By one key measure, it is now official: This is the most authoritarian Congress in history.
The House Rules Committee, meeting in its ornate chamber on the third floor of the Capitol on Monday night, sent two bills to the House floor under “closed” rules — that is, legislation that must be rubber stamped in toto, without being amended by so much as a comma. That brings the number of closed rules in this Congress to 84, beating the previous record of 83 set in 2014, according to the Democrats’ tally (a Republican tally counts one fewer). And here’s the truly remarkable part: Republicans have another seven months in this Congress to run up the score.
There are various explanations for this. But what this means in practical terms is the GOP majority has used parliamentary maneuvers to block votes on amendments to legislation that would likely pass with broad bipartisan support — on outsourcing jobs, immigration, gun safety, disaster relief, Social Security, Medicare, the environment, prescription drug costs, Pell Grants, national security, criminal-justice reform, veterans’ benefits, drinking water, child nutrition and maternal health.
