There's a chance John Boehner's rules could backfire by revealing divisions within the GOP. Boehner's open House cuts loose

In debating a 359-page government-funding measure this week, the House is also considering whether the military should sponsor NASCAR vehicles, the Federal Communications Commission should reconsider its net neutrality rules and Congress should bar Barack Obama from spending money on White House renovations.

Welcome to Speaker John Boehner’s open House.


For the first time in recent memory, Republicans and Democrats are having a field day pitching amendments to cut spending and shift money among federal accounts. In so doing, they’re taking advantage of the Ohio Republican’s promise to let the House work its will on a seven-month spending bill that already would cut $60 billion from current spending levels for federal agencies.

By Tuesday morning, 403 amendments were lined up and hundreds more were expected overnight. Not all will be offered, and some will be ruled out of order if they do come to the floor because they don’t conform to parliamentary rules.

But while the process is earning rave reviews from lawmakers who had chafed under a House more tightly controlled by both Republicans and Democrats in the past, some Republicans are angry that their priorities won’t be addressed and others are a bit confused by the complexities of writing legislative language that passes parliamentary muster. There’s also a chance Boehner’s rules could backfire by revealing GOP divisions on policy and strategy.

One Republican seething with anger is Iowa Rep. Steve King. He is making a stink about not getting a chance to gut last year’s health care overhaul law — a goal shared by GOP leaders who are, nonetheless, not ready to push that button.

“The speaker said ‘Let the House work its will.’ Well, the rules don’t allow the House to work its will,” King griped after casting a “present” vote on the rule structuring debate for the bill. He received backup from the conservative website RedState.com, on which influential right-wing blogger Erick Erickson wrote under a flashing-siren icon that disbanding the House Rules Committee “would actually be pretty good for America.”

But King’s case is an anomaly: He wanted a special favor from the Rules Committee, not equal treatment, because his amendment would have required a waiver from House rules to be in order. For most lawmakers, the process is working just fine — at least for now.

There’s always the possibility that King’s complaint could become a brushfire, gaining strength as other lawmakers feel shut out, or that GOP leaders will have to shut down the process early because it’s taking too long: They are looking to get out of town Thursday evening for a 10-day break.

Behind the scenes, GOP leaders are aware that they could run into trouble if drafting errors upend the legislative hopes of a class of 87 freshmen who have never written amendments before.

So they’ve been engaging with that class, specifically, to help design amendments that won’t die the way King’s did.

Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) acknowledged that it’s “a challenge” to manage a rule that allows so many amendments but said it’s important to give lawmakers a chance to legislate.

“The main thing we want is an open, fair hearing, so that members say they had their day in court,” he told POLITICO Tuesday.

The process is different in many ways. The standing House rules are rigged to favor spending cuts rather than increases and prevent wholesale changes to the nature of bills. But that’s always been the case. Now, Boehner is letting rank-and-file lawmakers offer a broad range of ideas.

Even Democrats are on board — for now. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), a liberal ally of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), called the open process “generally a good idea,” even adding that he thinks “there’s a limit to how open the process is, but I welcome a move in the right direction.”

“Of course, we’re starting with the Republican proposal, and their ideas are not very good,” Waxman quipped.

Waxman’s comments illustrate that Boehner has already succeeded — for better or worse — in shifting the debate over to the policy behind all these amendments.

Cuts to police and firefighters is one area that has Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) particularly exercised. He welcomes the GOP to take to the floor to defend those cutbacks.

“After a lot of these guys pat these guys on the back, they then stick a knife in their right shoulder,” Pascrell told POLITICO.

Democrats, Pascrell said, shouldn’t be waging fights on procedure.

“You know what? If the only argument I have against this is process, then I ought to keep my mouth shut,” he said.

But not everyone is buying into this open process.

Rep. Rob Andrews, another New Jersey Democrat close to his party’s leadership, claimed that the open-process label is “false advertising.” He complained that the rules don’t allow him to raise taxes on oil companies to reduce the deficit and increase spending for homeless veterans, and he expressed frustration that the House would be debating the bill for hours upon hours.

“We’ll have all of the downside of an open rule but none of the upside,” Andrews said.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), ranking member on the Financial Services Committee, wishes that he had better operations for transferring money from other accounts to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which faces impediments to implementing new regulations under the spending cuts envisioned by House Republicans. His amendment would take $131 million from the Treasury Department, IRS enforcement and the General Services Administration and give it to the SEC.

“My regret is that you can only do it within the Appropriations subcommittee,” Frank said.

For Republicans who are new to the game — or a bit rusty after years of tightly written floor rules — there are some rules of the road to remember: An amendment can be offered only as the House reading clerk reads the pertinent section on the floor — if a member waits too long, the amendment could be ruled out of order. Any amendments not received by Tuesday night are also not permitted to be offered on the floor. And members can speak for five minutes on any amendment.

Plus, if Democrats begin to try to hamstring the process on the floor, the Rules Committee can meet and narrow the rule and are able to bring it back to the floor on the same day to pass the bill. On Tuesday evening, Democrats were already taking advantage of legislative maneuvers to delay a series of votes.

But King has the far right outside the Capitol ginned up about the process — and the GOP has taken notice. He has accused the leadership of circumventing a number of its legislative promises and is vowing to keep up the fight through the debate over the debt ceiling, appropriations bills and any other short-term funding measure that comes before the House.

“The speaker has said he wants to have a rule and live by the rules. I like living by the rules,” King told reporters Tuesday. “But if the rules allow language to be written into the bill by some — their franchise is no more valuable than the franchise I have to represent my constituents.”