more power to the referee

The most powerful man in America, at the moment, is a parliamentarian.

As Democrats try to salvage health care reform, there is one man who above all others will help determine its fate, and he is not Barack Obama or Harry Reid or even a member of Congress. In fact, odds are you've never heard of Alan Frumin, the Senate parliamentarian. But when it comes to the complex budgetary procedure known as reconciliation, the filibuster-proof process which Democrats hope to use to make certain fixes to the Senate bill, Frumin is "the defense counsel, he's the prosecution, he's the judge, he's the jury and he's the hangman," says Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the top Republican on the Budget Committee.

It will be up to Frumin to decide what parts of the previously passed Senate health care bill Senate Democrats can and cannot amend with a simple majority of 51 votes. House Democrats, who are being asked to pass a Senate bill with which they have some real disagreements, are counting on their Senate colleagues to make a certain number of tweaks after the fact, but that is no easy task.

The problem in using reconciliation is twofold: 1) it's open to amendments and many Republicans Senators, including Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, say they plan on filing hundreds of amendments, potentially gumming up the Senate for months; and 2) under a provision known as the Byrd rule — named after Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia — every provision passed through reconciliation must be deemed relevant to the underlying budget by the parliamentarian.

Or, in other words, "germane to the resolution," a staple of Robert's Rules of Order and classic parliamentary procedure. (The same general principle forbids amendments that merely insert "not" into bills or resolutions as a way of negating their impacts, except in the case of an obvious typo.)

Read the whole thing to learn about the fascinating intricacies of the Senate's parliamentary procedure--and what would make a parliamentarian say, "The rules are perfect and if they're all changed, the rules are still all perfect."

changes in Student Congress, Public Forum debate rules

Bill Nicolay, director of forensics at Snohomish High School, sends along word of NFL rule changes to Student Congress and Public Forum debate. The highlights, which I've edited only for formatting:

Public Forum

• Final focus goes from one to two minutes
• Ballots will be redesigned
• No reading of evidence in Crossfire (this seems to mean that competitors should be discouraged from asking for cites during crossfire)

Congress

• Will now be called “Congressional Debate” rather than Student Congress
• Preferential ranking by judges becomes the preferred method of advancing students to either a super congress (if used) or straight to nationals (if no super congress).  However, ranking by judges could be used to produce a slate of candidates for student vote [via preferential ballot], should a district choose to do so.  Base and board vote are gone.
• Standardized ballots for congress ranking will be provided to all districts
• Both the authorship/sponsorship and first negation speeches will be followed by two-minute questioning periods.  I’m assuming all other speeches remain at one minute (not addressed).
• Committee meetings may not be scored
• This may be a big one, depending on current district procedure: A total of two three-hour sessions of debate is required to legitimize the congress, so congress moves from five to six hours (plus time for setting up), meaning that it may no longer be doable in a single day along with speech, since it all events have to end by 10:00 p.m.  There is language which says that “if a district offers a super session, it has the flexibility to have additional smaller preliminary chambers before advancing students to the super session.  I believe the key term here, “smaller,” refers to chamber size and not time, because...
• Congress sessions are limited to 18-20 students, and for each student beyond 20 we have to add ten minutes to the session.
• Presiding officers may be selected or an adult may serve.  No provision or language was given regarding scores received by presiding officers.
• All nationals legislation will now be vetted by Nationals Office Staff and may be approved, rejected, or improved and resubmitted.  Each district can submit two items of legislation.
• Affiliate chapters can now enter as many entries as charter chapters (based on the manual table).

I like the added minute in PuFo--that "final focus" has always been a waste of fevered breath. In Congressional Debate, I have mixed feelings about extending question time for the first speech in negation, if only because question time tends to turn into Thinly Disguised Speeches.

Mr. Nicolay also noted that a committee is exploring the use of laptops in LD (I'm not yet convinced) and in extemp (which needs to happen yesterday--otherwise, how many forests of magazine trees must die?).