A House in chaos

Is Pelosi Losing Grip on the House?

For a few hours Thursday night, the House of Representatives was in chaos.

Shortly after dinnertime, New York Democrat Charlie Rangel emerged from his private hideaway after news broke that he would be admonished by the House ethics committee.

But reporters in the Capitol rushed right past Rangel to ask House Democratic leaders about a critical intelligence bill that had just been pulled over a torture provision. The language had been inserted in defiance of leadership by House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.).

At the same time, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was slated to meet with leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus to try to salvage a routine $15 billion jobs bill that had turned into a piñata for progressives, the moderate Blue Dog Coalition and members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
Any of these three issues — a floundering jobs bill, a hastily scotched intelligence authorization or an ethics committee admonishment of the powerful chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee — would qualify as a midlevel crises.

Together, these incidents illustrated a chamber in a minimeltdown near week's end.

“It’s a mystery how that language got in there,” Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) said of the controversial intelligence bill provision backed by Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.). “I think there are a lot of issues about the drafting of the McDermott amendment.”

House leaders huddled on the floor to figure out what to do next when they realized that the language — adopted by Slaughter’s panel the day before — could kill the bill. The spot they chose was only 15 feet or so from the one in the well of the House where Rangel had just lit into ethics Chairman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Jo Bonner (R-Ala.) in full view of their colleagues and the galleries above the chamber.

As the intelligence bill was melting down, word began circulating that House leaders might bypass the Rules Committee altogether on a jobs bill because members from multiple factions were threatening to vote against a rule that would allow its consideration.

Black lawmakers say the package is skimpy and Blue Dogs are upset that it would take a waiver of deficit-reduction rules to pass the House. Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.) objected to the apportionment of a small tranche of highway dollars in the measure.

But House leaders are nearly convinced that rank-and-file lawmakers won’t quash a jobs bill if they are faced with a vote on it. So, they began discussing whether to bring it up under suspension of the rules, which would require a two-thirds vote for passage but eliminate the sticky trick of getting the votes to allow it to be considered.

Meanwhile, Rangel dragged Lofgren and Bonner into two meetings in his private office just off the House floor. The ethics admonishment, leveled because of actions taken by Rangel’s aides, was accompanied by one for the ethics committee’s own former counsel, opening the door to the question of who is to blame if ethics rules are broken by the ethics committee itself.

After consulting with the ethics leaders, Rangel finally emerged to face the cameras, only to find print reporters sprinting past him to get the scoop on other legislative matters.

Amazingly, Rangel’s latest scandal was playing second fiddle even in his own home state, where a brouhaha continued over whether Gov. David Paterson’s administration improperly used state resources to intimidate a woman who accused a gubernatorial aide of domestic violence.

And all this as news of a disheartened public reacting negatively to Obama’s arrogance at the healthcare summit earlier in the day, that turned out to be the sham that most expected, was pouring in.

House leaders seemed likely to have at least the intelligence bill — and perhaps the jobs bill — in better position by Friday.

But for a few hours Thursday, nothing seemed to be going right.

“Can’t anybody here play this game?” joked a Democratic aide whose sense of humor remained intact.

Source: Politico