Only in the U.S. Congress would Thursday be the day when heavy duty work begins. The House is operating under new rules now. Thursday’s consideration of legislation relates to tying the president’s ability to release supplies from U.S. strategic oil reserves to opening up new public lands to oil and gas exploration. What’s remarkable about this bill (which will go nowhere because the Senate won’t pass it) is that it’s the first test of the “modified open rule” the GOP majority adopted in the rules package for the session.
That means any member can bring an amendment to the bill without having to go through the Rules Committee to get it approved. They only had to submit it to the Congressional Record in time to get it printed in order to be heard on the floor. In a cursory reading of the “Amendments” section of Wednesday’s record, it looks like there are about 100 amendments that made it in, many of which are from Democrats—as many as three-quarters. So it could look like a miniature version of a Senate vote-a-rama in the House Thursday afternoon.
The restrictions on these amendments, besides needing to make it into Wednesday’s record, is that they have to be germane to the underlying bill (as in have something to do with the reserve and oil production) and they are limited to five minutes of debate. The pertinence is enforced on the floor, by the way, with any member being allowed to raise a point of order over an amendment, and the House parliamentarian determining whether it can fly.
Reinstating this rule is arguably a good thing, another instance where the Freedom Caucus unwittingly does something positive in the attempt to blow it up. It wrests some power away from leadership and reinstates the power of regular members to put their stamp on legislation. The tiny GOP majority means this gives Democrats a big field to play on and make mischief. The Freedom Caucus might control McCarthy, but they can’t control the other 400ish members.
RELATED STORY: The Freedom Caucus in now going to be in charge of House Rules. Wheeeeee!!!!
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It gives Democrats a real chance to needle Republicans and make them take some uncomfortable votes. For instance, there are a number of amendments to a petroleum reserve bill to ban offshore drilling off both coasts. There aren’t a whole lot of coastal Republicans left in the House, but enough that voting to endanger their states’ beaches might be problematic.
It’s a partial return to how the House worked a lot of the time before the Newt Gingrich revolution that really consolidated legislative power in leadership. The Rules Committee has always been the gatekeeper of what gets to the floor, but in recent decades it’s been a very narrow funnel. These changes are thanks to the Freedom Caucus. They might have some really interesting unintended consequences for Barely Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who agreed to them as a condition of his getting to be barely speaker.
The Rules Committee isn’t owned by his team anymore since he put three nihilist Republicans on it. The bloc of three is enough to overrule the rest of the GOP members on the committee, and arguably the stuff McCarthy wants and/or needs to get to the floor. But the ability to bypass the Rules Committee entirely and go straight to the floor with this modified open rule makes for even more unpredictable fun.
Speaking of that unpredictable fun McCarthy’s razor-thin majority gives him, it’s still not at all clear that he will have the votes to keep Rep. Ilhan Omar off of committees. It takes a simple majority to accomplish, and thus far Democrats appear to be unified behind her. There are three likely lost votes for McCarthy among Republicans, and several undecideds.
Over on the Senate side of things, there’s not a lot happening beyond the Senate Judiciary Committee advancing more than two dozen judicial nominees.
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