This probably shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did, and disappointed me as well: Nancy Pelosi has proposed rules changes to reverse the House reforms which were put in place as part of the Contract with America, reforms which
were designed to open up to public scrutiny what had become under this decades-long Democrat majority a dangerously secretive House legislative process. The Republican reform of the way the House did business included opening committee meetings to the public and media, making Congress actually subject to federal law, term limits for committee chairmen ending decades-long committee fiefdoms, truth in budgeting, elimination of the committee proxy vote, authorization of a House audit, specific requirements for blanket rules waivers, and guarantees to the then-Democrat minority party to offer amendments to pieces of legislation.
It would seem that Speaker Pelosi doesn’t want the House GOP to be able to hold her caucus accountable for their actions and decisions, and doesn’t want the public to be able to keep track of what they’re doing; and she certainly doesn’t want the House GOP to have any more input into legislation than she absolutely has to allow them. Sauce for the goose apparently isn’t sauce for the gander, in her book. Human Events’ Connie Hair may well be right to conclude,
Pelosi’s proposals are so draconian, and will so polarize the Capitol, that any thought President-elect Obama has of bipartisan cooperation will be rendered impossible before he even takes office.
HT: The Anchoress