New House Rules
As is the case, as we begin a new session of Congress, the Republican-led House adopted its new set of rules (H.Res. 5) they claim will
make it easier to keep their campaign promises: to cut taxes, repeal President Obama’s health-care law and slash spending.
Those rule changes pretty much passed on a party-line vote. And as for the pay-go rules, well they’ve pretty much now become the cut-go rules. Under their new rules, no offsets will be required for any bill offering up tax cuts. However, for any bill addressing spending, corresponding spending cuts from other spending areas will be required and no tax increases will be allowed regardless of how badly the bill might be needed. For those of you who are paying attention, that means this time around the GOP House could run this Nation into absolute insolvency twice as fast as the last time they were in charge had Democrats not been able to hold the Senate.
The House rules have no effect on the Senate, just the House. Here’s a quick look at the changes:
- Constitutional Authority: All proposed bills must be accompanied by a “Constitutional Authority Statement.” Such note must specify the specific section of the Constitution that empowers Congress to enact the legislation. In previous rules documents, such a statement was required only for bills once they were reported out of committee and was included in the committee report.
- Transparency: All bills must be posted online for three days before they are put up for a vote. Previously, only bills reported out of committee were required to be “made available” three days before a vote. Also, the text of legislation must be posted online 24 hours before it is due to be marked up in committee.
- Spending: Spending increases have to be offset by cuts of an equal or greater amount elsewhere and cannot be paid for by tax increases.
- Term limits: Committee chairmen have a six-year term limit. Previously, they did not have term limits.
- Gephardt Rule: A new rule ends a provision that had allowed the House to automatically raise the debt limit when a joint budget resolution was adopted.
Personally, I like the ‘transparency provision’ as well as the ‘term limits.’ But, as to the pomposity regarding ‘Constitutional Authority’, I seriously question how many of the GOP truly understand the Constitution. A case in point would be Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who has already submitted a bill to end ‘birthright citizenship.’ He thinks that by amending the Immigration and Nationality Act, he can do an end-run around the 14th Amendment. Wrong! Rep. King, you cannot omit a right via change in statute that is GUARANTEED in the U.S. Constitution! You’d think that all of the gyrations this nation went through related to prohibition would have taught him that.
New Senate Rules
The Senate has also introduced new rules, but those new rules have not yet been voted into play. Instead of closing yesterday’s session, Senator Reid adjourned the session, which will allow Senator’s to chew on those proposed new rules for a bit and ultimately pass them in late January when they un-adjourn the session.
As we’ve all seen over the past 2 years, the Senate’s archaic set of rules with extended timelines before each subsequent vote has been sorely abused by the minority party to obstruct the business of the American people all in the name of their partisan ideology.
- Eliminates Filibuster to ‘Begin’ Debate.
- Filibusters must ‘Continuously Debate’. Under the new rules (S.Res. 12 – actual text not available as of 1/6/11 on Thomas), if the majority party fails to muster 60 votes to cut off debate (cloture), the filibustering senators must ‘enter a period of continuous debate.’ I had really hoped that they would define ‘debate’ such as to preclude the reading of the D.C. Phone book, or Tolstoy’s War and Peace to fill up that ‘period of continuous debate.’
- Time limits between actions have been reduced. For example, debate on a motion to take up a bill is now limited to 2 hours. The time between a cloture vote and a final vote on a nomination can not exceed 2 hours — instead of 30 hours.
- Secret Holds. secret holds can now only be made for a few days. Then the Senator’ must reveal his/her name. To eliminate abuse, ‘secret holds’ can no longer be shifted from one Senator to another to avoid disclosure.
- Guarantees that the Minority Party will be allowed to offer up ‘germane amendments’ to bills under consideration.