Madam Speaker: Use the Rules!

There's an extensive commentary about whether the bailout is the right thing to do.

And there's also an extensive commentary about why the bailout failed in the House yesterday.

I think the bailout vote failed in part because the majority party didn't make good use of their most powerful ally: creative rules.

Most major legislation is brought to the House floor by using a rule. As I tell my students in my Legislative Process class, when bills emerge from committee they are placed on the House Calendar. However, very often major pieces of legislation need to be acted upon before their place on the calendar. In these instances, the majority party leadership will ask the rules committee for a rule to bring the bill up for debate earlier. And in the case of major legislation that is very carefully crafted, the majority party will ask for a rule to protect the carefully crafted compromise from hostile amendments.

In absence of a rule governing debate on a bill, nearly anything can happen. Anyone might submit an amendment, and debate might drag on for sometime. Instead, rules typically proscribe the length of the debate and the amendments that will be in order. Before taking up a bill with a rule, the rule is debate and voted upon first, and then--once the rule passes (a near-certainty)--debate will be take up under the guidelines of the rule.

For example, a rule might indicate that debate will be for one hour, with time equally divided between proponents and opponents of the bill. No points of order will be allowed, and only two amendments made by the chair of the committee of jurisdiction will be allowed.

The vote on the bailout was a difficult choice for many members, particularly members in the majority party from marginal districts or those running for higher office. Nearly all of them voted no. Had members from marginal districts voted yes, then the Democrats would have had an ample margin to pass the bill.

Why didn't those Democrats vote yes? Because the bill put them in a tough position. Much of the public is opposed to the bailout, and in this instance, those members chose to act as delegates rather than trustees. And who could blame them?

Pelosi, though, could have anticipated this and drafted a rule that would have allayed the concerns of these members. For example, she could have brought the bill up for consideration under a King of the Hill rule. This rule allows votes on several alternative versions of the bill. The bill that is in the final position is the only vote that will count.

So, one could imagine crafting several different versions of the bill to allow those members in tough re-election fights to vote for or against several other versions of the bill and then casting their vote in favor of the final version. Then they could go back to their constituents and say: "I voted against all these harsher versions" or "I voted for all these harsher versions" before I doing the "right" thing and voting for the compromise legislation.

But Pelosi didn't do that. The bill failed, and the stock markets collapsed.

Pay careful attention to what the leadership does next. Stay tuned, and follow the rule and the proposed legislation here.

$700 Billion: Where's the Fireside Chat?

I was reading the Washington Post this evening, as I typically do, and I noted a piece on the front page where folks in Manassas Park, VA were asked what they thought about the government's proposed bailout of banks. Manassas Park is notable because it is apparently a part of Prince William County that's been hit hard by foreclosures. It's one of those exburb type communites--30 miles from DC--where subdivisions have cropped up over the past decade and where gas prices hit commuters hard. Read the piece here.

In any case, despite the desperate straits folks find themselves in, hardly anyone expressed support for the government's bailout plan.

Then it dawned upon me: Where's the Fireside Chat?

If this is the greatest economic crisis since the nation faced the Great Depression, why hasn't the President appeared on national television to explain the crisis in detail so the average person could understand it? If this is so important to the national well being, shouldn't the President at least try to get public opinion behind it?

Let's put this into some historical perspective. Banks were failing all over the country in 1933, right before FDR was inaugurated. The average level of educational attainment was much lower than today-perhaps an 8th or 9th grade education. People did not understand why banks were failing, and why the federal government had called for a Bank Holiday. People were scared about losing their life savings. And so FDR, in the first of his fireside chats, spoke plainly and directly to the nation, putting them at ease, explaining how banks work and why the Bank Holiday was necessary. After the Bank Holiday ended, bank deposits soared. FDR had created a sense of national confidence despite the dire situation.

Listen to the first Fireside Chat here:



The educational attainment of Americans has gone up dramatically over the past 70 plus years. And yet, the crisis facing the mortgage and banking industry is much more complex. The average American simply doesn't understand what's going on--and yet we are expected to pledge more money than the government has spent on Iraq in an apparent bid to save those who lived outside their means. While there might be a very good reason to do this, it is absolutely necessary for the President to exercise leadership on this and to explain, carefully and patiently to the American people, why this is necessary--and necessary fast.

The bailout is no sure thing. Democrats are putting conditions on their support (some of those conditions are reasonable, while others are not) and Republicans in return are calling for their own conditions. If it is truly important to get this through Congress before they recess for the fall elections, and to do so without conditions, then the President must act and act forcefully. Maybe the President does not want to do so for fear that his low approval ratings might actually make the prospects of passage even worse. I'm not sure I agree.

But sitting back, without explaining to the nation why we should trust him, his Secretary of Treasury, his appointee to the Federal Reserve Chairmanship, and Capitol Hill's leadership, is abdicating one of his greatest responsibilities as an executive.