Rep. Ryan’s budget plan survives procedural snags in House

By Karoun Demirjian

Friday, April 15, 2011 | 12:50 p.m.

The GOP did its darndest to get the fiscal 2012 budget proposal drafted by Rep. Paul Ryan through the House before Congress breaks for two weeks of recess -- and ultimately succeeded.

But not before running up against a series of procedural snags -- and one bona fide protest.

A group of environmental activists visiting the Capitol was sitting in the House gallery during the series of votes on the 2012 budget. When lawmakers started to end the debate, and set up the final vote on Ryan's bill, the protesters started getting up and singing, one by one.

Some sang the "Star-Spangled Banner" with Earth-friendly lyrics. At least one sang "We Shall Overcome" -- apropos, considering this is Emancipation Day in D.C.

Rep. Charles Bass, who was presiding over the House for the vote, banged on the gavel and tried to repeat the rules of the House to stop the repeated interruptions, but he wasn't too successful: nine protesters rose to sing and/or orate, and then got led out of the chamber by House staff to be arrested by Capitol Police in the hallway, before the protest was over.

It's not the only bit of protest that was waged on the House floor today (though it was certainly the most overt).

In keeping with their pledge to have a more open floor process, Republicans allowed four substitute amendment votes on budget alternatives to come to the floor before the final vote on the Ryan plan. On one -- presented by Republican Study Committee's Budget and Spending Task Force Chairman Scott Garrett -- Democrats almost pulled off a procedural coup when a majority of them voted "present" instead of against the bill.

There are three options for House voting: yes, no and present; but only two count toward the final tally. If a lawmaker votes "present," it says "yes, I'm here" -- but the present votes are then subtracted from the total when it comes to determining how many votes are needed for a bill to pass.

One hundred and twenty Democrats -- including Nevada's Shelley Berkley -- voted "present" on the vote for Garrett's proposal, and because their votes weren't counted toward the total, Garrett's proposal came within nine votes of actually passing. Had that happened, his measure would have been swapped out for Ryan's, totally gutting the Republicans' preferred fiscal 2012 plan.

It isn't that Democrats want Garrett's proposal. On the contrary: Garrett's proposal makes much deeper cuts than Ryan's budget does. It hacks $9.5 trillion out of the budget over the next decade (Ryan's cuts $4 trillion over the same time frame, and only $6.2 trillion over its total projection through 2030). And given how much controversy there is over Ryan's budget, having Garrett's on the table instead could have backfired, especially come election time.

In the end, Ryan's budget did pass, by a vote of 235-193. But the sideshows along the way highlighted how Democrats are getting more inventive with their procedural attempts to stymie the Republicans, even if in the end, they aren't that successful.

The House is a more feisty and raucous place than the Senate, but in many ways, it's also more boring. Because of the way the rules work, the House usually becomes the playground of the majority, who with the aid of an obliging rule, can pretty much get anything through that the leadership wants, provided members of their own party fall in line.

That was a source of endless frustration to Republicans over the four years Democrats were in charge, and it's proving to be a source of frustration to Democrats under Republican leadership now.

But the minority does get one last chance at recourse with any bill, through a procedure known as the Motion to Recommit, which is what they usually use to stage objections.

The Motion to Recommit is just what it sounds like: a motion, made right before a bill passes, to try to change it or simply send it back to the drawing board. In the last few years, they come up before almost every major vote.

But what makes them interesting is the strings that get attached. In January, when the House was voting to repeal the health care bill, Democrats offered a motion to recommit that said it couldn't pass until lawmakers agreed to abandon their own coverage. When the subject on the table was the budget, Democrats staked their motion to recommit on a pledge that lawmakers would abandon Big Oil subsidies.

The political payoff is that when Republicans don't vote for the motion to recommit, they're technically on record for having voted in favor of keeping their own health benefits while repealing a law that's aimed at providing more Americans with health care, or in favor of subsidizing Big Oil.

Today's move was a lot more politically obscure in its intention -- there's nothing from it, really, that Democrats will be able to wave around on the campaign trail. But they certainly succeeded in scaring the Republicans a little, many of whom were scrambling as the voting period closed to change their votes to avoid an undesired substitution.