Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Sunday slammed the legislative process used by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to ram through the Democrats’ legislation.
Gingrich told John Catsimatidis, host of New York WABC 770 AM radio’s “The Cats Roundtable,” that members of the House are acting like “robots” in voting in-step with Pelosi. He said the “machine-like” process is “a total collapse of the legislative process.”
“I think that it really tells you how the system is evolving that they’re ramming through all of this legislation,” Gingrich said of the House. “They have a five-vote margin, and basically, they’re saying to their members, ‘You don’t have to read anything. You don’t have to know what’s in it. We don’t have to have any hearings. You can’t offer any amendments. All you need to know is show up and vote yes.’ And It is the most machine-like House I can remember going back to Joe Cannon in around 1905. And these folks don’t represent anybody except Nancy Pelosi. And so, they walk in. They’re told, ‘We’re bringing up this next bill and vote yes.’ And they go, ‘Absolutely.’ And it’s a total collapse of the legislative process.”
“[T]he Democrats are expected to automatically vote yes no matter what. I mean, it’s working, but it has nothing to do with a free society or a representative government,” he continued. “It’s just pure machine politics. And that to me has been probably the biggest surprise of what’s happened so far this year.”
Gingrich later added, “[Y]ou’re getting an automatic, robotic, you know, sort of like Pelosi’s robots are walking out there, and they’re voting yes automatically. If the Republicans offer an amendment — even if it’s a smart amendment — they vote no automatically. The same thing is happening in the Senate.”
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