The House of Representatives will begin its legislative work on Monday after last week’s four-day spectacle to elect the Speaker, which ended with Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) securing the ring after 15 rounds of voting.
The House of Representatives is scheduled to convene on Monday and move on to its first order of business: voting on a package of rules for the 118th Congress, which has already come under scrutiny by some Republicans. The terms were central to GOP negotiations last week, with McCarthy offering a series of concessions to close the House.
After the rules are passed, the House of Representatives is scheduled to pass the Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act, which seeks to cancel the money for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that was included in the Democrats’ Tax Cuts Act. Inflation. Other bills are also scheduled to hit the floor this week.
Also Monday, the Republican Steering Committee is scheduled to meet to finalize committee chairs and assignments for the 118th Congress, a source told The Hill.
The Senate is not in session this week.
Home to get the rule pack
The House of Representatives on Monday will take up a package of rules for the 118th Congress, marking the first leg of legislative work in the new session. The House was unable to bring up any bills until a Speaker was elected.
The package was at the center of closed-door negotiations last week between McCarthy’s allies and supporters, with those close to the GOP leader trying to strike a deal to give the California Republican.
McCarthy was finally elected Speaker in the early hours of Saturday on the 15th ballot. Six of the GOP members voted in attendance, which lowered the threshold needed to win McCarthy and ultimately put him on the path to the leadership post.
But to win the Speakership, McCarthy gave up a series of rule concessions that swayed supporters. Among them was a change to the motion to vacate the chair, which is used to force a vote to impeach the Speaker.
The package of rules agreed to by Republicans in November required at least half of the GOP conference to support the motion to trigger a vote. But in a compromise for some conservative Republicans, the package released last weekend lowered the threshold to five Republicans.
However, this change was not enough for a number of Republicans, who called for the threshold to be lowered to one. The motion for release had historically required only one member, but Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) lifted it to a majority in each party when she became speaker in 2019.
McCarthy ultimately decided last week to reinstate the motion with one member to vacate to shore up support for the Chair. That difference is only change between the rules package that will hit the floor on Monday and the terms released by the Republican conference last weekend. Other concessions agreed upon are not included in the legislation.
The package also directs the creation of a subcommittee on “Arming the Federal Government,” which would fall under the purview of the House Judiciary Committee, heeding a request from some Republicans who called for a “church-style” committee to investigated. government abuses – a reflection of the 1975 Senate select committee named after former Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho), which examined the intelligence agencies.
The rule package would also reinstate the Holman Rule, which would have allowed amendments to lower government employee salaries or funding for specific programs to $1, effectively limiting them. It also ends proxy voting, which was created during the pandemic, among other things.
The rules package is already being scrutinized by some Republicans, setting the stage for what could be a messy first legislative vote for the House in the 118th Congress.
Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) tweeted Friday night that he would not support the rules package, doubling down on that stance during an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday morning. He said one of his main concerns is that the terms could cut defense spending.
“This has a proposed cut of billions of dollars in defense, which I think is a terrible idea, when you have aggressive Russia in Ukraine, you have a growing threat of China in the Pacific,” Gonzales said. “I will visit Taiwan here in a few weeks. How am I going to look our allies in the eye and say, I need you to increase your defense budget, yet America is going to cut ours?
Rep. Nancy Mace (RS.C.) also signaled she might oppose the package on Monday, telling “Face the Nation” she was “considering” the opposition’s terms of concerns about the closed-door negotiations that took place between of the President’s vote. last week.
“I like the rules package. It is the most open, fair and fiscally conservative package we have had in 30 years. I support it. But what I don’t support is a small number of people trying to work out a deal or deal for themselves… privately, in secret to get a vote or a vote present. I don’t support that,” she said.
“So I’m on the fence now about the rules package vote tomorrow for that reason,” she added.
Opposition from Gonzales and Mace could put the rules package in jeopardy because of Republicans’ slim majority in the House of Representatives. If all members are present and Democrats oppose the terms in unison, Republicans can afford the others to lose four “yes” votes.
Republicans assemble bills for the first legislative week
Once a package of rules is passed, Republicans are planning to bring a series of measures to the floor involving China, law enforcement and abortion.
The first bill, however, is titled the Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act, which would revoke funding set aside for the IRS in the tax, health care and climate package that Democrats passed over the summer.
McCarthy announced in September that the measure would be the first to be taken up by a GOP House majority. It comes after Republicans have on a number of occasions falsely said that increased IRS funding would lead to 87,000 new IRS agents. However, this rough calculation includes support staff, non-agent IRS employees, and replacement individuals who leave after a decade.
The House of Representatives this week is also set to vote on bills that would create select committees on the “Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party,” which would aim to end critical economic dependencies on China and ” the armament of the Federal Federation”. government vs. ordinary Americans,” which will investigate how government agencies obtain various information.
McCarthy appointed Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) to chair the China subcommittee in December.
Also this week is a resolution, led by Rep. Ken Buck (R-Texas), expressing support for law enforcement agencies and condemning efforts to dismantle them — a direct blow to Democrats who have called for defunding police.
Republicans are also planning to focus their efforts on abortion-related legislation this week, introducing the “Abortion Survivors Born Alive Act,” which outlines medical protections for babies who survive an attempted abortion, and a resolution that condemns attacks on pro-life facilities. , groups and churches.
Additionally, the House will take up the Protecting America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve from China Act, which would ban sales and exports of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the Chinese Communist Party, and prosecutors must follow the law, which calls for transparency among prosecutors.
The steering committee to finalize the tasks, the chairpersons
The Republican Steering Committee is scheduled to meet Monday and finalize assignments and chairs, a source told The Hill.
The committee met in December and ratified chairs for the 118th Congress for committees that had only one person running for the top post. Decisions on contested seats, however, were doomed amid GOP opposition to McCarthy’s bid for Speaker. The group will now meet on Monday to complete its business.
The panel still has to decide who receives gifts for the House, Homeland Security, Budget and Education and Labor Committees.
Emily Brooks contributed.
