The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee slammed the head of the House Rules Committee on Tuesday for a “dead-of-night” move to undo the committee’s vote to require women to register for the draft.
The House Rules Committee met Monday night to decide which amendments would be debated when the fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act is on the House floor this week. In the committee’s rule, an amendment from Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, and chairman of the Rules Committee, to strip out language requiring women to register for the draft is considered as adopted.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., criticized the move in a statement, since it avoids any debate of the issue by the full House.
“This is an exceptional situation. The Rules Committee chairman is so concerned about a vote on women’s equality in the military that he has created a provision ‘considered as adopted’ that overturns a measure voted on by the Armed Services Committee, ignores the mandatory scoring requirement, and passes itself, avoiding a separate vote by the full House,” Smith said. “This is a dead-of-night attempt to take an important issue off the table, and I think people will probably see through this tactic.”
The House Armed Services Committee voted 32-30 last month to requiring women ages 18-26 to register with the Selective Service. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., introduced the amendment but voted against it, saying that he wanted to force a conversation in Congress on the issue.
The Senate Armed Services Committee included a similar provision in its draft of the defense policy bill.
