Regular order has been the defining cliché of Paul Ryan’s career as House speaker. He won the speaker’s gavel promising to restore those congressional best practices, then tried leading according to them. And as the messy Obamacare overhaul begins, Ryan says nothing’s changed.
The process is being followed, the Wisconsin wonk told reporters Wednesday. Everything’s perfectly all right now, he seemed to say, Republicans are fine. We’re all fine now, thank you. Except it’s really not and plenty of people are complaining.
But any judgment about regular order can’t be made until the process is over. That’s because regular order refers more or less to the rules, precedents and customs of the House of Representatives. It’s how the legislative sausage is supposed to be made and the exact opposite of what occurred when Democrats passed Obamacare in 2009.
Anything but open and honest, Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., infamously explained to the public that “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what’s in it.” And after months of backroom deals, Obamacare arrived. Now that Republicans are trying to repeal the law, they’re trying to do the opposite. Like Ryan suggested, they’re trying to follow regular order.
While Pelosi kept the bill behind closed doors, Ryan touts the fact that everyone can “go and read the bill online.” And while Democratic leadership called the shots with the help of lobbyists, the Republican insists that rank-and-file representatives are currently engaged in “a bottom up process.” Apparently, transparency requires a lot of secrecy.
Until the bill dropped Monday, no one knew any details about the repeal legislation. In fact, the majority of Republicans couldn’t even read the bill because Ryan literally hid it in a locked and undisclosed location. Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky mocked that level of secrecy last week during a grandstanding goose chase, wandering around Capitol Hill in a quixotic search of the “secret Obamacare bill.”
Now that the bill has been released, though, none of that matters. Ryan can make up for a rough start if he ensures regular from now on. That would mean that members have an opportunity to offer amendments to the bill first in committee and then later on the floor. If that happens, no one can cry foul about process.
More than a parliamentary tweak, regular order could up-end the entire repeal bill. It’d require leadership to fend off attacking amendments from both the Left and Right. And already one GOP opponent, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, has predicted its death. On Tuesday he told the Washington Examiner’s editorial board, “under regular order, it’s going to die.” But more than just this bill is at stake.
The massively unpopular bill has currently been dubbed the American Healthcare Act. That name probably won’t stick. If the speaker shirks regular order and muscles the bill through, it’ll always be remembered as Ryancare.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
