House Republicans claim Democratic fraud
WASHINGTON (CNN)— House Republicans emerged from a private meeting on Saturday and expressed their continued frustration with the Democratic leadership by accusing the Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of stripping comments he made on the House floor from that chamber's official transcript.
On Friday evening Republican Leader John Boehner offered a resolution claiming that Rep John Murtha (D-PA) "brought dishonor and discredit to the United States House of Representatives by misusing the powers of the chair."
Hoyer then stood up and declared, "Enough is enough," to thunderous applauses by his fellow Democrats.
One day later, Hoyer's declaration is missing from the Congressional Record, the daily journal of floor debate and action.
"We may be very close to where we have to think about maybe the NFL rule where you have instant replay where you can go and see what really happened on the House floor," quipped Minority Whip Roy Blunt, armed with a dvd of the House floor debate in dispute and a copy of the official transcript. "The problem is we don't have a referee."
House members regularly change their floor statements by asking to "revise and extend" their remarks. A search of the House transcript found that single phrase was uttered at least six times by Democrats and Republicans on the House floor during Friday's session.
“The journal is correct,” said a Hoyer spokeswoman. “This seems to be another attempt by Republicans to divert attention from our accomplishments and their lack of substantive ideas."
Republicans interpret the power to self-edit floor remarks differently.
"The purpose of "revise and extend" is to clean up utterances and clean up language in a way so that future readers will understand. It is not to substantially revise the meaning and affect of your comments on the floor," said Republican Conference Chairman Adam Putnam.
–CNN Congressional Producer Evan Glass
Is there anyone in the world smart enough to fix this broken government of ours? Compare our present government with the Roman empire. Bush thinks he is Ceasar. The senate is greedy and corrupt. The legal system is politicized and corrupt.
Can we not learn from history?
The fact that members of congress can EDIT or DELETE specific comments they made from the official transcript blows me away. Seems like another of those "insider perks" that members of both parties quietly use. I consider myself fairly well informed about how our political system works but I was truly surprised to learn this little factoid. Does anyone else find this a little disturbing or am I just getting paranoid in my old age?
This is omly the tip of the iceberg in a ethically and patriotically void Washington DC, led by a White House with their own agenda, not in tune with what is good for the country or what we US citizens want them to do.
Vote them all out of office and vote independant!!!!
Profiteering cowards, each and every one of them, DEM & Republicant.
This would be a front page story of the roles were reversed. You have to dig to find this on the nightly news. Bias at CNN is reflected by the emphasis placed on some stories and not others.
Whouldn't it be a nightmare if Katherine Harris yep that same woman who started the 2000 Florida Election Butterfly Ballot uproar runs for President in 2008 against Hillary Clinton? I sure do think it would be a nightmare.