Retired Sen. James Inhofe passed away recently and, in addition to the glowing tributes from others, I wanted to share a personal anecdote about how the Oklahoma Republican made a difference in an unexpected way.
Here’s the backstory. Civics 101 tells us that bills and resolutions introduced by a House member or senator are first sent to a legislative committee, and then possibly to a subcommittee. The House or Senate may consider the measure after it emerges from that process and the committee sends it to the full chamber. Sounds simple enough.
But what if a member doesn’t like a resolution that lands in a committee where he serves, knows the House will pass it if it has the chance, and, therefore, decides to kill it by preventing it from ever getting out of the committee? The House, after all, can’t pass a resolution it cannot vote on.
For the past century or so, the House has had a rule allowing a majority of House members to “discharge” a measure from a committee that has not released it by signing a discharge petition.
This happens only rarely. Since 1980, an average of just 13 discharge petitions have been introduced each year and only a fraction of those succeed in getting at least 218 signatures, the minimum number needed in the 435-member House.
In the past, the discharge petition process was secret. The names of House members signing a particular discharge petition were not made public until the total reached the threshold of 218 and the list was published in the Congressional Record.
That allowed a member to, say, receive praise for co-sponsoring a resolution he knew was stuck in a committee while refusing to take the step of signing a discharge petition that could actually help get the measure passed.
Inhofe, who died July 9 at the age of 89, changed that.
On March 18, 1993, Inhofe—then a member of the House—introduced House Resolution 134 to change House rules to require public disclosure of discharge petition signatures from the time the petition was filed.
He knew, however, that then-Rep. Don Edwards, D-Calif., the second-most senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, opposed that rules change and would block the resolution from ever reaching the House floor.
Inhofe, therefore, introduced a discharge petition for his discharge petition resolution on May 27, 1993, and it reached the requisite 218 signatures on Sept. 8. Less than three weeks later, the House adopted this reform by a vote of 383-40. (Edwards voted no.)
But I digress. In October 1991, the Justice Department secured the conviction of Stephen Knox for knowingly receiving and possessing child pornography. Knox challenged his conviction, arguing that the videos he received were not child pornography because the young girls depicted were at least partially clothed.
That was an important consideration because the porn industry responds quickly to how courts interpret and apply these statutes. The Justice Department defended the conviction, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit affirmed it on Oct. 15, 1992, holding that such an exhibition does not always require nudity.
Bill Clinton was elected president less than three weeks later. On June 7, 1993, the day Clinton appointed Drew Days to be solicitor general, the Supreme Court agreed to consider Knox’s appeal. To everyone’s surprise, Days filed a brief in September reversing the Justice Department’s position and agreeing with Knox that the child pornography statute should be construed narrowly.
Within weeks, Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., joined by 57 co-sponsors, introduced House Resolution 281 denouncing the about-face and asserting the “sense of the House of Representatives that the Department of Justice repudiate its reinterpretation of federal child pornography laws, defend the conviction won in the lower courts in the Knox case, and vigorously prosecute sexual exploitation of children.”
The Smith resolution was sent to the House Judiciary Committee.
You’d think that a resolution like this one, calling for more vigorous prosecution of child pornography, would breeze through Congress. On Nov. 4, 1993, the Senate voted 100-0 for an amendment to a crime bill offered by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, denouncing the Justice Department’s flip-flop in the Knox case.
But for some reason, while Smith’s resolution was adding co-sponsors by the day, it sat languishing in the Judiciary Committee.
When Smith filed a discharge petition for Resolution 281 on Feb. 9, 1994, it already had 251 co-sponsors, far more than the number needed to pass, but dozens of these members had apparently not signed the discharge petition to help make that happen.
It turns out that Edwards—who had opposed making the discharge petition process more transparent—also opposed Smith’s child pornography resolution.
The organization for which I worked at the time had established a television network with programming, including a daily political show that I hosted, available by satellite and cable in a growing number of markets.
Thanks to Inhofe, the names of the Resolution 281 co-sponsors who had not signed its discharge petition were now in the public record. I called each of those offices (as a courtesy, of course) to tell them that this would be a topic on an upcoming show and their names would appear on television screens across America.
Reactions varied—some accompanied by language too impolite to repeat here—but dozens of members quickly signed that discharge petition.
Smith offered Resolution 281, which by then had 265 co-sponsors, as an amendment to a major crime bill on April 20, 1994, and the House voted 425-3 to include it. (You guessed it, Edwards voted no).
When Clinton signed that crime bill into law on Sept. 13, 1994, it included the Smith amendment, asserting that the Justice Department’s position in the Knox case “did not accurately reflect the intent of Congress.”
Inhofe’s determination that more sunshine was needed on this aspect of the House’s legislative activities made it possible for Americans to participate more effectively in the political process; in this case, on an issue of great importance.
What might have seemed in the beginning like an inside-congressional-baseball tweak to House rules turned out, thanks to Inhofe, opening the window just a bit so that House members could not say one thing in public and do the exact opposite behind closed doors—and so that the House might be a little more responsive to the American people.
