South Carolina lawmakers look at changes in House rules

COLUMBIA. S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) - The South Carolina House of Representatives is considering a significant change in its rules that some lawmakers warn will silence the chamber’s most conservative voices.

But ers say it’s meant to ensure the legislation that impacts millions of South Carolinians is properly vetted before it’s enacted.

Because the House has no filibuster, one way opponents of a bill can try to block it or delay its age is to file hundreds or even thousands of amendments.

This slows things down.

But there’s a proposal to do away with that option.

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“It puts more emphasis on the public participation and participation at the committee level, rather than have 1,000 or 2,000 amendments put up that have not been vetted, that the public has had no input,” said House Speaker Murrell Smith, R-Sumter.

If adopted, the rule could kick in once a debate in the House has hit the three-hour mark.

Then could vote to limit debate from there by allowing the majority leader – currently a Republican – and the minority leader – currently a Democrat – to pick up to 12 amendments each to be considered from among those that have already been filed.

The rest of the amendments would be dead, although each party could draft one more new amendment each.

This proposal has the backing of both the Republican and Democratic caucus leaders.

But in South Carolina’s House of Representatives, a dozen-plus belong to the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus.

They are not of and are often at odds with the more moderate and much larger House Republican Caucus, whose leader is one of the who would pick amendments.

So the Freedom Caucus says enacting this would block their ideas from being considered and debated.

“It’s scandalous,” said Rep. Adam Morgan, Freedom Caucus chair. “We’re opposing it. We’re gonna oppose it at every turn. We think that the South Carolina House of Representatives should truly be representative and be a place of open debate.”

The rule has not come up for debate yet in the House, although say that could happen as early as next week.

To provide context into how long debates can last in the House, last year’s abortion debate spanned about 24 hours over the course of two days before actually voted on the bill.

This rule proposal would still allow up to more than eight hours of debate on a single bill.

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