Another measure that makes spending bills bear a open rule process, allowing members to make unlimited edits during the debate on the floor. This sounds harmless, maybe even seductive. Let a thousand legislative flowers bloom and so forth. In fact, it tends to get out of control. Just ask the Democrats, who tried this back in 2007. The tie imposed by minority members of the Republican Party on bills was so brutal that the Democrats quickly reversed course.
The rule change that caused the most buzz involved the movement away from the chair, a mechanism by which ranking and profile members could request a vote on whether or not to kick off the speaker. During Nancy Pelosi’s (second) tour as speaker, a majority of either party required to trigger such a vote. The tumultuous caucus demanded a return to pre-Princess norm allowing a single member to do so. Mr. McCarthy protested vehemently for good reason. It was Mark Meadows (representative at the time) file a petition empty in 2015 that eventually led to Speaker John Boehner giving up the hammer. No one needs to tell Mr McCarthy that since then, his conference has only become more acrimonious and rife with bomb-disrupting monkeys. But in the end, he gave in.
Among McCarthy’s informal concessions was a promise to give members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus many seats on the Rules Committee that, despite its weak name, has enormous influence on the government. as the panel that controls bills debated in the House of Commons. floor and under what terms. Like the committee website proudly, it “has the authority to do virtually anything in the process of considering a measure, including claiming it has been adopted.” It could “rewrite only part of the bill, or the entire bill. In essence, as long as a majority of the House is willing to vote on a particular rule, there is little that the Rules Committee cannot do.” Pictures, if you will, a small group Lauren Boeberts hold the Rules Committee hostage and, by extension, the entire legislative process.
Many of the changes the anti-McCarthy rebels pushed for were ostensibly aimed at making the House more democratic by empowering ranks and profiles. But as things went, power simply shifted from the leader, who was in charge of the entire conference, to a group of extremists obsessed with personal branding. their. The expected outcome would not be a fairer, more equal House of Commons but an extremely dysfunctional House of Representatives.
This unfortunate situation is not only about one’s weakness or ambition. It is about a party that has nurtured sad, paranoid, angry, anti-government elements for many years. The burning faction now has everyone, not just the speaker, because of each nose hair.
