committee. This is an attempt to eliminate
that inconsistency.
That brings us to our proposed amend-
ment to Rule 37 [39]. This is a rule, I
might as well read it — this is again a
fairly important substantive proposal: "Be-
fore a proposal is taken up by the Commit-
tee of the Whole, any delegate, with the
Chairman of the Committee on Calendar
and Agenda having the prior right shall be
privileged to move that a limitation be
placed upon the time of the debate and con-
sideration of such proposal - by the Com-
mittee of the Whole; provided that equal
time is to be afforded to the proponents and
opponents of such proposal, and the Com-
mittee may fix in advance consideration of
a proposal a time for the Committee of the
Whole to rise and report.
You will recall that in our rules we have
adopted the Committee of the Whole pro-
cedure. That is the place where we let down
our hair, where debate is free and where
there are no restrictions on the number of
times a delegate can speak, and where the
previous question cannot be moved. There-
fore, unless there was some procedure by
which time limitations could be set on de-
bate in the Committee of the Whole, it is
possible that the Committee of the Whole
could be used as a filibuster device.
The rule that we have proposed is mod-
eled upon, not taken from, a rule adopted
with success by the New Jersey Constitu-
tional Convention of 1947. There are two
substantial changes made in it. As orig-
inally proposed in our committee, Senator
Malkus proposed and the committee unani-
mously approved the proviso that makes it
clear that if a time limitation is set on a
proposal that the proponents and opponents
shall have equal time. The practice, I think,
as Congressman Sickles has pointed out,
is substantially identical with, but modeled
upon the practice that prevailed in the
House of Representatives of the United
States wherein the leader, the chairman
of the substantive committee, and the leader
of the minority would go to the Rules Com-
mittee, and they would get a rule as to the
amount of time permitted for debate. Our
procedure here would be that generally the
Chairman of the Committee on Calendar, I
assume after listening to both the chairman
of the substantive committee, and those
that are going to take a different point of
view, would move, for instance, on an ob-
vious example, the question of whether or
not it should be a unicameral or bicameral
Legislature, that three hours, whatever it
may be, three or four hours be allotted in |
the substantive proposal and the opponents
and proponents would have equal time.
However, the committee at any time could
amend it to extend the time. That happens
frequently in the Congress, I am told. It is
one device at least to preclude the possi-
bility that the Committee of the Whole
could be utilized in a way that would pre-
vent filibuster.
Our proposed amendment to Rule 48 [52],
I believe, was suggested by Delegate Chabot
in July. The way the rule is now drafted,
when the previous question is moved, it
takes down not only the pending question
with respect to which the previous question
has been moved, but it would take down all
amendments on the Clerk's desk at that
time. I think the purpose of the language,
and I think here we drew from the Michi-
gan Constitutional Convention, which in
turn, I believe, drew from a peculiar pro-
vision of the Michigan Legislature, was to
eliminate the possibility of using a series of
frivolous amendments to hold up debate.
On the other hand, as Delegate Chabot
pointed out, and the Committee unani-
mously agrees, if the previous question
takes down everything, it means you would
not even have an opportunity to debate a
very good amendment that you wanted to
debate. There are other ways to avoid friv-
olous amendments. They can always be
moved to be tabled. If that motion is not
debatable on ballot, the Committee was of
the view that the change suggested is one
that should be adopted by the Convention.
That ends the specific recommendations
that we offer today as far as the report,
but I would just like in terms of amend-
ments to the rules to say we also recommend
as part of our report, it need not be done
by rule, that the Secretary of the Conven-
tion have the power, provided he furnishes
the Convention with a copy of what he has
done, to eliminate numerical, you know,
cross reference, numerical errors, gram-
matical errors, that sort of thing; and I
think rather than come back to this Con-
vention every time we found out that we
did not dot an "i" or made an erroneous
cross reference, that this would be a sen-
sible way to do it.
There was also a proposal originally sug-
gested by Delegate Case, who unfortunately
is ill today, that would have limited debate
on third reading to new matters, and Dele-
gate Case's proposal had some merit. The
Committee considered it carefully, but we
felt in view of the liberality with which the
previous question could be moved in the
Convention, not in the Committee of the |
