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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 7h

Replace it with the pro-forma bill!

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 16h

No harm in drafting gimmicks properly too.

ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 20h

Not that Jared 🙂, and in matters of procedure it’s safe to assume that members just don’t know.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 21h

Literally all you have to do is repeal clauses 12(a) and 13 of rule I. You probably would not get a majority for a motion to adjourn right now.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 21h

This reminds me of that suggestion that members should ‘vote against every rule until the Speaker agrees to put [a bill] on the floor’.

Why not ‘the House shall meet’? No, the speaker must remain in charge; the only way to do anything is through him. It’s a terrible mentality.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 21h

For example, on a day on which the rules required precedence to be given to a discharge motion, the chair was still able to adjourn the House before that could happen.

ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · Apr 3

OK, they’re just ignoring the discharge rule.

It’s disgraceful but not exactly surprising: McCarthy and Johnson have done this before in other contexts involving two-day deadlines.

The House should reconsider whether the speaker should have the unilateral authority to adjourn it.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 21h

You’d think that a requirement to have a ‘recorded quorum call’ (i.e., a call of the House; this is not the Senate) every day would alleviate that to some extent, but experience suggests otherwise.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 21h

It would only prohibit *motions* to adjourn and take away the speaker’s *recess* authority.

The result would be the absurdity that the speaker could adjourn the House, but the House could not adjourn itself!

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 21h

The massive problem with this is that it would still leave the speaker’s unilateral adjournment authority in place. The only thing that might change is that you’d have a pro-forma session every day instead of every three days.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 1d

(I don’t think there are any profound conclusions to be drawn from this.)

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 1d

Oddly specific.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 1d

A fun 🧵

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 1d

Someday there will be a thread exploring this fully, but TL;DR: the purpose of the previous question in those days was to set aside the main question. The House turned it into a cloture mechanism some years later. If the Senate had retained the rule, who’s to say it would have evolved the same way?

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 1d

The Senate’s own rules made it possible starting in 1789.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 1d

(Anyone who replies with any reference to 1806/Aaron Burr/an accident is getting blocked; that is a myth.)

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 1d

“And that’s why we nuked it twice in the past month.”

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 1d

Not exactly a Nobel Prize.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 1d

(And Wicker said the same thing in debate.)

ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 1d

Voice vote ≠ unanimity

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 2d

You know how people say, in reference to Congress, that the rules are not self-enforcing? In general, that is not the case in the House of Commons; it is the duty of the chair to take the initiative in enforcing the rules.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 2d

That clip was from the valedictory debate at the end of the last Parliament; in a light-hearted, personal debate like that, the chair might have been more hesitant to interrupt for something relatively trivial like this.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 2d

Nope.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 2d

OTOH, as always, given that the Senate has not published its precedents in my lifetime, it’s quite possible that the rule changed without my knowing.

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 2d

House: ‘For what purpose does the gentlewoman from Vermont seek recognition?’
Senate: ‘And I’ll turn it to the senator from Vermont!’

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ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 2d

‘En blanc’?

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