Republican Jim Walsh’s angry tirades disrupt the work of the Washington State House

Over the past few days, as the Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives has worked earnest­ly to con­sid­er and vote out leg­is­la­tion ahead of today’s house of ori­gin cut­off, it has become appar­ent that State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jim Walsh (R‑19th Dis­trict) has a fright­en­ing anger man­age­ment problem.

Wal­sh’s col­leagues have come to expect bom­bast from him when he speaks from the floor. But on sev­er­al recent occa­sions, includ­ing last Fri­day, his angry tirades have become more than a nui­sance. They have brought the House­’s work to a halt.

Wal­sh’s repeat­ed inabil­i­ty to com­ply with the House­’s rules has left Speak­er Pro Tem John Lovick (who shares pre­sid­ing duties in the cham­ber with fel­low Speak­er Pro Tem Tina Orwall) with no choice but to gav­el him out of order and then to call the House into recess when Walsh would not stop yelling over the gavel.

On Fri­day, March 8th, the House was in the midst of an exten­sive debate on HB 1523, intend­ed to increase the avail­abil­i­ty of qual­i­ty, afford­able health cov­er­age in the indi­vid­ual mar­ket. The bill is part of a push by Demo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers, as well as Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, to offer prac­ti­cal leg­is­la­tion for a pub­lic option plan for those who buy insur­ance on Washington’s Health Ben­e­fit Exchange.

Sup­port­ers of the bill, includ­ing House lead­er­ship, believe it will help low­er health care costs in the state by requir­ing three stan­dard­ized plans be avail­able on the exchange, while oppo­nents of the bill claim it will in fact increase costs.

Cur­rent­ly, Wash­ing­ton res­i­dents com­pare and buy indi­vid­ual health cov­er­age through pri­vate car­ri­ers on the Exchange. Under HB 1523, the Exchange would work with the state insur­ance com­mis­sion­er, the Wash­ing­ton Health Care Author­i­ty, and oth­ers, to cre­ate three oth­er stan­dard­ized plans.

Begin­ning in 2021, at least two of the stan­dard­ized plans would have to be offered through avail­able car­ri­ers, in addi­tion to the oth­ers they nor­mal­ly offer.

The bill might seem fair­ly mun­dane to an out­side observer.

Jim Walsh sees it very differently.

“This bill isn’t social­ized med­i­cine, this bill is the train wreck that comes first, and then there’s social­ized med­i­cine,” he thun­dered after being rec­og­nized to speak.

“In my dis­trict we’ve suf­fered from [the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act] and all its emp­ty promis­es of being able to keep your posi­tion and cov­er­age. We’ve lived through the pain of see­ing that you don’t get to keep your posi­tion, because the physi­cians all move away,” he yelled. “These pro­grams are designed to strip rur­al Wash­ing­ton of its health­care choic­es. This is not the way to reform, in any ratio­nal sense, our health­care deliv­ery sys­tem. We all want that. We want a sys­tem that can deliv­er good qual­i­ty care to every­one in the state.”

He went on to insin­u­ate that the bill would strip fund­ing from Medicare and oth­er cur­rent insur­ance options of rur­al Washingtonians.

“[The Patient Pro­tec­tion Act] was a fail­ure,” he bellowed.

“This social­ized med­i­cine mélange will be a fail­ure and frankly, I don’t think it’s an unin­tend­ed con­se­quence, Mr. Speak­er. I think this is designed.”

Short­ly after Walsh made these com­ments, the House was tem­porar­i­ly gaveled into recess due to Walsh’s vio­la­tion of Chap­ter XIII of Reed’s Par­lia­men­tary Rules.

Sec­tion 226 of this chap­ter of Reed’s Rules, titled Pun­ish­ment, states:

The pun­ish­ment which can be inflict­ed depends upon the char­ac­ter of the assem­bly, and is in legal assem­blies usu­al­ly lim­it­ed by law. In vol­un­tary assem­blies it may be cen­sure, rep­ri­mand, or expul­sion, or a demand for apol­o­gy on pain of expul­sion. It almost always hap­pens, when atten­tion is called to the unsuit­able nature of the words used by the mem­ber, or the acts per­formed by him, that he makes such an expla­na­tion or retrac­tion as enables the assem­bly to excuse him and go on with its business.

By call­ing into ques­tion the motives of the bil­l’s authors and fail­ing to observe prop­er deco­rum on the floor, Walsh was in clear vio­la­tion of the House­’s rules of debate.

At that point, Speak­er Pro Tem Lovick cut Wal­sh’s mic, caus­ing the audio feed being trans­mit­ted to TVW to imme­di­ate­ly cease, before Walsh’s tem­per reached its peak.

In accor­dance with its pro­ce­dures, at the time Wal­sh’s mic was cut by Lovick, TVW (Wash­ing­ton’s equiv­a­lent of C‑SPAN) ceased to show Walsh speak­ing and instead switched to a cam­era point­ed at the ros­trum. The sub­se­quent video shows Lovick repeat­ed­ly bang­ing his gav­el, with Walsh now off-screen and unheard.

Accord­ing to sources who were in the cham­ber, Walsh con­tin­ued shout­ing over the gav­el as the mic was cut and his access to TVW’s view­ing audi­ence terminated.

When the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives resumed its work a short time lat­er, the bill passed eas­i­ly and was sent to the Sen­ate for fur­ther consideration.

The roll call was a par­ty line vote, as follows:

Roll Call
HB 1523
Indi­vid­ual health ins market
Final Passage
3/8/2019

Yeas: 57; Nays: 41

Vot­ing Yea: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Apple­ton, Bergquist, Blake, Callan, Chap­man, Cody, Davis, Doglio, Dolan, Enten­man, Fey, Fitzgib­bon, Frame, Good­man, Gregerson, Hansen, Hud­gins, Jink­ins, Kil­duff, Kir­by, Klo­ba, Leav­itt, Lekanoff, Lovick, Macri, Mead, Mor­gan, Mor­ris, Orms­by, Ortiz-Self, Orwall, Paul, Pel­lic­ciot­ti, Peter­son, Pet­ti­grew, Pol­let, Ramos, Reeves, Ric­cel­li, Robin­son, Ryu, San­tos, Sells, Senn, Shew­make, Slat­ter, Springer, Stan­ford, Stonier, Sul­li­van, Tar­leton, Thai, Tharinger, Valdez, Walen, Wylie, Chopp

Vot­ing Nay: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Barkis, Boehnke, Caldier, Cham­bers, Chan­dler, Cor­ry, DeBolt, Dent, Dufault, Dye, Eslick, Gildon, Goehn­er, Gra­ham, Grif­fey, Har­ris, Hoff, Irwin, Jenkin, Klip­pert, Kraft, Kretz, MacEwen, May­cum­ber, McCaslin, Mos­bruck­er, Orcutt, Rude, Schmick, Shea, Smith, Steele, Stokes­bary, Suther­land, Van Wer­ven, Vick, Volz, Walsh, Wilcox, Ybar­ra, Young

Sources tell NPI that late Tues­day evening, Walsh again behaved inap­pro­pri­ate­ly and failed to fol­low the rules of debate on the House floor. Wal­sh’s repeat­ed fail­ure to fol­low House rules could result in pun­ish­ment being imposed by his cau­cus or by the entire nine­ty-eight mem­ber House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives… or both.

This is a devel­op­ing story.