Mumbling It Through

...Brooke felt himself to be in this position, and so took off his hold...

...Huddleston also called Senator Moss, who was back home in Utah...

...Ever since the Agriculture Committee vote Peyser had figured the tobacco-state legislators might try the unanimous consent move...

...As Huddleston proceeded with his plan, he had to bear in mind what is perhaps the primary unwritten rule of the Senate-“gentlemanly conduct” between its members...

...Right about this time Peyser started to head back towards the House chamber...

...Senator Moss have any option in the matter,” said Moss aide Ed Merlis...

...President Ford threw the bill back at Congress without his signature, saying, “I believe this bill would adversely affect our tobacco exports, lower farm income in the long run, and increase federal spending at a critical time in our economic recovery...

...Mr...

...This meant that before he could bring up the tobacco legislation, hopefully for a “unanimous consent” vote, he would have to track down Senators Brooke and Moss and warn them that the bill was coming to a vote...

...asked Speaker Carl Albert...

...The methods employed in passing this bill constitute legislative skill, not legislative chicanery...

...Secretary Butz was also present, and he made available to Ford an editorial in a Durham, North Carolina, newspaper which normally supports tobacco interests, but opposed this particular bill on the grounds that it had been passed by legislative sleight of hand...

...Is there any objection to the request of the gentleman from North Carolina...

...Peyser and Albert Quie of Minnesota, all of whom urged a veto...

...Ford accepted their recommendation and vetoed the bill...

...The Senate was to be in session that day, but it was understood that no significant legislation would be considered, which meant that senators could feel free to go home...

...In the first place, the bill for the price increase was passed last August by the House Tobacco subcommittee...

...If he had been in Washington, Moss would have prevented unanimous consent by casting a “no” vote...

...The procedures were unusual, but they were perfectly legitimate...

...A second unwritten rule of the Senate is that if you are the only senator holding up the passage of legislation, and you are not able to be present to make your view heard, then you don’t hold up legislation...

...Six of them came back from their constituencies during the August recess and approved the bill 6 to 0. The bill then went on to the full House Agriculture Committee and again received a friendly welcome...

...Mr...

...Someone requests permission to bring up a bill, and if no one speaks up, the Speaker bangs his gavel and-poof!-it’s passed...

...Ann Cooper is a reporter for the Capitol Hill News Service...

...It passed unanimously, although Rep...

...Butz recommended that President Ford veto the bill...

...The secrecy was observed...

...Unwritten Senate Rules Four days after the House passed it, the bill was thrown into the lap of Senator Walter Huddleston of Kentucky, who heads the Senate Agriculture subcommittee with jurisdiction over tobacco legislation...

...He was told that during the two minutes he was off the floor the House had brought up and passed a controversial bill raising tobac-ca price supports-a bill that tobacco-state legislators claimed was necessary to aid small tobacco farmers strapped by inflated production costs...

...There followed several weeks of bitter exchanges between Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz and tobaccostate legislators...

...Gee, Pete,” one said, “we appreciate your help on that vote...

...The bill was then read a third time and duly passed...

...Not only did he have his hold on the bill, but he had also been led to suppose that no significant legislation would come up on Yom Kippur...

...Ford then met with Senator Brooke (who already had sent the President a telegram urging a veto) and ten other Republican senators, as well as Reps...

...Peyser, who has also opposed rice and peanut support programs and would have opposed this one, was not present...

...C.), who is chairman of the Tobacco subcommittee, Carl Perkins (D-Ky...

...The next step was for the proponents of the legislation to approach the House leadership to get its informal blessing...

...The legislative route this bill took . . . was covered by a cloak of secrecy and legislative chicanery,” the Secretary told the House Agriculture Committee when ne announced he would recommend a veto...

...So on the morning of Yom Kippur, Huddleston made a transatlantic phone call to Brooke’s London hotel...

...In other words, we go from three calendar years to three marketing years...

...He was in luck, as he would later admit, having found what was perhaps the only day he could have made a successful unanimous consent move...

...The wisdom of having a tobacco productioncontrol and price-support program is not in question,” he said...

...The issue has been debated in Congress, and is provided for in permanent legislation already on the books...

...But Moss was in Utah, at best seven hours away by plane...

...To help remedy this problem, each party has what are known as “objectors”representatives assigned to keep a constant watch on the floor to stop just such moves...

...Huddleston had his eye on the calendar, where he saw that the following Monday was Yom Kippur, a Jewish holiday...

...To have the bill “held at the desk” required Senate leadership approval, and the parliamentary exchanges between floor and leadership in these cases provide a further illustration of “mumbling it through...

...But getting an increase approved by unanimous consent wasn’t quite as easy as it may have seemed to a reader of the next day’s Congressional Record...

...But Senator Huddleston took the less common step of having the bill “held at the desk,” the first move in his plan to get the bill passed by unanimous consent on Yom Kippur...

...The tobacco price-support and production-control program provides protection to the over 580,000 tobacco-producing families in the United States . . . .” He continued for a couple of minutes in this vein...

...President,” Senator Robert Byrd declared, “at the behest of Senators Huddleston and Ford, the two distinguished Kentucky senators, I ask unanimous consent that the chair lay before the Senate a message from the House of Representatives, on H. R. 9497...

...Peyser was at his desk, but the tobacco-state legislators saw their chance when Peyser went out to have his brief chat with the reporter...

...Precise 1 y what Huddleston and Brooke said to one another only they know, but Huddleston, in any event, understood that Brooke had taken his “hold” off the bill...

...He could have put a hold on the bill, even though he was in Utah, but he couldn’t have been present to implement that hold by voting in the Senate...

...Clearly it is easier to pass legislation in this way if few senators know what is going on: opponents, unaware of what is up for consideration, will not make any extra efforts to be present...

...He contends that it is the only way they can pass tobacco price-support legislation these days...

...What vote...

...But the day after Huddleston moved to have the bill held at the desk, Senator Brooke noticed the small entry in the Congressional Record on the tobacco bill, and he immediately put his “hold” on the bill...

...the bill was passed, and a motion to reconsider the bill was tabled...

...President Ford held two separate meetings, the first with Senators Helms and Huddleston, who argued that the legislation should be allowed to stand...

...on the same subject matter, and that so far as we are able to determine, the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry is not opposed to it, and has indicated that it is all riglit to pass it in this manner...

...I think it is a sneaky way of doing it...

...C.) paid a call on Reps...

...But this particular morning, for some reason, the Republican objectors, on whom Peyser had relied in the past, let him down...

...Unlike Brooke, Moss had no forewarning that this bill was coming up for a vote, so he had not put a “hold” on it...

...He spoke to the reporter for two minutes and then headed back to the cavernous House chamber, where about 50 of the nation’s 435 representatives had gathered for the mundane morning business that congressmen must dispense with before they turn to important matters...

...Jones rose to his feet...

...No one knows what’s going on unless they happen to be on the floor at the time, and even then it’s often hard to hear,” one Senate aide said...

...Finally, Senator Thurmond stood up, proclaimed . the importance of the bill, and urged its passage...

...R. 9497) to amend the computation of the level of price support for tobacco...

...Huddleston replied that the legislation was “milder” than what had already passed the Senate...

...Every year for the past five years Moss has introduced legislation to stop tobacco subsidies or phase them out...

...Carl Albert, Tip O’Neill and John Rhodes and were given permission to proceed...

...Defenders of the legislation claimed that Butz had given Ford wrong information, but what made the legislators much more emotional than Butz’s “misinformation” was his attack on the legislative tactics used to maneuver the bill through Congress...

...Peyser calls it sneaky...

...Its supporters had to be sure that no opponent was on the floor of the House at the time, since only one negative vote would kill the measure...

...The question is, did...

...The problem, as Peyser told a reporter, is that a congressman can’t be on the floor every minute the House is in session...

...HOW do you explain this...

...and Charles Rose (D-N...

...Secrecy was of the utmost importance, so as not to alert possible opponents of the measure who might then be present and attentive the following day...

...Walter Huddleston of Kentucky had won the day...

...Thus the rule of senatorial courtesy whereby senators can put “holds” on bills was, in Moss’s case, canceled out by the other rule whereby senators don’t block legislation when they are absent...

...The presiding officer, Senator Jesse A. Helms from North Carolina, duly laid H. R. 9497 before the Senate and said: “Without objection, the Senate will proceed to its consideration...

...The clerk then read the title of the bill...

...This is an absolute disgrace...

...Speaker,’’ Rep...

...Bills that are held at the desk can, in other words, be brought up for immediate vote on the Senate floor, but they can pass only if there is no dissenting vote...

...The Department claimed that the bill would make domestic tobacco less competitive in price and would cost the government an additional $50 million in repayable loans...

...Any senator can put a “hold’’ on a bill at any time, meaning that it can’t be brought up for a vote if he is not on the Senate floor...

...The Department of Agriculture had been critical of the legislation since it began its life back in the House Tobacco subcommittee...

...Mumbling It Through by Ann Cooper Shortly after the morning prayer on Thursday, September 11, 1975, Peter Peyser, Republican congressman from New York and the House of Representatives’ most’ vocal critic of the* federal tobacco price-support program, walked off the House floor to chat with a reporter in the chandeliered, lavishly ’decorated Speaker’s . lobby...

...We find that it is a bill somewhat less controversial than a bill that passed the Senate earlier...

...Thereupon the bill was ordered to be “engrossed and read a third time,” which was done...

...The normal procedure when a bill arrives at the Senate is for it to be sent to committee-in this case the Senate Agriculture Committee, where some observers feel it would have died a natural death...

...Senator Brooke then felt free to leave on a planned trip to London with Vice President Nelson Rockefeller...

...A couple of tobacco-state congressmen strolled up to Peyser...

...Jones observed, “this bill only changes one word in the present law-‘calendar’ to ‘marketing...

...Accordingly, Walter Jones (D-N...

...Butz should stop being a crybaby just because he got outmaneuvered in Congress,” shot back Huddleston in a press release...

...they managed to do it late last year when he was off the floor for a while, but the Senate never got around to voting on that bill...

...The leadership has to agree to recognize a bill and to let it come to the floor without objection...

...Speaker,” he said, “I ask unanimous consent for the immediate consideration of the bill (H...

...An aide to one of the tobacco-state legislators said that the objectors, like the leadership, were informed in advance and consented to let the tobacco bill go through...

...So he didn’t put a hold on it...

...There is no debate, there are no amendments, and the whole process takes less than a minute...

...So 1 just say that for purposes of the record...

...Officially it’s known as “unanimous consent”- the procedure frequently used for routine business and for quick approval of non-controversial measures...

...There wasn’t much opposition here because there are only eight members of this subcommittee, and they are all from tobacceproducing regions...

...When Walter Jones of North Carolina introduced the bill he didn’t even tell his fellow Tobacco subcommittee members...

...The next day the bill was brought up for a vote...

...Quite often those on the floor don’t even know what was brought up...

...The thing that burned me is that I was standing right out in the hall,” Peyser would say later...

...Tobacco-state legislators used the unanimous consent procedure for price-support legislation with just this inattention in mind...

...Ford asked Huddleston, pointing to the editorial...

...Oddly enough, in the whole debate few people mentioned that the program supports a product that the Department of Health, Education and Welfare will spend $2.5 million to warn Americans not to smoke this year...

...But like Brooke, Moss was constrained by the same unwritten Senate rules...

...John Breckinridge of Kentucky calls it “a parliamentary procedure known as ‘mumbling it through...

...Peyser asked...

...On September 10, the night before it would be brought to a vote, the bill was introduced with no fanfare in the House...

...I Ask Unanimous Consent’ Because of the health problems now linked to smoking, the pricesupport program-which guarantees tobacco farmers a minimum price for their crops-has become controversial, and the chances of passing a pricesupport increase using the normal parliamentary procedures of the House are slim...

...And so the clerk read: “Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled that Subsection B of Section 106 of the Agricultural Act of 1949, as amended, is further amended by striking the words ‘three calendar years immediately preceding the calendar year in which the marketing year begins for the crop.’ And in lieu thereof, the words ‘three marketing years immediately preceding the marketing year.’ ” “Mr...

...This legislation was a good example of how these informal Senate rules can break down,” an aide to Senator Brooke said...

...And market prices for burley tobacco this winter are expected to average above the increased support level the bill would have put in effect, which means the federal government will spend little or no money for the support program...

...Actually, the net cost of the tobacco price-support program has been only about $60 million since it began in the 1930s, according to a spokesman for the Department of Agriculture...

...As far as tobacco legislation is concerned, two of the most important senators are Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, who opposes tobacco price supports on health grounds, and Frank Moss of Utah, a Mormon, who is regarded as the Senate’s leading tobacco critic...

...Legitimate or not, Butz and the President prevailed...

...As did the bill’s proponents in the House, Senator Huddleston saw the opportunity to use a few parliamentary strategies that are not in Roberts’ Rules...

...S e n a t or Griffin then replied, noting “briefly, for the record, that we have been checking on thislegislation with members’of the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry...

...So Huddleston moved discreetly...

...When he walked back into the chamber, not one objector was in sight...

...Huddleston spoke next...

...There was no objection...

...An aide to Senator Brooke says, however, that when Brooke returned from London to Washington the next day, he was surprised to find that the sequence of events in the Senate had not been precisely as he had understood it would be in his phone conversation with Huddleston...

...How Do You Explain This?’ Late in the Senate session on Yom Kippur, then, Senators Huddleston and Ford of Kentucky, the Senate Majority and Minority Whips (Byrd of West Virginia and Griffin of Michigan), and Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina became the only Senate witnesses to passage of the tobacco bill by unanimous consent...

...The ensuing White House meetings were themselves unusual for legislation involving such small sums...