"The bill was referred to the 41st day, effectively killing it, but it was hoghoused on the House floor Tuesday afternoon before being defeated."
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Reading that, I wondered whether most readers would be familiar with the term "hoghouse":
like,
to "hoghouse a bill."
------------------------ I'd never heard of that phrase until I started working as a lobbyist and attending annual legislative sessions in our state capital. (What? -- They're legislating a house for hogs??)
-------------- After the legislative session starts, in our state, there are so many days during which you may introduce a bill. After deadline date, then -- no more new bills. However, if the deadline date has passed & you really need a bill, and you become sort of desperate, for whatever reason, you can introduce your bill by "hoghousing" it onto another bill.
Let's say, Senate Bill 98 is still "alive" in the last couple weeks of the session. Senate Bill 98 isn't going anywhere, and so you basically use it, as a vehicle for your Concept that you want to introduce (but you can't because it's too late for new bills).
You have your Concept, you propose an amendment to "strike" all the language of Senate Bill 98 and then the proposal of your Concept that you want becomes the new language of Senate Bill 98.
(You didn't introduce a new bill; you just amended an existing bill.)
A legislator might "hoghouse" a bill in either of two scenarios that I can think of:
1) you need to bring the bill, but the issue didn't arise until after the deadline date for new bills; or
2) you had your Concept in an earlier bill that got killed. So you take it & hoghouse it onto Senate Bill 98. That is your opportunity to try it again.
The term hoghouse originated in earlier times -- at state university they wanted to build a hoghouse (a literal hog-house -- or, you might say, barn) -- it's an aggie school -- and they needed a bill --
it was too late in the session to introduce new bills --
and --
someone brainstormed and said, "Hey! We can amend our bill onto another bill that's still alive! We just have to get permission from the live bill's sponsor!"
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Deferring a bill "to the 41st day" is an expression, too, that's probably unique to our legislature: if the legislative session is 40 days long, then when you want to kill a bill, you say, "I move that we defer House Bill 1111 to the 41st day."
Since there are only 40 days of the session, the 41st day never happens, so the bill is dead.
You can also kill a bill just by killing it -- voting it down.
But if it is referred to the 41st day, it is deader.
More dead.
Why? Effort, Experience, Trial-and-error, and Will -- blending together to create Tradition.
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[One year a voter who was keeping track of bills told me, "They've got an awful lot of bills that they've referred to the 41st day. How are they going to have time to handle all of those on that one day?" : ) An excellent question, if you don't know the insider-meaning of "41st-day." And most people don't have any reason to know about that. They're busy knowing about other things.]
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When I began lobbying, learning what it means to "hoghouse" a bill, or to "smoke out" a bill was one of the first things I remember.
And really, when you begin, you don't need to personally engineer either hoghouses, or smoke-outs. You need to be very basic and straightforward -- simple, and up-front.
But yet that was one of the first things I learned, because fellow lobbyists (mostly lawyers with unique personalities and sets of interests -- people who had, shall we say, a lively and enthusiastic "love affair" with the political process) wanted to teach me that.
That was the instruction they wanted to offer; the story they enjoyed telling.
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"Smoking out" a bill is where -- your bill got killed in Committee, but then down on the floor you have legislators lined up and organized to revive the bill by smoking it out. One legislator moves to invoke Rule # whatever-it-is, & he needs x-number of votes. If he has enough votes, the bill is resurrected from being dead, & they discuss it on the floor (even though it never passed the committee) and then it will be either passed or not, on the floor.
Thinking of "smoking out" a bill, reminds me of a "lobbyist axiom" -- they keep a list (or collection) of axioms, which were written, over the years, by various lobbyists -- they are rules to remember, and they are humorous, in varying degrees -- ironic. ...
(like, for example, "There are 101 ways of saying "No" around here that sound like "yes").
A segment of state government located in the Capitol building (we'll call it "MXM") does the research and writes the bills in correct form.
One lobbyist "axiom" states,
"You know your bill is in trouble if you have to smoke it out of MXM."
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In my first year of lobbying, a gregarious (non-lawyer) lobbyist -- a consummate schmoozer used to sometimes teach me things, & other times make jokes at my expense. It was OK -- they didn't "cost" me much, and they were funny.
Once, trying to say "hoghouse" to him in conversation, I said, "smokehouse" -- like, trying to say "hoghouse," but thinking of "smoke it out" -- I knew "smokehouse" wasn't a Thing; I just misspoke -- but my mentor / teaser hurried right over to the nearest group of lobbyists and announced, "Her organization is gonna smokehouse a bill!"
Everybody's a comedian.
-30-
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