The week of substantive work in the Congress continues with a Friday session in the House. Yes, the House is on the floor doing a real bill on a Friday. So that’s something Barely Speaker Kevin McCarthy accomplished. Since he and his crew also did away with proxy voting, everyone actually has to be there, as well.
The House is continuing to plow through amendments in their new “modified open rule” to a bill to limit President Joe Biden’s use of the Strategic Patroleum Reserve, tying it to release of oil leases on public lands. Members brought about 140 amendments in the process, many from Democrats. By the end of Thursday, they had worked through a couple dozen of them with two-minute votes, and delivered a stinging rebuke to McCarthy’s darling Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
Many of the amendments had been dispensed with by voice votes. They all had 5 minutes of debate before the voting began. The voting process kept all the members on the floor, and some actually pretty impressive work by the presiding officer, Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR), who kept the process clicking along.
It also brought some fun. While Greene might be McCarthy’s favorite, she is definitely not held in high esteem by her colleagues. She had one amendment, and it only got 14 votes. (She did get the support of fabulist Rep. George Santos, so there’s that.) That brought out some not-so-veiled gloating on the part of old-guard Republicans.
RELATED: Holy unintended consequences, Freedom Caucus! The new legislative fun begins in the House
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Former House Rules Committee chairman Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) opined that this open amendment process would be a good learning process for members like her. “We are trying to open things up for everybody,” he said “There were several people, or at least one, that only got 18 votes. So it also has a way to—over time—to lessen the stupidity factor.”
Don’t hold your breath, Pete.
Democrats seemed to thoroughly and genuinely enjoy the process. “If I get some amendments passed then I’m gonna like it a lot,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), told The Hill on Thursday, adding that she is “absolutely for a transparent process.”
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) agreed, highlighting the fact that the Freedom Caucus did Democrats a favor by pushing the process. They wanted the ability for their members to get more say in legislation, but doing that meant Democrats had that new power, too. “I think it gives the Democrats an opportunity to offer amendments,” Cohen said, pointing out that they’ll have more success getting amendments through on the floor than in the GOP Rules Committee, which normally controls amendments.
The House was busy Friday morning wrapping up the remaining amendments that weren’t dispensed with in voice votes. This bill can only be considered a warm-up for the process, because it is purely messaging. The Senate isn’t going to take it up, and President Joe Biden would veto it, anyway. But it’s provided the whole House a chance to flex some lawmaking muscle that’s sort of atrophied over the past decade or so.
Over on the other side of Capitol Hill, the Senate is out Friday, still waiting on the Republicans to get their shit together on committee assignments. The committees can still meet and have hearings and do work because like the Senate as a whole, they are continuing bodies. It’s not like the House, where literally nothing could happen until the Speaker was elected. But it does mean there could be no real legislative work. They had just two roll call votes, one an a non-binding resolution and one executive confirmation. They still have not adopted their organizing resolution that will allow legislation to start moving.
That’s largely because a bit of disarray in the GOP, when newly elected Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) announced that he wanted one of the Judiciary Committee Republicans to step down and let him have their seat. He even called Sens. Marsha Blackburn (TN) and Thom Tillis (NC) to ask them to make room for him. They were not amused. The first problem for Schmitt, other than being an entitled asshole who totally bucked all the norms and traditions of learning his place as a freshman, is that his colleague from Missouri, Sen. Josh Hawley, is already on the committee. The Senate Republican Conference has a rule against that. He asked for a waiver and didn’t get it.
But that process kept the Republicans from finishing committee assignments for all the members. He has to come up with new committee requests and submit them. That has pushed the Republicans’ organizing into next week, and with it, the formal organization of all the Senate committees. That means the Senate can’t adopt its whole organizing resolution. It appears that Schmitt decided to stake his claim as the Senate’s most obnoxious member early on. Look out, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. You’ve got some stiff competition.
On Thursday, they designated January as “National Stalking Awareness Month,” on a 94-0 vote, just to have something to do. Usually, these kinds of resolutions are done by voice votes or under unanimous consent. On Monday, they confirmed Brendan Owens as assistant defense secretary for energy, installations, and environment, 60-35.
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