Probe of Disputed House Vote Turns Into Long and Costly Saga

It was supposed to be a last-ditch parliamentary maneuver by House Republicans on an Agriculture Department appropriation bill, a routine "gotcha" amendment designed to expose Democrats to political peril over the simmering issue of federal benefits for illegal immigrants.

Instead, a GOP motion from last August on the bill, and the ensuing controversy about allegations of vote stealing, have spawned a highly unusual internal investigation that already has cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The long-running probe has included three public hearings and a one-hour meeting on the House floor for a firsthand demonstration of the chamber's electronic voting procedures. Next month, two of the House's most powerful members, Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) and Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), will be hauled before the select committee, first for closed-door interviews about what happened during the vote, then probably for public testimony about their recollections.

The Select Committee to Investigate the Voting Irregularities of August 2, 2007 -- as the panel is formally known -- began with an initial budget of $300,000 but is likely to soon request supplemental funding to cover its mushrooming costs. Most of the budget is being gobbled up by roughly $50,000 a month in legal fees to cover the costs of dueling sets of outside counsel from the downtown law offices of King & Spalding and Dickstein Shapiro.

"It is very unusual, perhaps unprecedented, for the majority party to agree" to the minority's demand for an investigation, said Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "I think it reflects the sensitivity of the Democratic leadership to charges that they are running the House in a transparently partisan fashion and matching the abuses under the previous Republican majority."

The dispute revolves around a Republican "motion to recommit" the Agriculture Department appropriation to a committee, the last action the minority generally can take before final passage of legislation. Republicans have been unusually successful in winning passage of their motions to recommit, fashioning them in the form of bill amendments and loading them with politically sensitive issues for Democrats from conservative districts.

The GOP motion on the bill would have prohibited illegal immigrants from receiving federal benefits, a proposal Democrats considered an unnecessary duplication of existing laws.

In a confusing late-night vote, lawmakers started switching their votes at the last minute. Rep. Michael R. McNulty (D-N.Y.), sitting in the chair as the presiding officer, banged the gavel shut on the vote at Hoyer's instruction at a moment when the electronic voting board showed Republicans were succeeding in their attempt to amend the bill, 215 to 213. Turmoil ensued, more votes were switched, and the Democrats declared that they had won, 216 to 212.

Republicans erupted in a protest that lasted several days on the House floor and did not end until Hoyer agreed to create the select committee.

"The integrity of the House of Representatives is completely dependent on the integrity of the vote that takes place on the floor of the Congress," Rep. Mike Pence (Ind.), the ranking Republican member of the evenly divided select committee, said at an October hearing.

Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.), chairman of the select committee, said the panel's work will help refine the procedures for the conduct of House business and provide a lesson in comity for his colleagues. "I'm hoping that this contributes to a better atmosphere," he said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Admitting that "mistakes were made" in the August vote, Delahunt said the investigation so far has been "eye-opening," particularly the morning the committee spent on the House floor learning the technology and effort that go into a simple roll call vote. "It's a process very few of us are aware of," he said.

The select committee has compiled a DVD of video footage from inside the chamber that night, Delahunt said, and has interviewed dozens of staff members from the House clerk's and parliamentarian's offices.

Delahunt said he is hopeful a report can be filed by the end of May -- 10 months after the initial controversy -- that would include a finding of facts about the contested vote. The report probably will include a recommendation for more parliamentary training for lawmakers.

Many Democrats, he noted, had never been in the majority before last year, and find themselves serving as presiding officers for the first time.

"It really should require more than on-the-job training," he said.