It had been a few years since I heard one of my favorite sounds from the House floor, as lawmakers began debate yesterday on a stop-gap budget plan that includes $61 billion in budget cuts.
"The clerk will read," is the simple order from the occupant of the chair during work on budget bills in the Congress, signifying how the body moves its way through the bill, stopping for amendments when they are offered by lawmakers.
The commonly followed order of business, known as the five minute rule, has been so infrequently used in the House in recent years, that some members who are in their second and third terms have never seen how this place usually operates.
Instead of free-flowing debates in the House, lawmakers have become used to very strict time limits and very organized debates, with limited opportunities for amendment.
It is a big change from the way I learned the ropes, and I actually spent a little time down in the Speaker's Lobby yesterday schooling some of my younger colleagues on how the debate would proceed.
When I arrived as a Page 31 years ago this summer, the House would work night after night and day after day on amendments to the dozen major spending bills, as the months of June and July would be filled with lengthy sessions and dozens of votes.
The floor was open for amendment, creating an air of uncertainty. You didn't know when the next vote was going to be, you didn't know who was going to win the next vote, you didn't know what subject might be next.
But majority rule can be sort of messy sometimes - in other words, the majority doesn't always win - so both parties got away from that in recent years by restricting amendments and making the House floor even more structured in debate.
If you were tuned in yesterday, you might have heard something like, "I move to strike the last word," or "I move to strike the requisite number of words," which technically was a way for members to be recognized for five minutes in debate by "offering" an amendment that "strikes" the last word of the bill or pending amendment.
It was a welcome sound from both parties.
Democrats took advantage of that window of unlimited debate to stage their own talkathon last night as the budget cutting debate began, as a number of more liberal members got up to voice their opposition to the GOP measure.
The first amendment took well over an hour to deal with - and with over 400 more amendments already introduced - that would mean days and days of debate.
But, there was no reason to worry, because once the clock moved past dinner time, the amendments began ticking off at a higher rate on the floor.
It was good to know that I still remembered the rhythms of the House under the five minute rule.
I thought about some of that last night as I went to a reception in the Capitol for an old family friend who was retiring from her job with the House Clerk's office.
She first came to Capitol Hill to work in 1957, two years before my parents arrived in the halls of Congress, and was finally leaving after 54 years of service.
So much time has passed by that most of the people at the reception probably had no idea that her mother was a member of the House.
The clerk will read. It had been a few years since I heard one of my favorite sounds from the House floor, as lawmakers began debate yesterday on a stop-gap budget plan that includes $61 billion in budget cuts. "The clerk will read," is the simple order from the occupant of the chair during ...
