Tomorrow, the House will vote on a new set of rules for the 118th Congress. The rules from the previous Congress do not automatically carry forward; typically what happens is that, rather than starting from scratch the new Congress adopts those rules and then makes changes to them.
I've seen a copy of the new rules, and it seems that Kevin McCarthy, in his obsessive quest to become Speaker that required 15 ballots and a near fist fight on the House floor, has bargained away much of the power of the Speakership - and maybe his own ability to hold the office. The changes include new committees and subcommittees (the chairs of which he has already promised to certain individuals). limited the ability of the House on some finance bills, making it harder or impossible to move those bills out of committee for a vote, and restoring a privileged motion (which takes precedence) to vacate the chair, which can be made at any time by any member of the majority party and could result in him losing the Speakership. So basically, if he doesn't do what they want him to do, he'll be gone.
As a result, assuming he isn't cancelled, he wil be the weakest Speaker in our history. But at least he gets to play with that big honking gavel, right? So it all works out on the end...
The House votes on the rules package tomorrow, and the same voting requirements hold - tyhe GOP has 222 votes, and they need 218 for the rules to pass. So far, I am aware of 2 GOP members who indicated that they don't like the package and might vote against it. Get your popcorn ready.
I have a link to a six-page document that explains the changes, if anyone is interested, but I'm not sure if it will work because it's a redirect from another web site. This document is somewhere on house.gov, but I can;t find a more direct link yet, so give this one a try:
http://substack.com/redirect/5515eccf-30cb-4603-b27b-5976804b64e0?j=eyJ1IjoiMmxpaGoifQ.7fMcvmMoH32wm1t3STYCmX-IkTijtCb-iKt0buRFo84 |
