Democratic House leaders have embraced a procedural maneuver long reserved for naming post offices as a new way to blunt Republican political punches.

By putting high-priority bills on the suspension calendar, the majority party has managed to counter tactics employed by the minority that had previously subjected vulnerable Democrats to tough votes.

The strategy was on display last week as Democrats put pressure on Republicans to support the lopsided passage of Medicare legislation and also get GOP House members on the record opposing portions of the majority’s energy agenda — a vote that quickly became campaign fodder aligning Republicans with oil companies.

Suspension bills can’t be amended, nor are they subject to “motions to recommit.” But they must get a two-thirds supermajority to pass. Usually they are minor, non-controversial bills.

Republicans complain that the approach abuses the process to avoid issues and prevent votes on popular Republican amendments.

“The majority doesn’t have enough confidence in its ideas to bring them to the floor with full debate and amendments,” said House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.).

Aides to Democratic leaders say they’re simply trying to pass bills in a difficult environment, with a bare majority in the Senate and a president eager to veto their initiatives.

“This is the legislative process,” said Nadeam Elshami, spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “What we’re talking about is results, and building pressure on Senate Republicans and on the president to sign bills.”

The approach became clear last week on the Democrats’ “Use It or Lose It” legislation, their marquee response to calls for more drilling on federal lands.

Democrats knew that if Republicans got a chance at a motion to recommit, they’d attach legislation calling for more offshore drilling. Democratic leaders oppose opening more federal lands and waters to drilling, but if all Republicans voted for it, there would likely be enough Democrats supporting drilling to pass it, which would have been an embarrassment.

So Democratic leaders scheduled it as a suspension bill. That meant Republicans got no chance to amend it. It got 223 votes — a majority, but nowhere near two-thirds. So the bill failed.

Still, Democrats got some advantage out of it. Hours after the vote, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) sent out news releases bashing Republicans who voted against the bill for supporting “Big Oil.”

Republicans question whether Democrats really even wanted to pass the bill, or if they just wanted to score political points.

“The DCCC got what they needed and they didn’t have the burden of passing their own legislation,” said Jo Maney, spokeswoman for Rep. David Dreier (Calif.), top Republican on the House Rules Committee.

Some Democratic aides acknowledge that the vote was held as a suspension in order to head off an offshore drilling vote that might have passed. But they say blocking Republican amendments is not the only reason they might bring up major bills on suspension.

“Sometimes it’s political. Sometimes it’s speed. Sometimes it’s floor strategy. It can be a mixture,” said another Democratic aide.

For example, Democrats brought up the physician reimbursement bill on suspension last week in order to pressure Republicans to accept cuts to Medicare Advantage as the price of preventing a Medicare rate cut for physicians. Democratic vote-counters didn’t know if they’d have the needed 290 votes, but it wound up passing with 355.

Blunt said the take-it-or-leave-it vote unfairly forced Republicans to support a cut to Medicare Advantage if they wanted to forestall the cut for physicians.

“A $47 billion bill on suspension is a huge abuse of the process,” he said. “Their only choice is between cutting Medicare and cutting payments to doctors.”

Republicans also put controversial bills on suspension when they ran Congress, such as a Vietnam trade bill and legislation to allow federal funding of stem cell research.

But Democrats appear to have started using suspensions more tactically as they seek a way to deal with the GOP’s aggressively partisan motions to recommit, which inject controversial issues such as gun rights or immigration into complex legislation being shepherded by Democrats.

When Democrats last month brought up a popular bill on residential treatment centers for juveniles, Republicans put up an amendment requiring parents to give consent before their children can get contraceptives. Caught off guard, Democrats pulled the bill and brought it up last week under suspension, where it passed.

The supermajority required to pass a bill under suspension increases the chances that it will fail on the floor. But the bill can be brought up again the regular way, because Democrats have begun inserting language to allow that into the rules they write on bills.

That’s what happened with a three-month extension of unemployment benefits last month. Amid wrangling over the emergency supplemental spending bill, House Democrats brought up the unemployment bill under suspension. When it barely missed getting the needed number of votes, Democrats brought it back the next day and passed it.

Republicans also note that suspensions can also be used to waive the pay-as-you-go, or pay-go, budgetary requirements, which mandate that new spending be offset by tax increases or spending cuts. That is how the fix to the Alternative Minimum Tax, without offsets, was passed in December.