WASHINGTON — After a grueling five-day, 15-ballot fight for the speakership, House Republicans won the first of what will surely be many tough legislative battles ahead Monday night: passing a package of rules that will govern the way in which they run over the House of Representatives. the next two years.
A package of rules at the start of a new Congress is generally uncontroversial, but given the fragile GOP majority and concerns about Chairman Kevin McCarthy’s last-minute deal with the far-right Freedom Caucus, Republican vote counters Republican Party worked furiously to hold the line. .
The vote was 220 to 213, with one Republican, Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, joining all Democrats in voting «no.»
Gonzales, a member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, had complained that some of McCarthy’s concessions to conservative agitators — specifically one that made it easier to remove McCarthy as speaker — went too far and reiterated all weekend that he opposed to the package. Another self-described pragmatist, Rep. Nancy Mace, RS.C., said over the weekend that she was «on the fence» but later voted «yes.»
«This is just the beginning. This is the easy part.[s], the speaker votes and the rules vote,” Gonzales said on Fox News on Monday. “But I guarantee you that no one expected 15 rounds of voting. … Nobody said that it will be four days, 15 rounds of voting and that their families will go through the stamp.
«As bad as it was to see it, it was even worse to be a part of it,» Gonzales continued. «Who wants to see this fiasco repeat itself over and over again?»
The conservative advocacy group, FreedomWorks, responded by tweeting: «If Tony is a ‘NO’ on the House Rules Package, he should not be welcome at the 119th Congress.»
But Gonzales made no apology for breaking with his party after the vote: «Last week was pretty chaotic; I don’t want that to happen again, so I think it’s time to give Kevin McCarthy a chance to make good on this commitment to USA».
Due to its narrow majority, McCarthy’s leadership team could afford to lose just four Republican votes on the rules package for the new Congress. If it didn’t pass, it could have ruined the delicate deal McCarthy made last week with the Freedom Caucus to secure the speaker’s gavel.
A provision in the rule package, demanded by conservatives and criticized by moderates, would lower the threshold to a single lawmaker to force a full vote to oust McCarthy from the president’s office for the next two years.
The motion to «vacate the chair seems like a bad idea,» Gonzales told reporters.
Another rule change, secured by conservatives, would ban the practice of automatically raising the federal debt ceiling when Congress passes a budget resolution. It means the House and Senate will have to vote separately to raise the nation’s debt limit, and Republicans have said they will demand massive spending cuts in return.
That will surely result in a fiscal showdown between House Republicans and Democrats, who control the White House and Senate, when the country hits its $31.4 trillion debt limit, which is expected by the end of the year. of the summer.
Although it should have been an easy rise, the Republican leadership took a victory lap given the GOP infighting that dominated headlines last week.
«I think it’s a good sign that what happened last week built trust instead of destroying it,» Rules Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Oklahoma, said in an interview. «Clearly, this shows that the differences of last week do not have lasting divisions within the conference.»
Other rule changes in the pack include:
- Require that new spending be offset by cuts in other parts of the budget.
- Require legislators to have 72 hours to read a bill before it goes before the floor.
- Elimination of voting by proxy or distance.
- Allow the House to vote to create a select subcommittee focused on investigating the origins of the pandemic and the «weaponization of the federal government.»
- Gut the Congressional Ethics Office, the independent, nonpartisan office that vets lawmakers.
Aside from the package, McCarthy agreed to place three Freedom Caucus members on the influential Rules Committee, which determines how bills are introduced; hold a vote on term limits for members of Congress; and placing another Freedom member on the committee that determines the committee chairs.
After passing the rules measure, the House passed its first bill in the new Republican majority: legislation sponsored by Rep. Adrian Smith, R-Nebraska, to rescind more than $70 billion in new funding for the IRS that passed by Congress last year. as part of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. The 221-210 vote was along party lines.
The GOP bill will go nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Monday the IRS bill would cut federal revenue by nearly $186 billion while cutting funding by nearly $72 billion, therefore adding $186 billion to the deficit over the next decade.
In other developments, the GOP Steering Committee, which decides who gets the gavels and committee seats, has recommended Rep. Jason Smith, R-Missouri, to be the chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee that writes taxes. Smith, who aggressively campaigned for his fellow Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections, defeated Reps. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., and Adrian Smith for the presidency.
Trustees also voted to recommend Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., over Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, as chairman of the Homeland Security Committee.
The full GOP Conference is expected to approve those recommendations this week.
