Word: rayburnisms
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Promptly at high noon, as he has done many hundreds of times before. House Speaker Sam Rayburn swept through the door of the Speaker's lobby and onto the floor of the House. This time something new happened, a violation of custom for which old Capitol Hill newsmen could recall no precedent: in a grand gesture of affection and respect, both Congressmen and spectators stood up and applauded the old man as he started up the steps to the Speaker's rostrum...
Cursing & Conniving. The question facing the House was whether to adopt Rayburn's resolution calling for the addition of three new members (two Democrats and one Republican) to the Rules Committee, the channel through which most major legislation has to pass before it can get to the floor of the House to be debated and voted on. In that simple question, a mere housekeeping detail on the surface, much was at stake: Sam Rayburn's own prestige, the balance of power between liberals and conservatives in the House, and the congressional prospects of Kennedy Administration legislative programs...
...four Republican members plus Mississippi's William Colmer. Because most major bills require positive action by the Rules Committee, the six conservatives were able to use a 6-to-6 deadlock to stall any legislation they disliked. By adding two new Democrats and only one Republican, Sam Rayburn expected to tilt the 6-to-6 standoff to an 8-to-7 majority. So much was at issue in the shift that the fortnight before the showdown saw the House's fiercest struggle for votes in many a year, a struggle that ultimately involved personal pressure from...
...usual, the prevote battle behind the scenes was what decided the outcome, and the floor debate made no real difference. "Judge" Smith complained that the Rayburn forces had granted him only eight minutes to state his case. Said he in attacking the "committee packing": "I will cooperate with the Democratic leadership just as long and just as far as my conscience will permit me to go." When laughter rippled across the chamber. Smith retorted: "Some of these gentlemen who are laughing maybe do not understand what a conscience is." Mister Sam based his case on the nation's obligation...
...Smile. Slowly, the clerk began reading off the roll. All but six members of the House voted-an extraordinary total. One of the few who did not vote was Rayburn himself; he would have voted to break a tie, but it never came to that...