The Oct 20 floor session was chaotic. Here are what some of our journalists have to say:
Christiane Amanpour
The Republicans held the floor, but the Democratic leadership swept parliamentary procedure. Minority Leader Hakeem Jefries was quick to call out Speaker of the House Rep. Steve Scalise when he accepted Rep. Michael Burgess' motion to refer HR005 back to the Rules Committee for further consideration; saying, “We didn’t even vote on the previous bill (HR002 which had just become HR003), how are we supposed to vote on another amendment?” Rep. Judy Chu also took to her feet on multiple occasions throughout the session, checking Speaker Scalise and the rest of his party’s errors. What does it say about our government system when the Speaker of the House has to apologize several times after fumbling over the rules and regulations of the House?
While the Democrats had a beneficial day image wise, the Republican party was triumphant in passing the rules and amendments to Rep. Randy Webber’s HR002 bill, “Make American Borders Safe Again.” With Rep. Maxine Waters and Rep. Pramila Jayapal absent from the left side of the chamber, the Republicans were unchallenged in the voting process. The Democrats presented the holes in HR002, pointing out grammatical errors in the bill itself; Rep. Ilhan Omar asked, “How, why, where?” in respect to funding. Friday’s floor session was a prime example of how Republicans are showing party loyalty, and voting together on a bill that is riddled with contextual errors. It’s disheartening to see how an agenda, however unprepared it may be, be pushed through legislation without the proper amount of debate time and bipartisan effort. All week, the Democratic caucus has discussed how to remain united in the minority, but little has been said about gaining the trust and support across the aisle.
Maureen Dowd
To say this floor session was entertaining would be an understatement. My fellow journalists were thoroughly entertained and were eating up all the arguing between members of both parties. I already knew this floor session would be entertaining when the morning business speeches were being held. Representative Khanna spoke about his desire to ban PAC money and establish term limits on Congressmen and Supreme Court Justices. While on the other side of the aisle Representative Jim Jordan spoke about his new bill that he co wrote with Representative Webber on a 6 week abortion ban.
Things continue to amp up during the official discussions and votes over bills. The huge debate and discussion mostly revolved around the bill “Making the American Borders Safe Again”. Democrats were adamant on this bill not passing while Republicans seemed to have unanimously agreed that this bill deserved to be passed. This contradicts what Rep. Katie Porter stated in the Democratic Caucus meeting on Wednesday. She spoke about how after talking with Congressmembers after the Rules Committee, the democrats voted in favor of the bill because of the Speaker’s support and role in it. All I got to say is that the democrats actually seem to be making a genuine effort on bipartisan issues as shown through the “Help Your Veterans Act” while Republicans seemed completely unwilling to even listen to reason. Not only was the bill completely disorganized and overall just a badly written bill, there seemed to have been no thoughts in the Republican’s brains when they voted for this bill. If the Republicans had a brain in their head they would have seen the errors in the current bill, voted against it, and come up with a much better written bill that still held the same ideals. Instead the Republicans are going around like mindless zombies and only listening to their leaders and not having an individual coherent thought.
Not only that, but there were many moments of disorganization in the floor session such as democratic members correcting the Speaker on many mistakes on his part, argumentation between members on whether a motion is allowed or not, and strange times for calling a recess. All I can say on these accounts is that Speaker Steve Scalise really needs to learn how to control Congress before Congressmembers soon start to become exasperated with him and get him out of that position.
Megyn Kelly
This floor session was very inefficient. Michelle Steel (Sammy Amer) calls out the extreme terrorism in the House of Representatives, not just Omar (Bilel Harrat). Omar is a disgrace to the Democratic party with the way she acts. The entire floor session, her feet were up, bright yellow Crocs, “chillaxing” like she was in her living room watching TV.
Besides that, Many democratic members, such as Jayapal (Arsh Goyal) and Waters (David Range), did not even bother to show up. As well as, were they even paying attention? Katie Porter (Antoinette Damico) voted "NAY" when voting, then proceeded to scream "YAY, YAY, YAY" loudly on the floor to a "Motion to read the bill (HR 002) line by line," and her vote would not have counted for anything due to the Republican majority. If the Democrats had done their job and read the bill, they would not have had to spend time voting on this motion. We could have been voting on more critical bills. Chu (Jasmine Torres) makes it her job to annoy the speaker by interrupting him every chance she gets. The speaker, Steve Scalise (Ryan Sadaghiani), had to repeatedly call for order in the house because people were talking while it was Representative Burgess's (Jacob Alt) time to speak. The speaker slams the gavel and says, "Please take your conversations outside," directing this comment to Representative Thanedar (Henry Lazarus), whispering in AOC's (Penelope Burwell) ear.
The only good thing from the session was the "Help Your Veterans Act" being extremely bi-partisan. At first, Gaetz (Bashir Hassan) objected to the Veterans Act bill, saying, "It lacks substance; while it does address one issue that veterans face, there are still many more issues." However, after hearing testimony from both sides, he favored the bill because it is a huge step to help Veterans. Representative Gaetz took the time to share that Representative Porter and Pocan (Hayden Johnson) approached him during recess, showing support and interest, saying they are more than happy to work on a bill with him regarding the Veterans bill to give veterans better healthcare.
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