Sunday, March 6, 2011

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

My mom was a fan of the National Enquirer.  Their tag line was "Enquiring minds want to know".  The House Leadership wants the Representatives to know the party line on important votes, and their tag line is the Parliamentary Inquiry.

Now that I've figured out that I'm normally voting on a committee report on a bill and not the bill itself, things only get more complicated.  Out comes a floor amendment to the bill in question.  It's a good amendment, makes a bad bill acceptable.  So now I need to vote yea on the amendment, and nay on the committee report to kill the un-amended bill.  And then there's a motion to recondider the vote on the amended bill.

I can deal with picking off the petals on daisies to figure things out.  She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me...  But I'm running out of fingers to figure the number of not's of the reconsider of the amendment of the committee report to kill the bill.  What am I actually voting for?

Fortunately, the House Leadership of both parties is allowed to make a Parliamentary Inquiry (PI) of the Speaker right before the vote.  It goes something like this.  A well know party leader goes to the podium and asks something like:  "Mr. Speaker, if I believe the sun rises in the East, would I not PRESS THE GREEN BUTTON"?  The opponents then have a PI of their own.  The opposition leader gets up and asks:"Mr. Speaker, if I believe the sun sets in the West, would I not PRESS THE RED BUTTON"?  More words that these are actually said (these are politicians), but the end is always the same:  Hint, hint.

Then we vote.  For those of us with ADD or just normal attention spans after a series of speeches, the respective party leaders are now holding up a red or green card.  Your final hint.  Inquiring minds want to know.

1 comment:

  1. In India, there are so many political parties, tribes and factions that symbols are used to rally voters. A faction might 'capture' the elephant symbol to represent their point of view, then urge voters to vote for the elephant, without any other supporting material. We seem to have arrived at the minimalist approach: a red or green card.

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