House Democrats are considering eliminating or substantially limiting a procedure in the House that would provide Republicans the ability to alter legislation, kneecapping one of the few powers of the minority party, Roll Call reports.

Call a “motion to recommit,” the procedure allows the minority party to insert language into legislation prior to a vote which would then be adopted with the larger bill.  MTRs, as they’re called, have traditionally been used to push legislation back to committee as a way to delay or kill legislation, but recently, House Republicans have used it to corner moderate Democrats on specific political positions.

“It’s turned into a joke,” Michigan Democratic Congressman Dan Kildee said. “It’s something that both sides use for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to play gotcha for the elections.”

As Roll Call explains, Republicans successfully used an MTR in February 2019 to add language to Democrats’ priority gun safety bill expanding background checks to require the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to be notified if an undocumented immigrant tries to buy a gun.

Currently, an MTR needs a simple majority to pass, but House Democrats could vote to eliminate or substantially change if, or how, MTRs are permitted in the upcoming session when they adopt their parliamentary rules.

Instead of eliminating the procedure, the House could make them harder to adopt.  Florida Democrat Stephanie Murphy is proposing raising the number of votes to adopt an MTR to two-third from the currently required simple majority.

However, the House Minority Leader, California Republican Kevin McCarthy, objects to any changes.  In a statement, McCarthy claimed Democrats of attempting to “overturn centuries of precedent just to protect their own political futures.  These rumored changes are a disgrace and would forever tarnish the institution in which we serve.”

McCarthy had no comment on the Republicans in the Senate overturning centuries of precedent by refusing to vote on Barack Obama’s judicial nominees in his last year in office or their continuing votes on judicial nominees for lame duck election loser Donald Trump.

“It would be nice if Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi and her so-called moderate members like Stephanie Murphy spent as much time working to deliver COVID relief as they do devising ways to rig the process to prevent blowback against their party’s radical policies,” McCarthy tweeted apparently unaware that the House passed the HEROES Act in May and the Senate is the stumbling block to additional coronavirus relief.