While many anxiously awaited the results on election night, outgoing Rep. Bob Good. R-Farmville, was on Capitol Hill attempting to kill a largely bipartisan bill that would allow pensioners to receive full Social Security benefits.
In an unusual move, Good, the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, asked the presiding member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Andy Harris, R-Maryland, to table — or effectively kill — the Social Security Fairness Act by unanimous consent during a pro-forma session that evening.
Good’s office did not respond to a request for comment or questions regarding the move.
Congress is still technically in recess until Tuesday. A pro-forma session is a brief meeting of a chamber during which business is not usually conducted. “Unanimous consent” is a procedure where a member of Congress asks that something be done and no other member objects to the request. A request for unanimous consent must be cleared by both the majority and minority leadership and relevant committee leadership before the presiding member — in this case, Harris — will recognize a member — in this case, Good — on the House floor for the request.
In this case, none of that happened.
“Good did not necessarily violate a House rule, but what happened was still significantly out of step with how the House operates,” Molly Reynolds, a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, said. Brookings is a Washington-based nonprofit organization that conducts in-depth, nonpartisan research into policy and governance at local, national and global levels.
“Harris violated a longstanding House practice that says that a member should not be recognized for a unanimous consent request related to legislation without the agreement of the majority and minority floor leadership and relevant committee chairs, which Good did not have,” Reynolds said. “The parliamentarian advised Harris that, because Good did not have that consent, he, as the chair, should not grant the request. But Harris did grant it, which tabled the bill.”
What’s in the bill and who supports it?
The Social Security Fairness Act would repeal provisions that reduce Social Security benefits for individuals who receive other benefits, such as a pension from a state or local government. A largely bipartisan effort, 210 Democratic members of Congress and 120 Republicans have signed on in support of the legislation.
The provisions that would be repealed by the legislation include the government pension offset, which can reduce Social Security benefits for spouses, widows and widowers who also receive government pensions of their own, and the windfall elimination provision, which can reduce Social Security benefits for individuals who also receive a pension or disability benefit from an employer that did not withhold Social Security taxes.
The bill was co-sponsored by nine out of Virginia’s 11 members of Congress, including Republican representatives Ben Cline, Jennifer Kiggans and Rob Wittman. Outgoing Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, was one of the first members of Congress to co-sponsor the bill and all other Democratic members of the House from Virginia signed on as well. Republican representatives Good and Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, did not sign on in support of the bill.
Tabling a bill can effectively kill legislation in Congress, but the House can bring the bill up under a procedure called “suspension of the rules,” Reynolds said.
Suspension of the rules would need support of two-thirds of House members to pass, and the bill already has 330 co-sponsors. The bill does indeed appear on the calendar for the week of Nov. 11 to be considered by the House under suspension of the rules.
Griffith’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Virginia’s police union speaks out
Ray Clemons, president of the Virginia State Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police, called Good’s effort to kill the bill “underhanded and reprehensible” in an open letter sent to Good on Wednesday and posted to the Virginia Fraternal Order of Police social media pages on Thursday.
“While thousands of law enforcement officers were going to polls, you and the presiding officer [Harris] conspired to violate the rules and practices of the House,” Clemons wrote. “You demonstrated great disrespect for the House, your colleagues and the millions of retired public employees who have lost a benefit they earned through their work because of the windfall elimination provision and the government pension offset.”
Clemons closed the letter by calling Good’s conduct a shameful affront to the people of the 5th Congressional District, which Good represents until January. He added that the people of the 5th District “should be grateful that [Good] will not be representing them in the new Congress.”
Clemons said in an interview Friday that he has not heard back from Good since the letter was sent.
The effort by the Fraternal Order of Police to get the Social Security Fairness Act introduced to Congress with bipartisan support had been going on for years, Clemons said.
“And then Bob Good’s actions put a serious obstacle in front of us,” he said. “It sets a dangerous precedent that would theoretically allow a handful of members [of Congress] to act in the name of the full House during a pro-forma session.”
“An act like this just creates mistrust,” he said.
Good lost the June 18 primary election to State Sen. John McGuire. McGuire won last week’s general election against the Democratic nominee, Gloria Witt, and will be sworn into Congress to represent Virginia’s 5th District in January.
