A bit of drama at the Iowa statehouse as a bill that would raise the state’s gas tax by a dime a gallon cleared a key House committee on a 13-to-12 vote. To ensure passage, Republican House Speaker Kraig Paulsen used his authority to permanently replace one of the committee’s Republican members who opposed the bill with another Republican who voted yes.

And Paulsen temporarily replaced a freshman Republican legislator who was a “no” on the bill and Paulsen himself voted “yes” in his place.
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Paulsen says he made those extraordinary moves because it’s clear a bipartisan consensus has emerged among legislators and the bill can pass both the House and Senate with both Republican and Democratic votes. Drew Klein is the Iowa director of Americans for Prosperity, a group that opposes the gas tax increase and he was at the statehouse to watch the vote in the House Ways and Means Committee.

The bill will be eligible for debate in the Iowa House on Tuesday. An identical bill cleared the Ways and Means Committee in the Iowa SENATE  on an eight-to-six vote. Senate Democratic Leader Mike Gronstal says he has “no particular timeline” for a vote in the state senate on the issue, but he says when it’s clear the bill will pass “it doesn’t make sense to wait.”