Republican Lawmakers Call Their One Play

6 Comments

by: Colorado Pols

As Jesse Paul of The Colorado Sun noted this morning on Twitter:

OK, well a pretty serious situation is developing at the Capitol for Democrats and their agenda.

Republicans in the House were already asking for bills to be read at length to slow the lawmaking process down. Now it’s happening in the Senate. #copolitics #coleg

— Jesse Aaron Paul ☀ (@JesseAPaul) May 21, 2021

This is not new territory for Republican lawmakers in Colorado, whose primary goal in every legislative session is simply to stop anything from ever being accomplished.

They’re trying it again in 2021.

Does this strategy actually work? Republicans seem to think it does, but opinions vary on whether this results in anything more than lengthening the day for lawmakers and journalists. It might be more effective now than it was in 2019, when Republicans opened the legislative session by demanding that the entire daily journal be read aloud.

The more important question is about why Republicans even want to be elected to the legislature in the first place when this is consistently their go-to strategy. There are a lot of other ways you could spend your day doing nothing (you can trust us on this one).

6 thoughts on “Republican Lawmakers Call Their One Play”

JohnInDenver says:

May 21, 2021 at 3:45 pm

Interesting they don’t try for improving the bill with amendments or offering something they think will appeal to voters statewide.

Here’s hoping journalists will ask 2022 candidates for the legislature if they will support such a time suck and, if they do, what they think is being accomplished by the tactic. Anyone do a calculation of how much “extra” it costs — hourly wages for Capital employees would be the bulk of the extra, but other items (printing of the legislative records being extended and added utilities are the only other two off the top of my head).

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1. 2Jung2Die says:
  
  May 21, 2021 at 4:48 pm
  
  Nobody’s supposed to sayeth this phrase out loud, but a “special session” would entail some cost and additional hours spent on things the legislature could’ve easily completed in regulation time absent the aptly-named time suck.
  
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PMan says:

May 21, 2021 at 6:37 pm

It's my belief that the Republicans may actually need to have the bills read out loud. That way, they can follow along with a finger on the text and attempt to say those hard words out loud. It could be a helpful learning experience for many of them.**

**See: Boebert, Lauren

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Peromyscus says:

May 22, 2021 at 6:02 am

Here's hoping the Dems trot out the speed-reading robot, the equivalent of a cream pie in Curly's face.

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Diogenesdemar says:

May 23, 2021 at 12:32 pm

On the other hand, this is probably the only way our Republican legislators are ever going to have any slight opportunity to learn what's in any bill . . .

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1. MichaelBowman says:
  
  May 23, 2021 at 4:26 pm
  
  …and pass up the chance for a nap, regularly interrupted by fundraising rage emails???
  
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