What's Happening in the House?

*** UPDATE 5/27 ***

With a only week left in the 81st legislative session, bills should be flying out of the House and Senate, but since May 22, there has been a massive slow-down in the House of Representatives. What’s going on?

In short, Democrats are using a legislative strategy called “chubbing”—excessive questioning and offering of amendments on non-controversial bills—to slow the legislative process so that they can avoid a debate on the contentious Voter-ID Bill (SB 362).

Since Friday morning, the House has been discussing the Local and Consent calendar, which is the calendar on which non-contentious bills are placed. Usually the House goes through Local and Consent at lightening speed because there is little debate on these bills. In fact, there is a rule that if bills on Local and Consent are debated for more than ten minutes, they are killed. It is assumed that if a bill takes more than ten minutes to debate, it is a controversial bill. The Democrats are talking for the better part of ten minutes on every bill—not long enough to kill the bill, but long enough to cause a slow-down—so that they don’t get to Voter-ID.

The last day to hear Senate bills on second reading in the House is Tuesday at midnight. This means that if the Democrats can keep talking about Local and Consent bills until Tuesday, then they could potentially kill Voter-ID without ever having to consider the bill on the floor.  Of course, this means that all of the other bills that don’t get heard will also die. To stop this from happening, Democrats are trying to hear bills out of order, but they need a 2/3rds vote to do this and Republicans are having none of it.

As of Sunday afternoon, Democrats had stopped chubbing Republicans bills and were only talking at length about bills filed by Democrats. However, there is no compromise on the horizon and no one knows what will happen next.

*** UPDATE *** Monday morning began with more chubbing, but the House has since finished the Local and Consent calendar. They are now back-tracking to Thursday's Major State calendar which includes debate on the Top 10% Rule (SB 175) and Unemployment Insurance (SB 1569). As of now, its just a race to Tuesday night to see whether or not the House gets to Voter ID.

*** UPDATE *** The Democrats were successful in their attempt to chub until Voter ID died. They spent all day and night on Tuesday talking about Local and Consent bills on third reading and didn't get to Unemployment Insurance (SB 1569) until about 11:30 PM. At midnight they had not finished debate on the bill, so it (along with Voter ID and many other important bills) died. Though the outlook is bleak, all House rules can be suspended with a 2/3rds vote, so no one will know until June 1st what will actually get passed.