The Humbling of Paul Ryan's Plan to Fix the Broken Appropriations Process

The state-by-state fight for gay and transgender rights has reached the floor of the House of Representatives, and it is ruining Speaker Paul Ryan’s carefully laid plans for reviving the congressional spending process.

Republicans and Democrats voted down an annual bill appropriating funds for energy and water programs on Thursday morning after Democrats succeeded in attaching an amendment to bar federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The provision drew bipartisan support only days after GOP leaders scrambled to defeat a similar amendment that Democrats tried to add to another appropriations bill—an embarrassing moment in which rank-and-file members were cajoled into flipping their votes so the measure would fail. The attempt succeeded this time, but it became moot hours later when the underlying $37.4 billion measure went down in a landslide on a vote of 305-112, with majorities of both parties voting against it. The meltdown happened so quickly that it appeared to catch the House Appropriations Committee, which wrote the bill, off guard. The committee sent out a statement from Chair Hal Rogers with a headline heralding its passage just minutes before it was voted down; it was quickly rescinded.

The defeat is less significant for this particular bill, or even the LBGT rights movement, than for what it says about Ryan’s push to return “regular order” to the appropriations process and reassert the congressional prerogative over federal spending. “Regular order” is insider lingo on Capitol Hill, but it refers to a bottom-up, committee-driven legislative process that gives more power to individual members and less to party leaders.

For more than a decade, Congress has tended to fund the federal government either through repeated stopgap measures or in one giant omnibus appropriations bill at the end of the year. Senior members usually negotiate both types of legislation in secret and then present it right before a deadline to rank-and-file members, telling them they have no choice but to pass it or shut down the government. Needless to say, this process rankles the rank-and-file, who chafe at how little say they actually have in perhaps Congress’s most important responsibility—the power of the purse.

The problem with regular order is that it generally doesn’t work as well in practice as it sounds in theory. For one, it’s messy. Ryan has promised to bring spending bills to the floor under what’s known as an “open rule,” which really means almost no rules at all. Members can demand votes on any amendment that relates to how the department in question spends money. And in an election year (or really any year), the minority party will always try to use this freedom to advance their causes and create political headaches for the majority it is trying to oust in the fall. Enter gay and transgender rights. What was once a wedge issue for conservatives has now become a weapon for Democrats, who are trying to exploit what they see as overreach by Republicans in states like North Carolina, where they have passed so-called bathroom bills to restrict transgender rights. The amendment from Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, who is gay, passed late Wednesday with support from all 180 Democrats and 43 Republicans. After winning on the anti-discrimination measure, Maloney and all but six of his Democratic colleagues voted against the full energy bill, along with 130 Republicans. Conservatives opposed it either because the LGBT language was in there, or because the bill spent too much, or both.