William A. Jacobson
Legal Insurrection
1/5/2011
From David Dayen of Firedoglake, whose election coverage I enjoyed, comes what may be the first race card played during the Boehner era (emphasis mine):
The new House of Representatives will be sworn in at noon today. We have a pretty good sense of their schedule of events for the first few weeks before the State of the Union address, and because the Senate is leaving town (another brilliant Democratic tactical decision), they will have Congress all to themselves.
First we’ll have the adoption of the new rules, which will allow tax cuts but not new spending, set budget caps based on the whim of the Budget Committee Chair, exempt health care repeal and the Bush tax cuts from stringent budget rules, and reduce the power of the non-voting representative from Washington DC, because it wouldn’t be a Republican majority if they weren’t taking an African-American’s voting rights away.
Umm, the only times DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton had the power to “vote” were when the House acted as a Committee of the Whole.
Here is Boehner’s position on why even such limited votes were improper:
“Speaker-designate Boehner appreciates that DC Vote stopped by today to share their concerns. He continues to believe, however, that delegates should not vote in the committee of the whole because they constitutionally cannot vote on the House floor.”
Call this a power play, if you want. But the race card?
Everything has changed; nothing has changed.
