Well, according to CQ, a completely Non-Partisan publications, the Republicans DID win that vote and the Democrats, whether by honest mistake or deliberate violation of house rules, stole the vote.
Democratic leaders had struggled all day Friday to quell a revolt that brought House action to a halt and threatened to send the House members home for the August break without action on major portions of the majority’s pre-recess agenda.
Republicans have complained since a Democratic majority took over in January that they have been shut out and too often denied the chance to influence legislation. Late Thursday, the Republicans moved from unhappy to irate when a Democratic presiding officer ruled that their motion to shelve the agriculture bill had been defeated, even though as the gavel fell the electronic scoreboard in the chamber blinked a tally of 215 votes for the motion and 213 against it.
Further down in the article it explains exactly what happened:
The floor confusion arose when, with the tally tied at 214-214, two politically vulnerable Democrats, Nick Lampson of Texas and Harry E. Mitchell of Arizona, went to the well of the chamber to switch their votes to “no.” The buddy system would prevent Democrats who voted “no” from being targeted as the deciding vote in future campaign ads. Moments later, three Cuban-American Republicans from south Florida, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart, moved to change their votes to “aye.”
The five vote switches were called out by the House reading clerk. The two Democratic changes put the tally at 212-216. Ros-Lehtinen’s switch made it 213-215. Lincoln Diaz-Balart evened it at 214-214, but a tie vote fails. As the reading clerk called out Mario Diaz-Balart’s new vote, the Speaker Pro Tempore, Rep. Michael R. McNulty, D-N.Y., banged the gavel, apparently unaware that the second Diaz-Balart’s vote had yet to be counted.
McNulty had his eyes on the electronic scoreboard, which still read 214-214. But almost as soon as the gavel came down, the scoreboard registered Mario Diaz-Balart’s vote, pushing the tally to 215-213. The scoreboard showed those numbers and the word “FINAL.”
Wapo tells us there will now be a special select committee, with subpoena powers, to investigate this whole matter.
The House last night unanimously agreed to create a special select committee, with subpoena powers, to investigate Republican allegations that Democratic leaders had stolen a victory from the House GOP on a parliamentary vote late Thursday night.
The move capped a remarkable day that started with Republicans marching out of the House in protest near midnight Thursday, was punctuated by partisan bickering, and ended with Democratic hopes for a final legislative rush fading. Even a temporary blackout of the House chamber's vote tally board led to suspicions and accusations of skullduggery.
[...]
The agreement to form a special committee was extraordinary. Such powerful investigative committees are usually reserved for issues such as the Watergate scandal and the funneling of profits from Iranian arms sales to the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s.
"I don't know when something like this has happened before," said House deputy historian Fred W. Beuttler. He called the decision "incredible."
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) accepted GOP calls for an investigation. "I do not believe there was any wrongdoing by any member of the House. I do believe a mistake was made," he said. "And I regret it."
The issue:
It started late Thursday, when GOP lawmakers moved to send the 2008 agriculture spending bill back to the House Appropriations Committee for members to add an explicit prohibition on illegal immigrants receiving food stamps. With so much on their plate, Democratic leaders were in no mood to comply.
Democrats appeared to have won the vote, but with the voting time apparently having expired, GOP leaders persuaded three Latino Republicans who had voted with the Democrats to change their votes. At the same time, Democrats say, five Democratic lawmakers who had voted with Republicans were scrambling to change their votes as well. With two of the GOP votes changed, Democrats gaveled the vote shut, 214 to 214, and declared that they had won. But the public tally showed that the Republicans had won, 215 to 213, just as the vote was declared for the Democrats. The official final tally was 216 to 212 in the Democrats' favor.
NewsBusters takes the New York Times to the woodshed on their dishonest reporting.
What's more, the Times never bothered to divulge what the vote was about. The article merely refers to the GOP motion as "a plan to revise the agricultural bill." Big deal, right? Not so fast. What the Times didn't reveal was that the motion in question would have barred undocumented immigrants from receiving any federal funds apportioned in the agricultural spending bill for employment or rental assistance. That's right: the Dems resorted to this profoundly undemocratic chicanery in order to preserve . . . welfare for illegals.
No wonder the Times didn't want its readers to know.
I still say it is a good thing we have cameras in chambers or the Democrats would have gotten away with not only stealing the vote, but offering illegal immigrants welfare that we, the American people, have to pay for.
The Republicans were quite right calling out SHAME!! SHAME!! to the Democrats.
The Influence Peddler points out that this will be very uncomfortable for the Democrats in Congress.
This will be uncomfortable for Democratic House leaders. CQ is a non-partisan publication with no ax to grind. If their account is accurate, then the GOP's misdirection tactics secured them a win that got taken away after the gavel came down.
Whether it was an honest mistake or a deliberate attempt to steal (correction) the vote, although important, is not the critical matter here, if the CQ is correct, the it was the Republicans that tried to keep illegal aliens from collecting welfare using our tax dollars and the Democrats that tried to give it all away.
The vote should be counted and no benefits should be given to those that broke our laws by coming here illegally.
The Democrats should be ashamed of themselves.
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