Your Voice: Childers' Vote on 72 Hr Review Period for Bills Questioned

This installment of "Your Voice" was submitted by Jim Jinkins. Jim writes:

Last week I called the Hernando MS office and Washington DC offices of Rep. Travis Childers, Democrat, MS District 1, asking if he had signed the discharge petition for H.Res.554, which amends the Rules of the House of Representatives to require that legislation and conference reports be available on the Internet for 72 hours before consideration by the House.Initially, staffers said they had not heard of the resolution, then that "It has already been adopted".

Finally, this morning, I was told that the House Rules already require a 72-hour wait before the House begins consideration of a bill. The congressman has not signed the discharge petition because there is no need for it. I trusted Rep. Childers and his staff to be truthful, but a wise man once said,"Trust, but verify."

I searched the THOMAS website at The Library of Congress to find its most recent status for H.Res.554. Go to this page:

http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/d?d111:500:./list/bss/d111HE.lst:[[o]]&items=100&TOM:/bss/111search.html.

Scroll down by hundreds and then by ones to find the resolution's entry.

There, I clicked on the link to H.Res.554 and selected the legislative language.The significant text forbids `a rule or order proposing awaiver of rule XIII 6(c) unless a question of consideration of therule is adopted by a vote of two-thirds of the Members voting, a quorum being present'. There are similar changes to Rule XXII 8 for 'AVAILABILITY OF CONFERENCE REPORTS AND AMENDMENTS REPORTED IN DISAGREEMENT.'

To me, the difference between needing a simple majority and needing amajority of two thirds to ignore the 72-hour requirement is a significant change to the rules. We can go back through the news since January to see how much difference it has made.

I still trust Rep. Childers and his staff to be truthful. After all,I finally got a direct answer to a yes-or-no question. He has not signed the discharge petition. However, it appears I cannot trust them to tell the whole truth.

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