BURSTLast week the House Rules Committee engaged once again in what I have come to term, “stealth procedjury.” I coined this term because it has been resorted to several times already this year, as it was previously when Democrats controlled the House.
The term combines "stealth," or secretive, with two words: "procedural" and "jury-rigged" — the latter being a makeshift contraption designed to address an immediate problem.
The immediate problem the Republican leadership has is how to tamp down pressures for a discharge petition calling for full disclosure of the Jeffrey Epstein files from being adopted, sent to the Senate, and winding up on the president’s desk for a signature or veto. Whereas the simple House resolutions are mere “sense of Congress” expressions with no force and effect in law, the discharge motion makes in order a House bill that could eventually confront the president with an embarrassing choice, no matter what his reasons for opposing it.
Stealth procedjury, in House Rules Committee process terms, means taking-up items not on the original meeting notice and then tucking them in at the bottom of a special rule and providing for their automatic adoption by the House in the vote on the rule — what we call a self-executing provision.
I used to refer to these last-minute insertions as jagged gems, but that imputes more value to them than they are worth. On reconsideration, I concluded they are more like glass baubles or trinkets designed to placate certain members or factions of the majority party in return for their cooperation with the leadership. That kind of ploy can invite what appears to be legislative blackmail — all legal of course in the congressional swap shop. Politics is still all about mutual backscratching.
One example of this bauble-dangling occurred just before the August break when the Rules Committee, at the Speaker’s behest, reported a House resolution calling for full disclosure of the Epstein files. The resolution was designed to appease those Republicans who might sign a discharge petition for a bill mandating full disclosure by the Justice Department. The resolution was not considered by the House before the Speaker abruptly cancelled all legislative business that final week and sent members home a day early for their August break.
What the Rules Committee did on Monday of last week was to put out a special rule for consideration of the four scheduled matters — the energy-water appropriations bill and three disapproval resolutions of executive regulations promulgated by the Bureau of Land Management. It then tacked on to the special rule three unscheduled House resolutions.
Two of them related to the Epstein files. The first simply tabled the pre-recess resolution on full disclosure and substituted for it another resolution commending the House Oversight Committee on pursuing the Epstein investigation already underway thanks to a subpoena issued approved by a bipartisan vote in an Oversight Committee subcommittee.
The third resolution creates a select subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee on the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The resolution was introduced just last week by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) who has been investigating the matter since last Congress as chair of a House Administration Committee subcommittee on oversight.
Although the Speaker announced the creation of the new Jan. 6 committee on Judiciary last Jan. 22, together with his aim to appoint Loudermilk as its chair, the actual formal launch was delayed for the last seven months due to internal committee jurisdictional disputes.
The Rules Committee’s special rule “self-executed” the adoption of all three of those simple resolutions. It is not surprising the House adopted the rule 212-208 with ten members not voting and one Republican, Rep. Kevin Kiley of California, voting present.
Why has the leadership been engaging in all this surreptitious gimmickry? The president has made clear to the Republican leadership he wants to stop the Epstein files discharge petition in its tracks. He has referred to the Epstein imbroglio as “a Democrat hoax.”
The discharge motion was filed on Sept. 2 by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). By the end of the week it already had 216 of the 218 signatures needed. The more shiny glass baubles dangled before members on unrelated issues having appeal to the MAGA base, the better the chance of keeping any more than the current four Republican signers off the petition. The stealth procedjury was the quick and dirty way of achieving that end -- a double jury-rig if ever there was one. However, with two House Democratic seat vacancies being filled by special elections this month, it may well be too late.
Don Wolfensberger is a 28-year congressional staff veteran culminating as chief of staff of the House Rules Committee in 1995. He is author of, “Congress and the People: Deliberative Democracy on Trial” (2000), and, “Changing Cultures in Congress: From Fair Play to Power Plays” (2018).