Week One at the Capitol, Process and Progress?

The Senate.
If you go to www.oksenate.gov, the senate home page and if you scroll all the way down you can click on the full text of the Power Sharing Agreement between the twenty-four democrats and the twenty-four republicans. Right away we have problems. My Webster's defines power as: "possession of control, authority or influence over others." Here is how this control, authority and influence worked this week. The Pro Tempores, democrat and republican, are co-equal as are the Co-Majority Leaders. The Leaderships are supposed make co-agreements and co-decisions. One of the early session duties of the Leaderships is the assignment of bills. Under the PSA, if there is no agreement by Leaderships, the bill automatically goes to the Rules Committee, which is also co-chaired by a democrat and a republican. It looks like loss of control, authority and influence to me.

A controversial bill, almost by definition, is a bill that cannot be agreed upon. As a result, all controversial bills are now headed to the Senate Rules Committee, Co-chaired by two freshmen senators.

Picture an old car with one steering wheel in the middle, two sets of gas and brake pedals and a driver on both sides, each co-driver pushing or pulling on the steering wheel, the old careening back and forth across the center line, in and out of the ditches, knocking down fences, scattering other cars and pedestrians, making the chickens fly and the dogs bark, until finally coming to a wheezing stop in a pile of trash cans. Its Laurel and Hardy time!

I imagine that Leaderships will be busy next week reassigning bills to the appropriate committees. Once again the PSA controls. Each Standing Committee has co-equal, co-chairs. If they can't agree on the addition of a bill to the agenda, there is an appeals process back to the Leaderships, who were not able to agree on the bill in the first place. Each co-chair has the power to add three bills to the agenda without the agreement of his or her co. These are called silver bullets. Maybe the second ride will be straighter and less bumpy, or aybe there will only be six bills heard in each committee!

The House.
Last session the Republicans learned that it was a lot easier to honk the horn than it was to drive the truck. They are learning to drive but they are not there yet. Back in the advent of computers, one of my old Arkansas legislator friends was lamenting the tech changes and he said "You know when that all gets in a computer, its there! I'd rather have a front page with some signatures, a seal and some ribbons and then add the other pages later." Well, it's all "There" now in the House. It has gone paperless. Each member has his or her own laptop and reads all bills by scrolling. There is now, a large computer screen in the House lobby where you can watch the progress on the floor electronically.

They do use paper in the committees, but once the bill is passed, it goes back into electronic state with any amendments made in committee. Those who live by computer also die by computer. The House computer has gone down at least once and no one could find out anything for a while. I remember former Speaker Dan Draper, after he started lobbying, using an exacto knife to change wording in a bill so that the Conference Committee Report "Looked" right but had his changes. I suppose a competent hacker will have the same opportunity and I doubt that all they will do is change "May" to Shall."

The Republicans have a maverick in their midst and are being sorely tested. On Thursday, this representative decided to try to amend each of the hundreds of appropriation bills being considered for Third Reading and passage to the Senate. Each amendment failed by 90 something to 1 but took up at least three or four minutes simply because of the legislative process. Three or four minutes times all the bills on the agenda meant a late Thursday departure for home. The Leadership finally allowed the guy to debate one bill on principal. He is going to cause trouble all session long so I am going to name him "Hairball." It will be up to you figure out who "Hairball" is.

The deadline for moving bills out of the Committee in the House of origin is February 22nd in the Senate but March 8th in the House. That is a two week lag in time. This means that the Senate will have to wait a while to get all the House bills while Senate passed bills languish in House Committee as the House works to get all of its bills out and over to the Senate.It will be a while before we get to this point but should provide plenty of fodder.