Republicans complained last week that the House rules for the new Congress, written by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and passed on a party-line vote last Tuesday, represent a historical and undemocratic crackdown on the House minority’s few rights. In an editorial today, the Washington Post dismisses this as mere griping.

Do the Republicans actually have a point? A November report by the Congressional Research Service offers a fairly clear answer, even if it is complicated to explain.

The biggest issue is a complicated but possibly consequential change that all but eliminates one of the very few effective tools the minority has for forcing votes on key policy issues: the “motion to recommit.” Although such parliamentary changes are opaque to the voting public at large, this one could have serious consequences in the coming Congress.

The motion to recommit, the subject of the CRS report, is known in modern times as the minority party’s last chance to change a bill they do not like. It is offered just before a bill passes as a means by which to send a bill back to committee for changes. Usually, it makes for a symbolic vote on a policy issue important to the minority. The rules passed by the new Congress, to offer the short explanation, strictly tighten the standards for such motions and the effect they can have.

Democrats argue that Republicans have abused the motion to recommit. In a statement released after the new rules passed, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) dismissed this concern, referring instead to “motions that attempt to kill bills through parliamentary tricks and waste our constituents’ time on ‘gotcha’ politics.”

But this is a meritless complaint. It should be understood that majority Democrats can easily defeat these motions if they stick together on the vote. It is not like a filibuster. The minority cannot use it to “kill” or even delay any bill unless it sways enough members of the majority to join them. In the cases where they have been successful, and there were an unusually high number of such instances in the last Congress, Republicans succeeded in changing at least three bills for the better. In other cases they merely delayed action for a brief time, or embarrassed Democratic leaders until they were forced to pull bills containing unpopular provisions from the floor.

In each case, Democrats had the numbers and the opportunity to defeat the motion. And in each case, every member of Congress was forced to vote on a key issue that Americans care about, without the luxury of hiding behind the fact that the key provisions they support or oppose are buried in thousand-page bills. What’s so bad about that?

In this context, it is hard to see the validity in their complaint, and it is hard to understand why the Post doesn’t see this for what it is.