The Hill News

A top Democrat accused Republicans of violating a key element of their new "Pledge to America" during votes on Wednesday.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the assistant to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said the GOP had broken its own promise to cite a bill's constitutional authority and make legislation publicly available for 72 hours before a vote in offering a substitute bill to the 9/11 first responders' health bill this afternoon.

"House Republicans promised in their ‘Pledge to America’ that they would do two things procedurally â€" allow the American people to see legislation 72 hours prior to a vote and include a citation of Constitutional authority in all legislation," Van Hollen said in a statement. "But today they made public a 21 page motion to recommit to the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act less than an hour before a vote, and it contains no reference to Constitutional authority."

Republicans have long complained that Dem! ocratic leaders in the House haven't made major bills available to the public long enough for them to be thoroughly vetted. GOP leaders said in their "Pledge," the governing agenda they released last Thursday, that a Republican majority would make all legislation available.

The Pledge also included a proposal to include in legislation the language that constitutionally legitimizes the action taken in any given bill. That idea was a result of elements in the healthcare reform bill passed earlier this year, which Republicans had complained contained unconstitutional elements. 

"This is laughable.  After promising the ‘most open and honest’ Congress is history, House Democrats have broken their word over and over again â€" shutting out Republicans, most of their own Members, and the American people," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio). "The difference between a motion-to-recommit and the 2,000-page monstrosit! ies that Democrats have crafted in secret and thrown on the Ho! use floo r is obvious to anyone who isn’t actually on the payroll of House Democratic Leaders.”

Van Hollen, the chairman of House Democrats' campaign efforts, called the GOP's Pledge hollow.

"This is just more of the same from Washington Republicans, who are apparently more concerned with scoring partisan political points than keeping their promises to the American people," he said.