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Dems warn leaders to resume regular order
By Jared Allen
Posted: 02/02/09 07:11 PM [ET]
A group of more than 50 House Democrats has penned a letter to Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) imploring him to restore this institution and see that the House returns to a regular order process of legislating.
The letter, signed by a large number of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition and the centrist New Democratic Coalition, has not yet been sent. Members are still gathering signatures in an effort to send the strongest signal possible to all top House Democrats that the caucus is up in arms over the top-down method of legislating employed by Democrats since late last year.
Hoyer, and not Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was chosen as the recipient not because he is viewed as the prime enemy, but because this group has no better friend in this fight than the majority leader who is widely respected across the ideological spectrum for his adherence to rules and procedures an aide said.
You and Speaker Pelosi have each been quoted repeatedly as noting that the country must be governed from the middle, employing bipartisanship to solve our problems; we proudly and strongly affirm that view, the members wrote. One of the most basic but vital tools we have at our disposal to encourage bipartisanship is regular order in the House and Senate.
Since last year, many senior House Democrats many of them subcommittee chairmen have grown overly frustrated with how only small and select bands of legislators have been responsible for writing bills, such as the $700 billion Wall Street bailout as well as much of the $819 billion economic stimulus bill....
Good for them. When the republicans were in control of congress they acted as one, the rank and file didn't question their leaders...just went along for the ride because they were so cowardly.
Oops, they're still doing that.
