Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) may stonewall appointments to a new independent ethics office as a way to protest its creation and the floor tactics Democrats used to pass it.

Bitterness over the proposed ethics office and the tense Tuesday night vote spilled into action on the House floor Wednesday. Republicans offered several delaying measures to protest what they consider a “stolen vote.”

“There are still questions about how the vote was conducted in violation of House rules Tuesday night as well as constitutional questions [about the creation of the ethic office].”

Nadeam Elshami, spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said his boss is prepared to work with Boehner in appointing individuals to serve on the Office of Congressional Ethics’s (OCE) six-member board of non-lawmakers.

“Suggestions of delaying the process by the Republicans would neither serve the bipartisan majority of members of Congress who support the outside ethics board nor the wishes of the American people to bring about additional accountability and reform to Washington,” he said.

Late in negotiations over the OCE, Democrats agreed to a GOP change allowing for only joint appointments to the board by both the Speaker and minority leader. Previously the plan allowed for unilateral appointments if the two were deadlocked. Members in both parties are worried about creating a new layer of ethics scrutiny that would give outside individuals the power to investigate sitting lawmakers.

Boehner took to the floor Wednesday morning to accuse Democrats of violating House rules by holding a procedural vote open for 31 minutes – 16 minutes longer than the 15-minute limit.

Democrats immediately tabled his privileged resolution aimed at negating Tuesday’s ethics votes by opening a separate ethics investigation into the alleged violation of House rules.

“The rules of the House specifically state that the majority cannot hold a vote open solely to change its outcome,” Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said. “This rule was clearly violated last night, and the majority must be held accountable for it.”

Rep. Neil Abercrombie (Hawaii), the lone Democrat to attack the ethics plan during an impassioned speech on the House floor, also was still seething Wednesday. He vowed to get back at Democratic leaders, said he had a plan to do so, but didn’t want to reveal it yet.

“This is not remotely over,” he said. “They messed with the wrong guy.”

Abercrombie said Democratic leaders continued to ignore his attempts to make a parliamentary inquiry into whether everyone had finished voting when the vote was 205 to 208 in opponents’ favor.

He argued that deliberately ignoring a member’s inquiry could be a violation of House rules, too.

The dramatic Tuesday night vote on a procedural motion, technically called the previous question, passed by 207 to 206 after Democratic leaders pressed several members to switch their votes from no to yes. If that vote had failed, opponents of the ethics office could have wrested control of the floor, offered alternatives or other amendments, and potentially killed the outside ethics office altogether.

Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) succeeded in convincing Reps. Sanford Bishop (Ga.), G.K. Butterfield (N.C.) and Emanuel Cleaver (Mo.) to switch their votes. Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Md.) and Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) also persuaded Reps. Bart Stupak (Mich.) and Maurice Hinchey (N.Y.) to vote with the leadership.

At the beginning of their tenure in the majority, Democrats passed a rule prohibiting votes from being held open past the allotted time for the purpose of changing the outcome, a practice employed by Republicans during their time in the majority.

Pelosi and her top lieutenants dismissed charges that she broke her own rule, and ridiculed any comparison to the three hours Republicans held a vote open in 2005 to pass the Medicare prescription drug benefit.

“This is very different,” said Pelosi. “We were in a reasonable timeframe…I had every confidence that the bill would have a majority of votes on the floor of the House. I’m very proud of the fact that they did.”

Pelosi also implied that some Democrats were unaware of the implications of the procedural vote and that’s why it took so long.

“Some people didn’t recognize that, what the consequences were of that, in terms of being able to bring up the bill,” she said.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-N.Y.) echoed those sentiments, arguing that some Democratic members weren’t aware that voting down the previous question would prevent the ethics resolution from making it to the floor.

Butterfield, one of those who switched votes, said he was well aware of the stakes involved.
He said he disagreed with the idea of delegating Congress’s “constitutional responsibility” to police itself to outsiders, although he agreed that the ethics process needed to be fixed. He originally voted against the procedural motion because he wanted more time to discuss different options, but changed his mind after talking to Clyburn, who highlighted how such a high-profile defeat on an ethics bill would play out in the press.

“We need to convince the American people that we’re serious about ethics,” Butterfield said Clyburn told him.

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) opposed both the procedural motion and the resolution itself because he supported an alternative bipartisan measure sponsored by Reps. Baron Hill (D-Ind.) and Zack Wamp (R-Tenn.).

Meeks said Clyburn put pressure on, but failed to convince him.

“I was feeling the heat of the whip,” he said. “I just tried to hide from him.”