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Democrats Won’t Consent to Typo Fix

Updated: 10:31 a.m.

House Democrats won’t consent to fixing a typo that fundamentally changes a GOP regulatory moratorium bill, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said.

“We’re not going to give unanimous consent,” Hoyer said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast this morning.

Without consent to fix the typo, Republicans will likely need to take the bill back to the Rules Committee and begin the floor debate anew.

The GOP bill was intended to ban new regulations until the unemployment rate reached 6 percent, but a typo would put the moratorium in place until 6 percent “employment.”

Democrats found the error and pointed it out to reporters after the House had approved the rule governing its floor debate.

“I know Republicans read the bills,” Hoyer said, mocking the GOP for the typo. “My, my, my how carefully they read that bill.”

Doug Andres, a spokesman for the House Rules Committee, said the correct version of the bill had been reported from the Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees. But because of a “clerical error” introduced in the Rules Committee print, what the bill does is fundamentally changed.

On Tuesday, Andres said Republicans “hope[d]” Democrats would consent to fixing the typo via unanimous consent on the House floor.

Erica Elliott, a spokeswoman for Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, was not amused.

“Unemployment in America has been above 8 percent for 41 straight months. The fact that the Democrats are making a crusade out of a typo shows their lack of commitment to serious debate about how to get this country back on track,” she said today.

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