Wednesday, the Senate once again drew itself into a pit of timewasting by taking time to congratulate the Steelers for winning the Super Bowl. Great. Here's the resolution:
Senate Resolution 27: A resolution congratulating the Pittsburgh Steelers on winning Super Bowl XLIII.
This resolution passed by unanimous consent, meaning (basically) that it was brought up on the floor, nobody objected to it, so it passed with no debate. This is how the Senate passes most of its stupid resolutions, making them more minor offenses than the lengthy debates in which the House partakes for its resolutions. I'm not letting the Senate off the hook for this; they still shouldn't be taking up floor time with this stupidity. However, you'll notice that the Worst Offenders list never lists senators in its "by Floor Time Wasted" section, mostly because of unanimous consent.
The point I'm trying to make here is that so long as these stupid resolutions are going to continue, the House needs a unanimous consent rule as well. The House usually takes 20-40 minutes for lofty "debate" before holding its stupid votes. They would waste much less valuable floor time if they incorporated this procedure in their rules.
And an update: the Senate may not be immune to the "Floor Time Wasted" list for long. I have recently found more accurate records of Senate proceedings, which include lofty speeches given in advance of unanimous consent resolutions. I will be including these in the time taken for the resolutions, which should increase them significantly. In the future, I will also likely be including wasteful speeches made that aren't attached to resolutions in my stats. I'm still deciding on how to count everything toward time totals, so watch for a post detailing my new scheme soon.
Friday, February 6, 2009
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