Political scientist John Berstien offers his view on the implication of the Hastert Rule on the recent guns and immigration bill in the House. The true believers who won't vote for the bills no matter what don't matter due to their small number. The Republican moderates who would like to see the bill passed don't matter as well even if they, together with the Democrats who support the bills, constitute a majority. The rest of the mainstream Republicans are the one who decide if the bill should be borught to the floor and dicatate if it's going to be passed.If the Hastert Rule is follwoed and if a majority of the Republcans want to pass the bills, Speaker Boehner (R-Ohio) will bring the bills out to the floor (the speaker sets the legislative agenda of the House) and the bill will be passed. Does the conservatives want the bills passed? For the gun control bill, those who voted against the Violence Against the Women Act would want the bill to pass to remove the issue from the electoral agenda before the next election. However, they can't openly state their position yet, because they do not know "whether the bulk of this group would rather see the gun and immigration bills pass or not," said Berstein.
It seems the gun control bill has revived at the Senate. So far Speaker Boehner has promised that the House would respond to any bills passed by the Senate and exaime it through a lengthy debate without the usual deadlines. Even though the conservative Republicans are under the pressure of their consitutents and pro-gun lobbyist, they couldn't and shouldn't go against the 80% of Americans who favor a background check. A "lengthy debate," on the other hand, would give the conservatives weeks and months to work out ammednments that would make the bill unfavorable to the Senate Democrats, an intersting piece of information mentioned in a Reuter article.At the end, a compormise could be impossible.
The gun control bill hasn't been passed by the Senate yet. But do you feel comfortable leaving the bill to the House if it were to be passed by the Senate?
Read more about the bill here, here, and here.
1 comment:
As we learned in class, the Brady Bill, which created the seven-day waiting period when one wants to obtain a gun, went through a very convoluted process to get passed. If my memory serves correctly, the bill died, got reintroduced, rewritten, and traveled back and forth from House to Senate until it was finally passed during the Clinton Administration. I think we can expect to see the same kind of process for passing this new bill on gun control, but the public might not have the patience to wait that long in the name of safety for children. A large percentage of people favor background checks so ideological differences between parties and houses should be put aside to at least get legislation passed for that aspect of gun control. If Boehner and the House are willing to look at and consider anything the Senate passes, then maybe another gun control bill won’t take as long to pass.
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