March 27, 2014 A couple of weeks ago I talked about the bipartisan cooperation that had taken place in order arrive at joint budget targets between the House and the Senate. This was a huge accomplishment that many of us thought would move us well down the road to completing our work and, perhaps, adjourning early. This week, however, crass partisanship has reared its ugly head and the idea of an early adjournment may be nothing more than a daydream. Unfortunately, both sides are at fault. Progress in the Senate has ground to a complete halt. It seems that the majority has decided that scoring political points in the race for governor and supplying a stage for their gubernatorial candidate is a priority over completing their responsibilities as legislators. In addition to the daily attacks on the Governor, Senate Democrats are now attempting to hijack a legislative committee in order to trump up baseless issues to further their attacks. Without consulting House leadership, Senate Democrats scheduled a meeting yesterday of the joint House-Senate Oversight Committee at a time already reserved for House committee meetings making it impossible for House members to be present. In addition, three more Oversight Committee meetings have been requested for next week for unspecified reasons, an unprecedented action. Here in the House we continue to make progress on the items that need to be accomplished to end the session, but we also are not immune to blatantly political maneuvers by those with a singular agenda. The remarkable accomplishments that the House has achieved over the last two years have come about because we have relegated the extremely divisive and controversial issues to the back burner; with a divided Legislature both sides have to put their partisanship aside for progress to occur. Yesterday, a House Republican undertook a parliamentary maneuver to bring one of the highly divisive issues to the floor. This individual represented only a very small minority of House Republicans but if his action had succeeded it would have brought the House to the same standstill that the Senate currently suffers. Fortunately, leadership was able to block the move under the rules and we were able to avoid a floor fight that would have destroyed the cooperation in the chamber for the remainder of the session. I have received correspondence from several constituents on the issues that our members attempted to bring up yesterday. While I don’t disagree with those issues per se, I am opposed to the yearly quixotic attempts to rehash those issues in the House. The House established our position on these issues our first year in the majority in 2011; those positions have not changed. Attempting to bring them up every year only serves to invigorate the minority and perpetuate the perception that we are tilting at windmills. We simply need to forego the drama and get back to the business that the people of the state of Iowa have elected us to do.
