Here is a shred, but examples are easy to locate.
I challenge you to find any similar example from the 40 years to which you claim the Republicans were excluded.
yuricareport.com
Factious Republicans Are Excluding Democrats from Participating in the Legislative Process
While Democrats were careful to include the Republican minority party in conference committee meetings when they were in control of Congress, the Republican faction has now resorted to excluding virtually all Democrats, including the Minority leader of the Senate, Tom Daschle, from even attending conference committee meetings. This is a violation of the Constitution, which we’ll look at below. First let’s consider these facts:
The Medicare Bill had only two minority senators appointed to the conference committee (Sen. Max Baucus of Montana and Sen. John Breaux of Louisiana) and zero minority members from the House. The Energy Bill had zero members of the minority party present.
When Democrats attempted to attend the conference meeting on the Medicare Bill chaired by Thomas, he stopped the meeting until they left. Thomas also summoned Capitol police to actually evict or exclude the Democrats from the meeting room. But the police officers refused to evict the Democrats—no doubt because they were aware that such an act was unconstitutional and that the officers could in fact be sued and held personally liable for such a deed.
When the House considered the annual appropriations for government spending for the 2004 fiscal year, not only were the Democrats excluded from the conference committees, but they were also excluded from participating in the debate on the House rules for the spending bills. In addition, the House violated existing laws and combined seven appropriation bills into one gigantic package. According to Tom Daschle, Republicans inserted passages that “had already been rejected by one or both Houses of Congress.”
Senator Robert Byrd called attention to the fact, “Under pressure from the White House, provisions that were approved by both the House and the Senate have been dropped…and controversial provisions that were written as one-year limitations were…mutated into permanent changes in authorization law.” Senator Byrd also pointed out, “There are many provisions within this package that never came before the Senate.” One of the bills, Senator Byrd said, “was never even debated in the Senate, let alone adopted.”
This is fraud and it clearly violates the rules of each House. The Senate rules read:
“Conferees shall not insert in their report matter not committed to them by either House, nor shall they strike from the bill matter agreed to by both Houses. If new matter is inserted in the report, or if matter which was agreed to by both Houses is stricken from the bill, a point of order may be made against the report…” |
