UPROAR IN THE HOUSE….Just in case anyone missed this while giggling at the antics in the House yesterday, here’s what started the fracas:
The seeds for Friday’s dust-up, the most vitriolic in years in the House, according to longtime observers, were sowed the night before when [Ways and Means chairman Bill] Thomas circulated the Republican draft of a pension-reform bill shortly before midnight and scheduled a committee vote for the morning.
When Democrats arrived Friday for the committee’s deliberations, they demanded more time to study the bill. They repaired to the committee library immediately behind the main hearing room, leaving only Stark in the larger room to try to delay the Republicans from acting on the bill.
I’m curious: what do conservative bloggers and commenters think about this? In recent years, House Republicans have routinely prevented Democrats from seeing proposed legislation, and this was just a particularly egregious example. Surely no one can defend Thomas’ action in demanding an immediate vote on a 91-page bill without even giving Democrats a chance to read it, let alone debate it.
Right?
