GOP Rebels Need to Take the Win
New rule changes will restore the House. Further demands are a recipe for chaos.
From Todays WSJ.
By
Kimberley A. Strassel
"
Donald Trump’s Wednesday statement on the GOP House chaos included some useful advice, overlooked amid the news that he supports Kevin McCarthy as speaker. “Take the victory,” Mr. Trump advised the Republican rebels, and he’s right. The anti-McCarthy crowd risks blowing up whatever good they’ve accomplished.
Process arguments can be boring—up to the point that they become necessary. Some of the participants in this week’s drama are in it for the showboating; Matt Gaetz wilts without a regular infusion of attention. But for the bulk of the 21 holdouts to Mr. McCarthy’s bid, the fight revolves around the most prosaic of process questions: how to fix a broken House.
No Republican disputes that the institution no longer operates as the Founders intended. Congress hasn’t complied with its own budget process for more than two decades, though that’s proved the least of the recent dysfunction. Beginning with
Nancy Pelosi’s forced march of ObamaCare in 2009-10, speakers increasingly have centralized control to their office. Committees barely function. Members have no ability to debate or amend. Leaders disappear into back rooms to cook up mammoth bills that are dropped on the floor for last-minute take-it-or-leave it votes. Add Mrs. Pelosi’s Covid “proxy” voting rules, and most of the House didn’t even bother to clock in.
This is bad for democracy. It makes a mockery of representative government and it also plays a big role in today’s partisanship, since it robs members of the opportunity to work together. But as the rebels note, it’s particularly bad for conservative causes. Big-government types love back-room legislating, since it produces vehicles for giant spending and bad policy that nobody has time to expose or stop. Those hastily written products also tend to be (purposely?) vague, empowering the bureaucratic state to fill in the regulatory blanks.
House Freedom Caucus members as early as last summer began demanding a fix should Republicans take power. Mr. McCarthy largely ignored them until the close midterm results meant he no longer could. Yet in the negotiations leading up to this week’s speaker votes, he agreed to sweeping changes.
Under the proposed new rules package, committees are back in charge of legislation, with rules designed to ensure that bills address single subjects—rather than catch-all legislation. It similarly gives members new power to challenge amendments that aren’t related to the topic at hand. And it revives “Calendar Wednesday,” whereby any committee chairman can bring a bill straight to the floor.
It includes new provisions for accountability and transparency. Proxy voting is history, as are virtual committee meetings. It requires a 72-hour rule to give members time to read legislation. It ends Democrats’ wild experiment with staffer unionization, which threatened to tie the chamber up with crazy demands.
And it makes it much harder for the House to tax and spend. It imposes a “cut go” rule—requiring any mandatory spending increases be offset with equal or greater mandatory spending cuts. A three-fifths supermajority vote will be required for tax increases. It revives what’s known as the “Holman rule,” allowing appropriations bills effectively to defund the salaries of specific executive-branch officials or specific programs. It also requires each committee to submit an oversight plan that lays out what action it intends to take on unauthorized or duplicative programs.
These changes will produce the first functioning House in years, even as they tie the hands of spenders. Take the win! Instead, the rebels continue to hold out for provisions that have the potential to negate this victory by plunging the House back into chaos. At the top of the list is the continued demand to allow any Republican member to call for a motion to “vacate the chair”—essentially a snap vote to oust the speaker.
Talk about inviting the dysfunction the holdouts claim to want to end. Conservatives used such a motion in 2015 to force John Boehner out, and while his successor, Paul Ryan, avoided the same fate, today’s raucous environment and the GOP’s narrow margins make it a destabilizing weapon. It’s designed to continue to make Mr. McCarthy a hostage to the rebels’ every whim. If you think the House is a mess now, imagine a scenario in which Mr. Gaetz or Lauren Boebert or Andy Biggs can bring the place to a standstill every time their noses are out of joint. Assuming their noses are ever in joint.
Between this and other provisions, the rebel message is that they won’t accept Mr. McCarthy as speaker unless he is stripped of all his power. Brilliant. Returning the business of the House to members is one thing. Neutering a leader of any ability to set a direction or maintain order is suicide. Just what the country needs: 222 headless Republican chickens running around, all claiming to be in charge.
At this point, the rebels can no longer plausibly claim they are fighting for “the people.” This is their own power play. Just take the win."
![[rofl]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/013.gif "ROFL [rofl]")
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