House Republicans unhinge bills with amendments on molesters and porn

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No one wants to be like poor Florida State Sen. Mike Bennett, who was forced to apologize last week after he “was caught on video viewing a picture of four young women in bikinis last week while his fellow senators were debating a bill dealing with abortion.”

Sunshine State News executive editor Nancy Smith later said, “The only thing is if I had to do it over again is I would probably not call the picture porn,” but instead “entirely inappropriate and risque,” yet the damage was already done and Bennett’s name will probably be forever linked to porn on the web due to his perhaps-four-seconds-long blunder.

And since no politician wants to be seen as soft on the politically incorrect subject, wielding pornography as a weapon can sometimes wreak havoc on proposed legislation.

“House Republicans on Thursday unhinged an $80 billion technology bill after forcing a vote that Democrats said would expose their members to election-year attack ads claiming they support pornography,” Jim Abrams reports for the Associated Press.

Democrats had to pull the bill after half their members voted for the GOP measure that, in addition to severely shrinking the technology bill, put them on record as supporting the firing of government workers who view or download pornography on the job.

It was the second time in a week that Republicans used such a tactic to their advantage. Last week they brought about major changes to the Cash for Caulkers bill to subsidize people who buy energy-efficient products for their homes by attaching a provision barring building contractors from hiring child molesters.

“You should be embarrassed,” House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., a moderate who works well with Republicans, shouted at the end of the debate. He said Republicans had stuck in a “little bitty provision that means nothing that’s going to gut the entire bill.”

A report at the Chronicle of Higher Education adds,

The chairman of the science committee, Rep. Bart Gordon of Tennessee, said he understood the federal government faced urgent budget problems but warned that such problems could be even worse in the future if the country failed to invest in its technological pre-eminence.

Mr. Gordon said he was especially frustrated by the apparent success of Mr. Hall in using the issue of pornography to help defeat higher spending levels for scientific research. “Nobody seriously thinks that we don’t want to deal with pornography here, for God sakes,” Mr. Gordon told lawmakers at the conclusion of the House debate. “If you vote for this,” he said of Mr. Hall’s amendment, “you should be embarrassed.”

Despite the opposition among Republicans, the bill was largely supported by industry, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers among hundreds of organizations writing in support of the measure.

The Chamber of Commerce’s senior vice president in charge of education and work-force development, Arthur J. Rothkopf, said he hoped Congress would reconsider the matter, while acknowledging the effectiveness of politically emotional issues such as pornography. “It’s an election year,” Mr. Rothkopf said.

Last week, at Politico, Jake Sherman wrote about the first time House Republicans used the tactic:

What do child molesters, casinos and swimming pools have to do with home energy efficiency tax credits?

Plenty, if you’re a House Republican.

Republicans wanted to kill a Democratic bill on Thursday — known as “cash for caulkers” — so they pulled off a procedural maneuver. On a “motion to recommit,” a legislative tactic that sends the bill back to committee, Republicans added a long list of restrictions, including one that requires home contractors to ensure that no employee “has been convicted of, or pleaded guilty to, a crime of child molestation, rape or any other form of sexual assault.” The GOP motion would also mandate that the program be eliminated if it incurs debt; a $12 million EPA advertising campaign was slashed; pool heaters do not qualify; homeowners with a gross annual income of more than a quarter-million dollars are not eligible for the program and funds cannot be used “for the purposes of conducting travel to gambling or gaming establishments in connection with official duties.”