New Rules of the Republican House

By the time many DOMEocracy readers have read this blog, the election of the next House speaker may well have been decided. Kevin McCarthy might have eked out a victory and seized the gavel that has eluded him for the past six years. If not, well, the 118^th Congress will begin in chaos and descend from there.

But regardless of whether McCarthy manages to ascend to the House dais, the new Congress will be operating under a number of new rules that he approved in order to secure votes for the speakership. Those rules tell us more about the governance style of the GOP majority than the outcome of the race for speaker.

Speaker Newt Gingrich, in 1995, rewrote the rules to eliminate three standing committees of the House and to end ice deliveries to member offices. Nancy Pelosi used the rewriting of the rules to create a select committee on climate change and to institute ethics changes, neither welcomed by Republicans who could do nothing about it. (Votes on rules packages are essentially mandatory party votes.) 

McCarthy has been engaged in weeks of negotiations with his extreme Right wing members to incorporate changes — not ones that would make the House function more effectively, but specifically to secure the votes needed to make him speaker. And in doing so, he has exposed the next speaker to grave vulnerability and revealed the harshly partisan agenda Republicans intend to pursue.

McCarthy’s rules package testily chastises the outgoing speaker for insisting on “unscientific mask mandates and security screenings” while exploiting “the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to keep the House in an ‘emergency’ lockdown for years, subject to her own whims and will.” Among the outrages Pelosi perpetuated were allowing remote voting so members would not expose themselves, their families and fellow travelers to a dangerous illness and prohibiting  loaded weapons on the floor of the House. All those “whims” are out the door under the Republican rules: no masks, no magnetometers. Hopefully, the coronavirus and the NRA will  pay close attention so that the House floor does not become a seething cauldron of disease and shootouts.

Of course, Republicans have neither the policy nor the votes to resolve the issues that they demagogue with their MAGAmaniacs: few if any details have emerged on the white-hot issues of climate, immigration, health care, inflation, border control, entitlement reform, tax equity, crime, or any other policies against which they fulminated all fall. And so, the new rules tend to focus on the kind of rhetorical excesses and partisan niggling that the GOP has substituted for serious lawmaking for the past decade.

Instead of legislating, Republicans will be investigating just about everything except the attempt to overthrow American democracy on January 6, 2021 by Donald Trump and his cowering acolytes in Congress. The January 6^th select committee is toast, its internal records delivered to the House Administration committee, a leadership panel that will doubtless try to bury its work. Good luck with that.

In its place, the Republicans are creating a new select committee “on the weaponization of the federal government” that will expose the Biden administration’s “assault on civil liberties,” surely a top priority of the American voters. There will also be a new select committee focusing on the Chinese Communist Party and dedicated to protecting “American competitiveness” and defending human rights. Perhaps that new committee can begin by ensuring the speedy implementation of legislation enacted under Pelosi to promote American competitiveness in the computer chip industry. Nor will this be the extent of the investigating by Republicans; every other committee will be required to “establish oversight plans detailing how they will hold the Biden Administration accountable.”

There are five holdout members of the GOP conference who could keep McCarthy from the speakership. Under the GOP rules package, those five – or any other 5 Republicans – could demand a vote on removing the speaker at any time, a certain guarantee that the extremist element will keep their new speaker on a very short leash for the next two years. A similar provision drove John Boehner out of the speaker’s chair in 2015.

Republicans also will also protect their ability to perpetuate their deficit-creating fiscal irresponsibility, embracing procedures that ensure oceans of red ink and likely produce government shutdowns. They reinstitute their ineffectual “Cut As You Go” budget rule that requires that all mandatory spending increases – but not tax cuts – be offset by spending reductions (and they aren’t thinking about cutting the Pentagon budget). And to ensure that tax policy stays out of the deficit reduction debate, they would require a filibuster-level three-fifths majority vote to raise (but not to cut) taxes, unique among all legislative standards.

The long list of bad ideas continues. Any member of the public could bring a complaint to the House Ethics Committee, ensuring a plethora of politically-inspired allegations that, proven or not, will become instant fodder for campaign attacks. “Congressman/woman Smith Under Investigation by Ethics Panel.” Fill in the blank. And those pesky staff unions in congressional offices? Nope; they’re gone, at least until the Labor Relations Board or the courts intervene. 

Just to be sure the 118^th Congress gets off on the right foot, the rules package also guarantees that members are not precluded from using gender-specific language in committee or on the House floor. A laser focus on the big issues! Nothing “woke” about these House Republicans, but their rules package also provides no evidence they are awake.