At the request of any Member, or by action of the Chairman, a bill, matter, or nomination on the agenda of the Committee may be held over until the next meeting of the Committee or for one week, whichever occurs later.

What is at issue is the request by Dems for a one week delay. However, the plain language – devoid of precedents, because I don’t have a copy of Riddick to hand – suggests that the Dems could indeed delay procedings for eight weeks. Which isn’t September, but it is a serious delay.

I wonder if this is possible, and I also wonder if Rule I(3) is not in some tension with Rule IV(1); the former permits any member of the committee to hold “until the next meeting of the Committee or for one week, whichever occurs later . . . a bill, matter, or nomination on the agenda of the Committee.” The latter, though, permits the Chair a non-debatable prerogative to bring “a matter before the Committee to a vote.” I don’t know what the precedents are on this rule, or even if this tension is entirely of my own imagining, but it seems to me that Rule I(3) permits a committee member to delay a business item on the committee agenda, i.e. when it is heard by the committee, but not on a vote for that business item. In other words, as a purely textual matter, speculatively, I can’t help wonder if maybe the Dems could delay the commencement of hearings, but not the final vote?