OPINION:
Rep. Chip Roy, Texas Republican, tried to drain part of the Washington swamp last week. He demanded that the United States House of Representatives vote before authorizing the spending of nearly $20 billion in disaster relief funding.
Many Americans believe draining the swamp requires transparency about legislation and voting when the entire House of Representatives is present. It is not voting to spend billions of dollars when only a couple of people, who likely haven’t read the bill, are present.
Last Thursday, the Senate voted to spend 19.1 billion dollars for disaster relief, including an additional 900 million dollars to Puerto Rico, which has already received nearly tens of billions in the last year. This amount included zero dollars for our humanitarian crisis at our southern border.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell notified Speaker Pelosi that she should keep the House in session Thursday afternoon, so the House could vote on the bill. Speaker Pelosi opted instead to continue with the planned 11-day recess beginning Thursday. You see, many of her members — the Democrats — had plans to jet all over the world on “information finding” excursions. Keeping everyone in Congress to vote on the plan might have inconvenienced her jet-setting colleagues.
So, she organized a procedural trick to get around having the majority of the members vote on the bill. She scheduled a floor session for Friday morning. She only needed two Democrats on the floor. One would act as Speaker, and the other would make a motion for unanimous consent to approve the bill. That’s right, Speaker Pelosi was going to spend almost $20 billion dollars with only two people on the floor, using a procedure more appropriate for naming post offices. These procedural oddities are exactly why the swamp needs to be drained. Regardless of whether you agree with spending that money, I hope you would agree that it should be done with a quorum — a majority — of members present through a public vote.
Friday morning, Congressman Roy threw a wrench into the gears. He informed Florida Democratic Congresswoman Donna Shalala that he would be objecting to the unanimous consent request and called for a rollcall vote.
Rep. Shalala said his objection was despicable. No, Rep. Shalala, it was the Speaker’s willingness to put a spending bill on the floor with only two members of the House present that was despicable.
Unfortunately, Chip Roy’s efforts may be wasted. House Democratic leadership stated that they intended to try the same maneuver again at the two pro forma sessions this week while almost all members of the House of Representatives will be in their home districts. On Tuesday, Democrats tried to pass this bill again by unanimous consent with only a handful of members present. This time, Reps. Thomas Massie and Alex Mooney showed up to object and call for a roll call vote. Democrats may now be forced to vote on this spending when a quorum is present instead of trying to sneak the bill through during a district work period.
If Speaker Pelosi thought this was such an important piece of legislation, she would have prevented the members of the House from leaving Washington until we had voted on the bill. But, she didn’t. At least she should have showed up for the effort to pass the bill with only 2 or 3 members of Congress on the floor. But, she didn’t.
It is an absurdity to conduct the House in this way, regardless of which party is in control. To try and run this bill through a shroud — without even a quorum — is worthy of derision.
It is these tactics that causes the entire body to be viewed with disdain — it is the swamp.
The swamp that has produced a deficit of $1 trillion a year, and more than $22 trillion in national debt, is alive and well. Efforts by Congressmen Roy, Massie, Mooney, and others, to merely require that the entire body vote on the $20 billion spending bill has been met with disapprobation by those who wish to see the perpetuation of the status quo. I am grateful to serve with Reps. Roy, Massie and Mooney, and grateful for their efforts to drain the swamp.
• Andy Biggs is a Republican U.S. representative from Arizona.
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