On Wednesday, Wilkins took the floor to blast the Senate for frustrating the legislative process by moving slowly on House bills.
"Their rules that allow one person to block the process don't work very well anymore," he sputtered to a rapt House.
Wilkins said the Senate was holding onto or delaying 64 bills passed earlier this session by the House. He was fighting mad that a lot of his chamber's work seemed to be spinning down the drain pipe.
What prompted Wilkins' outburst was remarks from the legislature's other top Republican, Senate Pro Tem President Glenn McConnell, who criticized the House for adding non-germane bills to measures returning to the Senate.
You might recall from high school civics that before something can move to the governor to be signed into law, the exact same measure has to be approved by the House and Senate. When one body finishes with a piece of legislation, it goes to the other, which then takes it up and sends it back. When it returns to the initiating body, members can agree to the version amended by the second chamber or they can vote to "non-concur," or disagree. If this happens, both versions go to a conference committee to get a compromise. If three members from each side come up with an agreement, both bodies vote on the final version. And if they agree, the measure goes to the governor.
As you can see, there are a lot of steps for something to become a law. What irked McConnell was that the House took a "teacher protection" bill and added previously passed House bills to try to get the Senate to act. In this instance, the House added a ban on same-sex marriages, probate judge rules and changes to lobbying rules.
"You've got to have an imagination greater than the Star Wars writers to be able to link those four things to the subject matter," McConnell said.
In essence, the House "bobtailed" gay marriage, lobbying and judicial proposals onto an education bill. Earlier in the year, Gov. Mark Sanford waxed poetic about the vices of adding extraneous measures to legislation. That, in part, prompted the House in April to pass a measure to stop the practice of bobtailing.
Guess who introduced the measure? Wilkins -- the same guy who was complaining about the Senate not moving things along after the Senate complained about House bobtailing.
Wilkins defended the practice by saying it was the only way to get the Senate to act if the House was going to continue "to be the hardworking members of the body that we are."
The speaker, however, seems to get quantity and quality of legislation confused.
For the past few years, the Republican-controlled House has acted as a legislative racetrack -- seemingly racing to get as much legislation to the Senate as possible. The House appears to value quantity, as evidenced earlier this year in dealing with property tax reform. Instead of sending the Senate a well-considered property tax reform option, the House voted -- and approved -- three different ways of changing property tax rules.
And that, in our view, is wrong. It allows House members to say they've done the work on property tax reform, which provides political fodder for them at election time. But what they've done really isn't the hard work. As in many instances, they leave the heavy lifting to the Senate to sort out the merits of the competing proposals.
Since the Senate characterizes itself as the more deliberative body, having extra work certainly doesn't help speed things along.
So what needs to happen? Part of the problem is lawmakers find themselves under increasing pressure as the session draws to a close. Rules won't ever be able to fix that.
But the House could start acting more responsibly in the initial passage of legislation to ensure there is fuller debate at the subcommittee, committee and floor levels. That will result in stronger bills that have fewer errors for the Senate to clean up.
Similarly, the Senate could try to make things move a little more smoothly. Senators could stay in session longer. They could face reality during filibusters. There was no reason, for example, to stay stuck on something like stronger seat-belt legislation for eight weeks when it was crystal clear after three weeks that nothing was going to happen.
Yes, the Senate has problems with timeliness. But when the House rushes legislation, the chances are greater for bad laws.