House Republicans are pushing a new anti-regulation bill, but have run into some trouble. An unfortunate typo, for example, means the bill would block all new major regulations until unemployment hits 94%.
Today, the same bill stumbled again because of another typo — the replacement references bill “H.Res. 783,” when it should have said “H.Res. 738.”
Republicans want Democrats to simply go along with easy procedural fixes, but the Dem minority isn’t in a cooperative mood. It led to this strange appeal from Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) this morning.
For those who can’t watch clips online, Foxx, overcome by emotion, decided to bring the Aurora massacre into the debate.
“A mistake was made. And then in attempting to correct the mistake, an extraordinarily minor other mistake was made. I would appeal to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to say, ‘We are human beings. We know how to forgive mistakes.’ Neither of these mistakes was made by a member. We’re quite willing to overlook mistakes like this in the past.
“And I think in the spirit of comity, in the spirit that was established on this floor, this morning, we should move on, get to the work that the American people sent us here for, and understand as was quoted this morning by one of our colleagues — our time is very precious. Don’t waste it by playing gotcha games. Think about what we discussed earlier.”
The “time is very precious” was apparently in reference to the mass shootings.
Let me translate Foxx’s remarks: “We’re trying to push a right-wing anti-regulation bill, which we know has no chance of becoming law, but which we hope to exploit in the election, confusing voters who don’t know better. Democrats aren’t going along, helping us overcome legislative incompetence, and we think that’s wrong.” If our “time is very precious” and shouldn’t be wasted, House Republicans could take some time to work on real legislation, and give up on the absurd notion that existing regulations are responsible for high unemployment. Indeed, this bill is deeply ridiculous. A former Republican congressman, Sherwood Boehlert, recently said “it would be difficult to exaggerate the sweep and destructiveness of the House bill,” noting that its restrictions would prevent the government from helping out the housing market, consumers, or the financial markets. Is it really any wonder that Democrats aren’t eager to help the GOP majority pass this nonsense?
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