What if you happen to might delay at present to keep away from making an uncomfortable choice tomorrow?
For many human beings, that’s not attainable. However within the alternate actuality that’s Congress, which operates in keeping with its personal arcane guidelines and precedents and is exempt from the statutes that bind the remainder of us, a day might be as lengthy or quick because the legal guidelines of political gravity demand.
That’s the way it got here to go that Home Republicans in current weeks declared the remainder of the 12 months one lengthy day when it got here to contemplating a problem to President Trump’s tariffs. They would favor to keep away from votes on whether or not to scrap the levies, however the legislation says the Home should think about them inside a set time period.
The apparent answer? Cease time.
It was hardly the primary time congressional leaders have meddled with the legal guidelines of the universe for the sake of political expediency. By bending legislative time, Home and Senate leaders have lengthy discovered methods to purchase themselves wiggle room for negotiation, protect their prerogatives and defend their members from votes they’d quite not should forged.
4 years in the past, Nancy Pelosi, then the speaker, stored the Home in recess in a single day quite than adjourning to stretch a single “legislative day” across two calendar days. The transfer allowed her to say she had stored a promise that she had made to reasonable Democrats that she would maintain a vote on a $1 trillion infrastructure invoice by the tip of the month.
Speaker Mike Johnson’s current efforts to freeze time have been extra conspicuous — and longer lasting. Final month, he quietly pushed by means of a provision that contained a calendar gimmick guaranteeing that no lawmaker might pressure a vote this 12 months to finish Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico. He used the same trick on Wednesday to move off a vote till not less than October on the worldwide tariffs Mr. Trump introduced final week after which partially paused.
The primary measure said that “every day for the rest of the 119th Congress shall not represent a calendar day” for the needs of the emergency Mr. Trump declared on Feb. 1 to impose the tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico. The decision accepted on Wednesday used the identical language to cease any member from forcing a vote on the remainder of Mr. Trump’s tariffs by means of Sept. 30.
