On OpenCongress.Org, H.Res 554 has 449 members in favor, with only 4 opposed. I think it's safe to say this bill has a lot of support. So, the question is, why has this resolution not been considered by the full House yet? It has been around for seven long months, but why has nothing been done with it??
Lately, democrats in both chambers have violated their own promise (and Obama's promise for transparency), as negotiations over Health Care reform between House democrats and Senate democrats has been done behind closed doors, after hours, during "informal meetings," instead of the more traditional, more transparent conference committees.
With so much support, H.Res 554 has an almost guaranteed passage in the House, but it would certainly make what the House is doing against the rules, and the House would be out of order. I guess this is the problem you have when you have people voting on their own rules and restrictions.
You can bet this much-liked resolution will not reach the House floor for consideration before the final Health Care bill is considered; you have Nancy Pelosi to thank for that one.
But, passing a resolution like this would mean that the House would have to change the way they do things. As you may or may not know, there were about 25 bills passed in 2009 that were rushed through in less than 72 hours. These are major legislations, including cash for clunkers, the estate tax, the stimulus bill, among others. You can view the full list of them by clicking here.
Let's hope people like Nancy Pelosi are not re-elected for yet another term. We have one more year to suffer through this, then hopefully we can get some politicians in who are ready to do their job: represent the people.
