Brookings gives Martin Hyde’s argument on Oct 4.
Gawker, Oct 13: Republicans Changed The Rules of Congress to Force a Shutdown: Why don’t the Democrats in Congress just force a vote on the spending bill already passed by the Senate? Because less than two hours before the government shutdown, House Republicans enacted a special rule that prevents anyone but the majority leader from introducing a bill to fund the government. So apparently there was a special suspension of rules that blocked the House from considering a clean CR.
But wait. Weigel of Slate has some commentary on this (Oct 14)! Unfortunately I can’t parse one of his sentences, so I don’t know what he’s saying. At least I tried. Did the House GOP change the rules to prevent a Democratic shutdown fix?
Oct 15: Discharge petition has 196 of 218 signatures needed. Invitations sent out to 30 Republicans who told media they would vote for clean CR. More: As 14 Democrats on Saturday – the first day allowed under the discharge rules – took to the House floor and requested a vote on the Senate-passed resolution, Republican leaders repeatedly blocked the vote citing leadership prerogative. Republicans angered Democrats with a last-minute rule change that preserves the power to block a vote on the Senate-passed bill. Amid Confusion, House Democrats Stick to Discharge Petition - Government Executive
So do we need 218 signatures or 14? If I understand this properly, there were 2 routes to a clean CR, one blocked because the Dems couldn’t find Republicans willing match claims made to the press with deeds, and the other due to a special rule change having to do with bills returned from the Senate.
I don’t really know a lot about parliamentary procedure but my understanding is there was a rule change firstly that changed the timing of the discharge petitions. My earlier statement that they could have passed one the day before the shutdown was incorrect, instead at some point in recentish history House rules were changed so that you could only file a discharge petition to force a vote on legislation that had been idled for 30 days.
So Oct 12th was the first day the discharge petition could be signed (link), and that’s what happened that day–but not enough Republicans (if any) signed it, so it never went anywhere. I also believe in addition to the 30 day rule, they also added some “calendar” rules as well, so not only can you only file a discharge petition on legislation that has been sitting there unattended for 30 days it can also only be done on certain dates in the calendar each month (the Politico article makes mention of this.)
My understanding is that what was holding Pelosi & Gang up until the 12th was actually the calendar issue, not the 30 day issue. This is because several recent “clean CR” bills had only very recently been voted on and would not have been sitting for 30 days even by 10/17. Instead, Pelosi was running a discharge petition to get a vote on legislation from some months back that would amount to essentially a clean CR/debt-ceiling increase [This legislation was actually a Republican-originated bill, I don’t know the history of it or why it existed.] That would have caused procedural problems even if it had passed the House, because it was a bill that had originated in the House and not the Senate. So under Senate rules of procedure once it was in that body it would have to pass two cloture votes with 30 hours in between the votes to have passed.
In any case, without delving into procedural matters any further suffice to say not enough Republicans signed Pelosi’s discharge petition on 10/12 for any of this to happen. If they were unwilling to sign the discharge petition, because they were afraid of angering their leadership, I don’t see how an actual vote on the bill would have fared any differently. The 87 Republicans that ultimately voted for the bill were doing so with the blessing of Boehner, a different situation than doing so against his wishes.
Interestingly if the bill wasn’t on this issue, but was some issue that the Tea Party wanted to see passed and so did the Democrats (I’m struggling to imagine what that would be), it seems more likely you’d have GOP defections. The Tea Party Caucus basically seems to ignore Boehner’s position as Speaker and doesn’t care about angering him. But the moderate Republicans and the more mainstream old school Republicans who were willing to sign the clean CR/debt-ceiling bill have a much stronger respect for party leadership and “following the rules” than their Tea Party colleagues so they were unlikely to go against Boehner.