[Congressional Bills 109th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 253 Laid on Table in House (LTH)]
109th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 253
Raising a question of the privileges of the House.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
May 3, 2005
Mr. Conyers submitted the following resolution; which was laid on the
table
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Raising a question of the privileges of the House.
Whereas the Committee on the Judiciary conducted a markup of the bill H.R. 748,
the ``Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act,'' on Wednesday, April
13, 2005 and ordered the bill reported on that same day;
Whereas the Committee on the Judiciary subsequently reported H.R. 748 to the
House on Thursday, April 21, 2005, with an accompanying report
designated House Report 109-51;
Whereas, during the markup of H.R. 748, Representatives Nadler, Scott, and
Jackson-Lee offered in good faith a total of five amendments to the
bill, all of which failed on party-line votes;
Whereas, because Representatives Nadler, Scott, and Jackson-Lee called for
recorded votes on their amendments, under section 3(b) of Rule XIII, the
votes were published in House Report 109-51;
Whereas, although it is the long and established practice in House reports to
describe recorded votes with objective, nonargumentative captions, the
Committee on the Judiciary majority departed from this practice in House
Report 109-51 by captioning these five amendments with inflammatory,
inaccurate captions implying that these three Members of Congress
condoned the criminal behavior of ``sexual predators'';
Whereas, as one example, while an objective, nonargumentative description of one
of Representative Nadler's amendments would read, ``exempts a
grandparent or adult sibling from the criminal and civil provisions of
the bill,'' and is in fact the language the Committee on the Judiciary
used to caption this amendment in past reports on this legislation, the
caption in House Report 109-51 was instead, ``Mr. Nadler offered an
amendment that would have exempted sexual predators from prosecution
under the bill if they were grandparents or adult siblings of a minor.''
(Similar problems occurred in describing amendments offered by
Representatives Scott and Jackson-Lee.);
Whereas, when Representative Sensenbrenner, the Chairman of the Committee on the
Judiciary, was asked about this language and given the opportunity to
correct it, both in the Committee on Rules and on the House floor, he
instead explained that it was his purpose and intention to include these
derogatory and inaccurate captions in House Report 109-51;
Whereas committee reports are official congressional documents to which American
citizens will refer when seeking to interpret the bills they accompany;
Whereas, although the committee markup and reporting process gives Members ample
opportunity to debate, characterize, and criticize each other's views,
committees have a ministerial, institutional responsibility to
accurately report the proceedings of committee activities;
Whereas the vote captions published in House Report 109-51 appear to be
purposefully inaccurate and misleading, and therefore belittle the
dignity of the House and undermine the integrity of the proceedings of
the House; and
Whereas this unprecedented manipulation of a traditionally nonpartisan portion
of a committee report constitutes an abuse of power by the majority of
the Committee on the Judiciary: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) finds that the Committee on the Judiciary purposefully
and deliberately mischaracterized the above-mentioned votes in
House Report 109-51; and
(2) directs the chairman of such committee to report to the
House a supplement to House Report 109-51 that corrects the
record by describing the five amendments with nonargumentative,
objective captions.
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