The House has taken up the rule governing the debate on the

Department of Homeland Security Appropriations bill

, (TCS ANALYSIS OF THE HOUSE FY2008 DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY SPENDING BILL) the bill itself will follow passage of the rule.

As you might imagine, there will be fireworks on the bill from the minority. Of course the earmark disclosure issue will be front and center. One thing that I have been hearing is at the conclusion of the debate on the Rule, the Republicans will force a vote on moving the previous question. Defeating the PQ, as geeks refer to it, in this case would force a debate to amending the House Rules to make challenges to meeting earmark disclosure subject to a debatable point of order.

In simple English: right now if you either a) put a list of earmarks in the report, or b) a statement that there aren’t any earmarks, then you avoid any challenges. Rule XXI 9 (c) eliminates points of order is either those two conditions are met. It doesn’t matter if they aren’t accurate – for instance, TCS found 53 earmarks that weren’t disclosed in the report accompanying the Defense Authorization (50 Defense Earmarks Not Disclosed by House Defense Committee). And despite a statement to the contrary, the first version of the Emergency Supplemental contained an earmark (When An Earmark…Isn’t) for Stennis Space Center in MS as well.

The proposed change would change XXI 9 (c) to allow a point of order that would be debatable (20 minutes equally dividable and of course defeatable) but would at least allow a challenge on the substance. My understanding is that the Republicans will keep bringing this up with each appropriations bill.

Finally, on the earmark machinations. The Democrats came to power promising greater openess and transparency, withholding earmarks while hundreds of billions of dollars in spending bills are debated makes a mockery of that process. The appropriations committee should vet all the earmarks – that’s their job. And we understand better than most that it is tough work and takes time. But if the job isn’t done, they shouldn’t force half-baked appropriations bills on the House floor just to make an arbitrary timeline. The Senate is just considering their appropriations bills in subcommittee this week. Like years past, the House will be done and sitting on their hands as the Senate plods forward. There is no need to rush, they should move deliberately and allow taxpayers elected representatives debate on these bills and earmarks we all know will be inserted at some point.

And that gets to the last point. I understand Chairman Obey has indicated that earmark amendment votes are largely “pro forma” and that they lose anyway. That misses the point of our democracy. One of the biggest sports clichés is for the announcer to say right after an big upset, “that’s why they play the game”. And the “game” in Congress is far more important than any sports games. In fact the debate and actually where individual members vote is almost as important as the vote itself. To use another cliché, in Congress it is often not whether you win or lose but how you play game. The first time an amendment to cut the Bridge to Nowhere came up in the Senate, it only received 15 votes. But we know what happened with that.