House Passes New Rules Package to 'Restore the People's House' With Sweeping Reforms

The House of Representatives now led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) convened on Monday evening to consider the rules package for the new Congress, a resolution that included many of the concessions demanded by conservative members of the House Republican Conference. Despite Republicans' narrow majority, the rules package for the 118th Congress was passed 220-213 — the first vote without rampant proxy voting in years — on a House floor that was much more at ease than in the overnight hours of last Friday and Saturday.

Ahead of the vote, GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik heralded the negotiated rules package as a set of changes that will "restore the People's House" by adding more transparency and bringing key conservative pieces of legislation to the floor for votes as Republicans now work toward delivering on their Commitment to America pledge.

Townhall earlier reported more on those provisions that will bring significant changes to the House of Representatives here. The concessions made by McCarthy last week are being heralded by more than just GOP leadership, too….
…it's a massive victory toward delivering on many of the promises made before and during the midterm election cycle to break the status quo in Congress, provide for more transparency on the House's activities, and actually debate and hold votes on some of conservatives' most-mentioned policy items.…








https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2023/01/09/house-vote-on-rules-package-n2618052






This is a great day for America. Transparency is finally back in at least one part of our federal government. These reforms are promising.

 

Getting rid of proxy voting, having 3 days to read a bill , and many other reforms will make the House of Representatives the people’s house once again.

 

So far the reforms by the republicans appear to make the country better.

 

Assuming that they will follow the new rules with the degree of consistency they do for all others, that may be meaningless.

Many of the rules are just kind of like changes in pathways, but fail to change conduct, to require honor, to restore order.
If there are no consequences to rules- there are no rules. Congress is totally averse to creating meaningful consequences for their own misconduct.

Sooner or later- that will have to happen before any meaningful change is possible.

 

Is this why they are gutting the bipartisan ethics committee?

Or why they have announced they plan to cut social security and Medicare along with making it harder to audit the very wealthy?

 

Once when the democrats were arguing among themselves and Hillary was asked about it, her reply was,
"Oh, that's just democrats".

 

I think so too and it was nice to post a positive article about some progress and change instead of the usual negative stuff.

 

Hell, as screwed as the DNC has this country just about anything is an improvement!

 

I'm wondering if the single vote of no confidence to remove the SOH is only granted for the Republican conference.

 

It is not hard to audit the wealthy. They do that all the time. They do not need to expand and target the working and middle classes which are vast in numbers and where they can wring Money out of people who will pay whatever the Jack booted thugs demand because they can’t afford a lawyer to defend themselves. As to Medicare and social security, they are running out of money and raising the age requirements will be likely not cutting actual benefits for those already retired or on disability. If we do nothing, either they will have to pay for social security in part out general funds or cut everyone’s benefits by 25%. This will happen around 2035 give or take a couple of years.

 

No, anyone can do it, though as it was historically before Pelosi if a minority party member did it the majority party woukd rally around their leader.

 

Of course, we could just go digital "And we will" and money will be a thing of the past.. Need more credits, add some zero's.. Think about it, most people "Young" haven't a clue how much a trillion dollars is, let alone 31 trillion!

 

And yet they violated it on the very first day by passing a bill without the 72-hour time frame required before voting. Go figure.

And if you read the entire rules package, it is an effort to control McCarthy and limit debates and voting on bills to 2 minutes, which means you cannot get much debate done. Nothing like trying to rule with an iron fist by the 20 minority republicans who think they are the ones running the country.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-house-vote-rules-that-will-constrain-mccarthys-power-2023-01-09/

 

The additional agents were mainly to replace staff that is retiring. And no, they do not have the staff to tackle very complicated returns.

If they are going to cut those programs they either need to allow younger generations that are not about to take a dirt nap the ability to stop payment or it should be a sacrifice made by all.

Personally I am fed up with the boomers and silent generation pilfering all they can and demanding everyone else around them make the sacrifices. The most selfish generations.

 

Actually, it is. YOu are dealing with complex tax laws that can have multiple exemptions to them and where the evidence is not all that clear. It is basically auditing the books, the QB or other bookkeeping software they use along with analyzing the documents they need to request, performing certain samples to test the books, and so forth. And all of this is time-consuming with another dozen or so like them in your inventory.

 

Ok. How many times did the Republicans invoke the rule. You know the democrats operate under a double standard.

 

Only if you're voting electronically following another electronic vote or report from the committee of the whole.

Here's the original:

Here's the amended:

LINK: Rules of the House of Representatives-One Hundred Seventeenth Congress
LINK: 118-Rules-of-the-House-of-Representatives-SxS-V2.pdf
LINK: untitled (house.gov)

Note Underlined: I did the amending as directed by the 3rd link as they do not have the full amended text up as of the time I wrote this post.

So, this only applies to those voting electronically and even then only in a select situation. Advanced notice will be given when this rule will apply. Basically if you want more than 2 minutes...be there IN the House instead of being out and about campaigning. Sounds like a good rule change to me.

 

Almost all votes in the house are electronic. What happens when the house votes is that members of Congress go to one of several in the chamber, place their id card, put in their numeric passcode, and then press one number for yes and one number for no, and one number for the present. And they can do this from their congressional office as well. It is not a roll call vote in most cases like what we had for speaker. Five menutes is reasonable time, but two minutes have the guise of trying to eliminate as many votes as possible.

 

The history of the ethics committee is that is like most of the house under Pelosi neither bipartisan nor particularly ethical.

 

How long do you think it takes to cast a vote? This only applies in a certain situation, people will have advanced notice when it will be applied. In addition to that other certain situation it only applies when a vote is called for. It does not apply to any debate stage of a session. It only applies to the time limit for voting. It doesn't even take 1 minute to cross the entire room that they use. Why do you think it should take 5 minutes to cast a vote?

 

It is more than just "casting a vote." When a vote is called, whether, for an amendment, a bill, or a resolution, the person has to decide whether to vote or not. And then there is a discussion with colleagues on whether to vote or internal communications with his or her staff on whether to vote yes or no. What the GOP and the hard right are forcing the congresspersons to do is to choose a party over the country with a two-minute time frame to cast a vote.

 

None of it means anything... just window dressing.

It's the same playbook the Republicrats have been running for decades.

 

That makes no sense to me. Why do they suddenly need extra money to replace someone who retires? I would think a number of people retire every year. Pay the replacements the money you were paying the people who retired. What I heard from the media was that the dems wanted to hire 87,000 new agents.

 

Can you show a source showing these are all new agents because I have posted several in this thread alone showing the vast majority are budgeted for retires over the next 10 years

 

Before the call to vote was called they had all the time in the world during the debate process and even before the bill was called to the floor for debate to discuss it with other party members and their staff. You're acting as if bills will be written and then called to the floor and immediately voted on before any discussion can be had. That is not how Congress works.