Fake Transparency…

5/17 Update: The Senate has abandoned S1365 and replaced it with S1437 which is mostly the same.  Meaning it is still no good.

Contact your Senator today and tell them to vote no on S1437 and tell them to demand a recall of H3047 from committee!  The vote on S1437 will likely come Wednesday or Thursday.

5/13 Update: The full Senate will vote on the fake transparency bill S1365 today. Tell your senator to VOTE NO.

Under the leadership of Sens. McConnell and Martin, the Senate Rules Committee unanimously passed a rules change late Wednesday that would:

• Record every Senator as voting yes on every voice vote.
• After the voice vote, this rule change will allow each Senator to go to the clerk and ask that their “recorded vote” be changed to no!

Read S1365 it for yourself. This rule makes an incorrect record of every vote that is not unanimous. Worse, it allows the Senators to blatantly game the system. And this is what Martin and McConnell call transparency!

A quick report of the hearing Wednesday morning in the Judiciary subcommittee on H3047, requiring a roll call vote on every law passed and on every section of the budget.

Immediate action required:

Please contact your Senator and ask him to:

• Make a motion to recall H3047 from committee, and to
• Demand a roll call vote on the motion, and to
• Demand a roll call vote on every procedure that affects this bill.

Also, tell him that S1365 is junk! (more on that below.)

Report on the public hearing:

This subcommittee consists of Larry Martin, Jake Knotts, and Robert Ford. The only one of these three Senators who has declared in writing that he is for this bill is Robert Ford. He was absent today. Go figure on that one!

That left Larry Martin and Jake Knotts. You can guess the result. There were no surprises. The hearing started at 9:30 and adjourned at 12:30. The room was packed to overflowing. The guards would not admit everyone, so folks were standing in the hall. The room was over its capacity of 145.

No one was believing the excuses given by these Senators. McConnell was there, and although not a member of the subcommittee, he was allowed ample time to speak.

Nikki Haley gave a stellar defense of the bill. Senator Davis also was on the mark with his defense of the constitutionality of the bill. Senators Shane Martin and Mike Rose also spoke in defense of the bill. Senators Phillip Shoopman, Shane Massey, and Mick Mulvaney were also there in support of the bill, though they were not give an opportunity to speak. Shane Martin says other supporters were tied up in other committee meetings.

Many grass roots supporters spoke in defense of the bill.

After three hours, the subcommittee adjourned without a vote on the bill. They are content to let it die without being sent to the floor of the Senate for a full debate. Two Senators… Larry Martin and Jake Knotts have imposed their will on the people of South Carolina in spite of the overwhelming voice of the public otherwise.

What’s next?

Our only choice at this point is a motion to recall the bill to the Senate floor. This committee meeting did no good. It only delayed action by two weeks.

What everyone needs to do is contact your Senator and ask him if he will make a motion to recall H3047 from committee and if they will demand a roll call vote on the recall motion and every procedure thereafter that effects this bill.

Diversions…

One smoke screen that McConnell and Larry Martin are trying is Senate resolution S1365. This resolution would amend Senate rule 16 to include this wording:

On votes taken ‘viva voce’, the vote of all Senators who have not been granted leave by the Senate shall be recorded in the Journal as ‘aye’, however any Senator shall have the right to inform the Clerk that he desires his vote to be recorded as ‘no’.

(‘Viva voce’ means a voice vote.)

McConnell repeated over and over again that he is trying to get a bill passed that will record every single vote in the Senate. What he didn’t say is that S1365 won’t record them accurately. In fact, this will do exactly the opposite.

S1365, McConnell’s answer to transparency, will record every Senator as voting ‘yes’ on every voice vote unless the Senator asks the clerk to record their vote as ‘no’. So just to make sure it is clear. I’ll repeat… If S1365 is passed, the Senate journal will record every voice vote as ‘yes’ for every Senator, unless each Senator that votes no takes the time to ask the Senate clerk to correct his vote.

Leave it to McConnell to muddy up the water even worse in the name of transparency. Every vote that is not a unanimous ‘yes’ will be recorded wrong! So we go from having no information on a voice vote, to having wrong information on a voice vote. McConnell’s solution will take us from a bad situation to a worse situation in the name of transparency! Amazing!

Adapted from an email blast by Talbert Black, Jr. of the SC Campaign for Liberty. Talbert has been following this bill for some time and is doing an excellent job being the point person on this issue.