There’s more than one way to skin a cat, as Louisiana’s
legislative Republicans showed on a controversial matter. But one of their own
might employ the same to thwart them.
Yesterday, the House Insurance
Committee had a light schedule of just two bills. One, SB 173 by
Republican state Sen. Fred Mills, has generated
much conflict. It regulates the state’s response in case the U.S Supreme
Court declares unconstitutional part or all of the misnamed Patient Protection
and Affordable Care Act. Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards
actually opposed it, setting off skirmishes that continued
in yesterday’s hearing where an administration representative softened that
stance with the bill’s passage.
Those fireworks only set the stage for an unexpected
conflagration. SB 212 by
GOP state Sen. Conrad
Appel would have created some temporary reporting requirements for insurers
about commercial vehicles. It easily passed through the Senate. The room mostly
had cleared and Republican state Rep. Thomas Carmody handled
the bill and spoke about it.
Whereupon the committee’s vice chairman, GOP state
Rep. Alan
Seabaugh, offered an amendment that essentially read in the most current
active version of HB 372 by
Republican state Rep. Kirk Talbot, the
panel’s chairman. That bill, as previously
noted, would bring many statutes dealing with vehicle insurance in line
with other states with much lower rates and has won widespread support among
House Republicans.
Democrat state Rep. Chad Brown
immediately asked about its germaneness, which Talbot said it was. Democrat state
Rep. Edmond Jordan
objected to the amendments, but all Republicans present except for state Rep. Mike Johnson favored
it and all Democrats there opposed it except for state Rep. Cedric Glover.
In the vote on the amended product, Johnson also voted affirmative.
HB 372 had been put the sword by a motley collection
of trial lawyers from both parties on the Senate Judiciary A Committee.
Folding it into SB 212 suddenly cuts them out of the deal and would send it
directly to the Senate floor, where sentiment appears to favor HB 372.
That creates a situation very undesired by
Edwards, a trial lawyer by profession who receives major backing from his kind.
His allies’ resistance to it sets up a number of potential flashpoints to keep
it from reaching his desk and thereby put him in the embarrassing situation of
having to cast a veto.
The next will come during an ordinarily perfunctory
step today. After a committee deals with bills, they encounter a “second reading”
on the chamber floor where normally all amendments made in committee the
chamber approves unanimously. For SB 212, at this point a Democrat will object,
asking for a point of
order from GOP House Speaker Taylor Barras
as to whether the amendments are germane (which may come in form of questioning
whether the bill
should have had a substitute, which if invoked would have invalidated
Senate approval).
Barras almost certainly will affirm germaneness
which will bring the amendments to a vote. A member may object to his ruling,
where a majority of those present could overturn that decision, but the chamber’s
Republican majority (provided they disproportionately weren’t absent at the
time of a vote) almost certainly would vote to sustain the ruling. The same
would vote to put the amendments in on the way to a “third reading,” or bringing
the bill at a later date to the floor.
Floor action should mirror this. Democrats should
try to reverse the amendments, which should fail. Then, the bill will pass.
Proceeding on to the Senate, things will become
really interesting. The bill will come back as a Senate bill with amendments,
where the Senate must decide whether to accept those amendments, and it will
have to hear it. Keep in mind that whereas Barras and a House majority should agree
upon the amendment’s germaneness and want the bill passed, in the Senate GOP
Pres. John Alario, an ally of Edwards,
won’t want the bill to pass while a majority of senators likely do.
If so, then any Democrat motion to reject the House
amendments likely would fail, leading to report acceptance and forcing Edwards
to deal with it. Success with that would send the bill to conference, where Alario
could appoint a hostile Senate portion of that committee (Appel as the author would
be one member, but the other two would be opponents and two must approve of any
conference report for the bill to continue in any form).
So, Democrats’ best strategy asks for their own
point of order when the bill comes up about its germaneness. But the problem is
Alario would have a far weaker rationale for declaring a lack of that, because he
can’t rule on amendments as there aren’t any; at that point, the bill is the
bill. To declare the bill inadmissible would be about as brazenly political and
bad a ruling as the Senate ever has seen.
Nonetheless, he could bulldoze his way through and
contrive a rationale to prevent a vote. But, as in the House, this can be appealed.
Normally, this never happens because crossing the president can incur all sorts
of penalties, such as getting kicked off committees.
However, these are not normal times. The session
closes up shop in about two weeks, ending the four-year term of senators and
the career of Alario, who faces term limits. Except for sabotaging bills in
conference as in the example above, there’s little he can do to senators who
defy him.
Thus, it would all come down to this: if, as
expected, Alario would make such a ruling to cover for Edwards, would there be
enough Republicans (and even a Democrat here and there) not vulnerable on
prized legislative instruments to back an override, which takes a majority of
the seated Senate or 20 members?
Don’t touch that dial.
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