[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
MEMBERS' DAY HEARING ON PROPOSED RULES
CHANGES FOR THE 118TH CONGRESS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON RULES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
NOVEMBER 29, 2022
__________
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via http://govinfo.gov
Printed for the use of the Committee on Rules
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
50-346 WASHINGTON : 2023
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COMMITTEE ON RULES
JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts, Chairman
NORMA J. TORRES, California TOM COLE, Oklahoma
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado Ranking Republican
JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas
MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
JOSEPH D. MORELLE, New York MICHELLE FISCHBACH, Minnesota
MARK DeSAULNIER, California,
Vice Chair
DEBORAH K. ROSS, North Carolina
JOE NEGUSE, Colorado
Don Sisson, Staff Director
Kelly Dixon Chambers, Minority Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Legislative and Budget Process
JOSEPH D. MORELLE, New York, Chair
MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas
DEBORAH K. ROSS, North Carolina Ranking Republican
JOE NEGUSE, Colorado TOM COLE, Oklahoma
JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts
------
Subcommittee on Rules and Organization of the House
NORMA J. TORRES, California, Chair
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
Vice Chair Ranking Republican
MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania TOM COLE, Oklahoma
JOSEPH D. MORELLE, New York
JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts
------
Subcommittee on Expedited Procedures
JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland, Chair
DEBORAH K. ROSS, North Carolina MICHELLE FISCHBACH, Minnesota
Vice Chair Ranking Republican
NORMA J. TORRES, California TOM COLE, Oklahoma
MARK DeSAULNIER, California
JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts
C O N T E N T S
----------
November 29, 2022
Opening Statements:
Page
Hon. James P. McGovern, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Massachusetts and Chair of the Committee on Rules. 1
Hon. Tom Cole, a Representative in Congress from the State of
Oklahoma and Ranking Member of the Committee on Rules...... 1
Witness Testimony:
Hon. H. Morgan Griffith, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Virginia...................................... 2
Hon. Tim Burchett, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Tennessee......................................... 10
Prepared Statement....................................... 12
Hon. Carolyn Bourdeaux, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Georgia........................................... 20
Hon. Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen, a Delegate in Congress
from the Territory of American Samoa....................... 21
Hon. Warren Davidson, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Ohio.............................................. 22
Hon. Robert E. Latta, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Ohio.............................................. 25
Hon. William R. Timmons IV, a Representative in Congress from
the State of South Carolina................................ 26
Hon. Kat Cammack, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Florida................................................. 34
Hon. Thomas Massie, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Kentucky.......................................... 35
Additional Material Submitted for the Record:
Letter from the Hon. Tim Burchett, a Representative in
Congress from the State of Tennessee....................... 45
Statement from the Hon. Lauren Boebert, a Representative in
Congress from the State of Colorado........................ 60
Statement from the Hon. W. Gregory Steube, a Representative
in Congress from the State of Florida, on Truth in
Testimony Reform........................................... 62
Statement from the Hon. W. Gregory Steube, a Representative
in Congress from the State of Florida, on Drug Testing..... 64
Statement from the Hon. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Representative
in Congress from the State of Texas........................ 65
Statement from the Hon. Raul M. Grijalva, a Representative in
Congress from the State of Arizona......................... 68
MEMBERS' DAY HEARING ON PROPOSED RULES CHANGES FOR THE 118th CONGRESS
----------
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2022
House of Representatives,
Committee on Rules,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 1:50 p.m., in Room
H-313, The Capitol, Hon. James P. McGovern [chairman of the
committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives McGovern, Torres, Perlmutter,
Raskin, Scanlon, Morelle, DeSaulnier, Ross, Cole, Burgess,
Reschenthaler, and Fischbach.
Mrs. Torres. You are going to keep us here.
The Chairman. Well, until we--for a little bit anyway. But
today's meeting gives all of our colleagues a chance to share
ideas that may be useful as we look ahead to the 118th
Congress. You know, as we have said over and over no party has
a monopoly on good ideas.
When Democrats came into power during the 116th Congress we
understood that everyone has valuable insight to offer, that is
how we created probably one of most bipartisan Rules packages
in recent memory by speaking with every Member from the longest
serving to the newly elected and spent months of vetting ideas.
Collaboration and a willingness to work together are
imperative to ensure that we have a well functioning House, one
that doesn't work for one political party or the other, but for
the American people. After all, that is what this is all about.
A House governed by good rules not only is a sign of our
democracy's health but allows us to tackle the issues that can
make a positive difference in people's lives. That is why we
all ran for Congress in the first place.
So this hearing will facilitate meaningful conversations
and I hope we will inform the incoming Republican majority as
they prepare the next Rules package. We shall all want to
strive for rules that further improve transparency and
accountability, measures that will bring this institution into
the 21st century and reforms that will advance the efficiency
and efficacy of Congress. So I look forward to what should be a
productive discussion to hearing what our colleagues have
prepared.
And now let me turn to our ranking member, Mr. Cole, for
any comments he wants to make.
Mr. Cole. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Today's hearing is one
of great importance.
The Chairman. Can we just have order?
Mr. Perlmutter. Sorry.
Mr. Cole. Mr. Perlmutter is you know----
Mr. Perlmutter. I am working on some things.
Mr. Cole. Indeed you are.
Today's hearing is one of great importance as we provide a
forum their ideas and proposals for Members in the preparation
of the rules package to govern the House during the upcoming
118th Congress.
I want to thank our witnesses today not only for taking the
time to appear before this committee, but also for their
thoughtfulness and hard work in assembling these proposals.
Indeed we are a better committee and a better institution for
your participation today.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to today's
discussion and I yield back.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
And so I would like to welcome our witnesses to provide
testimony on Members' day on our Members' day hearing proposed
rules changes for the 118th Congress. And Representative
Griffith you are up first. Just make sure your mike is on that
is all.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. H. MORGAN GRIFFITH, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF VIRGINIA
Mr. Griffith. All right. There we go. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman. I appreciate that. Let me start because I am going to
mention him later in just saying that it was my privilege and
honor to call Don McEachin a friend. We rarely agreed on
policy, but as several have mentioned here today he was
always--had a smile, he was a very good lawyer. And I have got
a story to go with one of my amendments that involves Don and
as I was contemplating it after learning the news last night I
thought about taking it out and I thought no, it is a good
story that talks about his legislative skill, I left it in my
comments.
Before we started I wanted to let everybody know that while
we didn't agree, he was a good friend and we served in the
Virginia house before we served in this House together. And so
we were long time colleagues.
All right. With that said, I don't know what numbers you
all have, but the first one I have is my legislative text
change which reinstates the Holman Rule. And I have a handout
an article by Mark Strand from the last time the Holman Rule
came into effect. And I will give it to our stenographer and
you all can do with it what you will. But it is an article that
talks favorably about the benefits of the Holman Rule. It is
really not as big a deal as some have made it out to be. I wish
I could say since I revived it, some years ago that it was as
big as the Washington Post thought it was in changing the way
we do business. But it is one of many steps we can take that
empowers individual Members in trying to effect spending and it
allows you to retranche spending in an agency which would
include rearranging the deck chairs so to speak. And you can
eliminate a deck chair or two if you wish.
The rule which existed for roughly 100 years on and off in
Congress the rule is rarely effective in getting passed on the
floor, but in those occasions when it has been, it has made a
substantial change and exercised the will of the people through
the people's House. I think it is a tool that we ought to go
have as Members. And look, all of the amendments that I am
going to propose today are attempts to try to make this place
to work better and to empower individual Members. The Holman
Rule is just one small part of that. I would like to see a
number these adopted.
Mr. Perlmutter. Mr. Griffith, can you just recap the Holman
Rule, please?
Mr. Griffith. Sure. So what the Holman Rule does is it goes
into Rule XXI and it allows you to cut spending and reorganize
an agency inside of an Appropriations bill. It has to be a
general appropriations bill, it can't be any other bill. That
is one of criteria, you have to--you know, it comes up on the
floor and you have to get a majority, which is why it is hard
to get any of the amendments passed. In fact, we used it for 2
years previously and I don't believe--in fact, I know that none
of the amendments were successful. I had one of my own, got
some interesting information out of it, had a good debate. It
allowed the Members to figure out what was going on in a
particular issue, but nothing actually passed and that is the
history of the Holman Rule over its 100 years is that I would
dare say maybe a dozen things have passed during that time
period.
But it is the safety valve that allows the Members to say,
wait a minute, this agency isn't working right and we think
there is a better way to do it with retranchement. You can't
increase spending, you have to cut spending overall. But you
can rearrange things. One that comes to mind and I am not
planning on putting this in but just comes to mind is CDC has
never been actually authorized. And while Energy and Commerce
probably ought to figure out how to authorize the CDC, if we
felt like there needed to be major changes then even the CDC
director said there needs to be some changes. And if that
needed to be done with a retranchement then you could possibly
use that as a way to do that or just to have a good discussion
on the floor in a legislative body. So that's what it does.
So----
Mr. Perlmutter. Thank you.
Mr. Griffith. That is what it does. All right. So that
pretty much explains the Holman Rule. Mr. Chairman, I don't
know if you want me to stop and answer questions or I could go
through the whole package and then open up to questions.
The Chairman. Why don't you go through the questions and
Mr. Burchett is here too and you can follow Mr. Griffith then
we can go to----
Mr. Burchett. Burchett, Burchett like a tree. Burchett,
Burchett.
The Chairman. What did I say?
Mr. Burchett. Burchett.
Mr. Griffith. You gave it a fancier----
The Chairman. Okay. French pronunciation.
Mr. Griffith. So you want me to stop, answer questions.
The Chairman. Yeah. Why don't you--why don't you come on
up.
Mr. Griffith. I have got about seven or eight.
The Chairman. Keep going. Why don't you keep going.
Mr. Griffith. The next one that I have is a change in the
germaneness rule, that is in rule 16. This would allow the
speaker to have a more strict germaneness rule. So it restates
in the germaneness rule. We've got the germaneness rule. It
then goes in and gives the speaker guidelines on what the
speaker is to look at when determining if something is germane.
The purpose of that quite frankly is to allow the speaker to
set new precedent and create a more strict germaneness rule.
Over the course of probably 100 years, and I haven't studied it
carefully, but it looks like that is about right we have gotten
laxer and laxer. And the precedents have made it so that really
our germaneness rule is pretty weak. This says, if you are
going to bring an amendment in it has got to be germane to the
original purpose of the bill, that's why you look at the title.
The guidelines say look at the title, look at the code sections
are affected in the bill, look at the agencies that are
affected in the bill.
If you go outside of that and if the original purpose is
the doc fix in Medicare, you can deal with the doc fix in
Medicare, but you can't come in and suddenly say we are going
to take this bill that touches Medicare in one spot and turn it
into an overall reform of Medicare. And you also--we had a--I
know that was a rules issue, but we had it where the doc fix
and you all might remember this and the payment in lieu of
taxes were added together in a single bill or a single vote.
Clearly not germane and clearly shows how far afield we have
gotten from he idea and what the people expect us to do, they
expect us to vote on one concept, one idea what the bill did.
It doesn't mean you can't have complex bills, but it has to be
a part of the original concept and not something that suddenly
got added on in committee, in Rules or on the floor.
And the speaker would have the ability, and I gave the
speaker--I will get to that later, I gave the speaker the
ability to make that decision solely because I think we need to
have a new understanding of germaneness. And an incoming
speaker is the best chance to do that and in order to do that,
you have to chance the rule just a little bit so you have got a
new rule to work with and you give them a new chance to set new
precedent and that is the purpose of that one.
All right, moving on to the next which I have as number
three, it's titled bill limitations. I will tell you it started
off two different amendments and they are clearly severable.
They are two different concepts but they line up in the rules
in the same spot. So I have in rule 12 2(a) and then a separate
and severable issues 2(b). I am going to talk to 2(a) first.
2(a) is no bill shall be introduced which contains more
than one purpose or question or questions of a bill that
violates a single purpose rule, the speaker on those questions
the speaker also would have the ability to make that decision.
Again, we sometimes get far afield, we don't want to talk about
single purpose, and this is stuff the American people want and
love. They like the idea of us voting on a single purpose. They
like the idea of any amendments coming in being germane to the
underlying bill.
Mr. Griffith. Again, a new speaker--and I would hope that a
new speaker would interpret these strictly, because I think it
makes our legislative process easier and better when you get to
the floor because you don't have to worry about all kinds of
superfluous issues being suddenly raised on the floor with an
amendment, which is one of the reasons why we have gone further
and further away from open rules. I don't think we have had a
true open rule in years is because we are worried about, you
know, somebody putting in, whether it be on the left or on the
right, putting in some kind of a crazy amendment.
What this would allow us to do, in combination with the
germaneness new rule, it would allow a speaker the ability to
hone it in, make an announcement to everybody, hey, we are
changing the tenor of this, and we are not going to allow those
kinds of superfluous amendments to be brought to the floor.
The second part, 2(b), if I might go forward is--and this
one is a little dicier and not as loved by anybody--but it is a
calendar deadline to introduce bills. Now, I put a proposal
together, because you have got to start somewhere. I am not
saying that I have got this down pat. Some of these others I
can defend to the death. This one is a little closer, but I do
think that we need to figure out a schedule. Because what
happens is is that we have bills that are introduced all the
time. That leads to--and all of us have probably done it, I
know I have. Some issue comes up. It is the cause celebre of
the day. And your constituents want to know what you are going
to do about it. Well, I am putting the bill in today. And we
get hundreds of those bills. And a lot of--most of the time
they don't come to the floor.
But what happens is we have legislative staff, we have
legislative services, or the people who help draft--the
drafting people. They all have--they put in overtime to get all
of this stuff drafted up and get it introduced.
What this says is if you have got an idea and you really
like that idea, get it in. Now, I pick June 1 of each year. Get
your bills in by June 1. After that--and I went fairly relaxed
on it--after that, in order to put a bill in, you would need
consent of the House. You don't have to have unanimous consent.
I came out of the Virginia legislature. I was a member of the
Virginia House for many years, and in that context we had to
have unanimous consent if you passed the deadline.
I am not asking for unanimous consent, but you have got to
come to the floor and say, hey, I got a really good idea, I
think it ought to be a bill, and then the House has to vote on
it. What that will do is--it better be something you are really
passionate about if you are going to come and do a mea culpa in
front of the whole House.
Now, I am going to tell you that I put it in as a calendar
event. It may actually make more sense--and I am happy to work
with anybody who wants to work on this--to say that you want to
do this based on a term, in which case I would propose January
30 of the second year of the term. It would not reduce as much
the drive-by legislation or the legislation for cause celebre
of the day, but it would guarantee that, in the second year,
you are dealing with the major issues and you are not dealing
with a lot of distractions, because everybody has had plenty of
time to put their bill in.
So those are a couple of bills. We have got more. Hang
tight.
I have also a change in rule--and it is my no. 4--rule XXIX
in its limitation on waiver. Now, this goes hand in hand with
germaneness and having the speaker make a decision on that, and
with the single purpose rule. And it says that you shall not
waive it without two-thirds vote of the whole House. Now,
majority in the House. House can waive it with 51. They can
waive the rule but it has to be two-thirds.
The point of putting this into the rules is to make it
clear that the germaneness rule and the single purpose rule are
special and should not be treated as just some other rule. That
it is our intent that you ought to have a super majority to
waive those two rules. That you shouldn't just do it willy-
nilly because on that particular day you felt like you wanted
to get out by 2 o'clock instead of, you know, working on
something till 6 o'clock.
I know people have a long way to go home. And I understand
that. But the American people elected us to get a job done and
not waive all the rules that make things--may make things less
comfortable, but I think this would help us in running this
place more efficiently and more effectively over a long period
of time. All of us are sloppy. We don't pay attention to it. We
just throw our stuff in. Oh, it is close, but we need to pay
attention to that.
Also going in line with some of these other rules. If you
are going to have strict germaneness and you are going to have
strict single purpose, which the American people I think want,
and you make it clear you don't want it waived, if a speaker is
consistently violating that, I think we need to have a vacate
the chair motion. Now, I put some guardrails on it because I
think there are legitimate concerns when you take the chair in
the modern era. It worked for over 200 years. Worked very well.
Only came up a few times.
But today we are living in a world where there is 24-hour
notice. There is Twitter. I mean, we have all been in meetings
where things are said, and before we can get out of the
meeting, it is already all over Twitter and starts to get on
Facebook and goes other places.
A speaker cannot establish their administration and
establish that they are doing a good job if there is an
everyday motion to vacate the chair. I do think an individual
Member ought to have that right to bring the motion. It is not
exactly, but it is kind of like our version of a no confidence
vote. And so what I did was I said that any new speaker gets 7
months to get their administration established. At the end of
the 7 months, a vacate the chair motion then becomes in order
for any Member to make.
If a speaker faces a vacate the chair motion and succeeds
in surviving the motion, they then--a new motion cannot be made
for 60 days. Some might argue for 90. I prefer 60, but you have
got, I think today, to have a true vacate the chair which
restores power to the individual Members, but you also have to
have guardrails on it. Because in the old days, what you did in
D.C., probably the public back home didn't know about it for at
least a week or two and sometimes months. Today, sometimes my
constituents know what happened in a different committee before
I do.
And so that is why I thought that we would need to look for
some hybrid language that restores to the individual Members.
Each Member should have a right to say, wait a minute,
something is not working right here, and have a way to clean up
things if necessary. I don't think it is going to be necessary
very often. Wasn't for 200 years necessary very often. In fact,
one of the times, the speaker himself called for a vacate the
motion--vacate the chair motion to prove that he had the
support on the floor, and he did. So that is my modified vacate
the chair rule IX.
Timing of the action reports. This one gets a little
complicated. I will do my best to explain it to you. You may
have some questions on it. But this one is kind of interesting.
What it just says is, if a bill comes out of a committee, Rules
Committee has to send that to the floor within 10 days or it
comes up to the floor--10 legislative days. It has to come to
the floor in order to be acted on, if it comes out of a primary
committee.
That does two things, in my opinion. One, make sure that if
we pass a bill out of a committee, it actually gets a vote on
the floor before that term of Congress goes poof. That doesn't
always happen. Lot of times the bills come out and they never
get seen again. It also guarantees, I think, that the committee
will do better work on the various bills. Because we shouldn't
be fixing bills on the way to the floor.
And that brings up my Don McEachin story. I think it was
the bill that dealt with surprise billing. Don raised the point
in the committee. He said this doesn't work in Virginia because
of the common laws--the common law and statutory requirements
in Virginia on the doctrine of necessities. I looked at it. My
only complaint was he found it first. It was brilliant
lawyering. He was absolutely right. We got a, well, we will
work on that on the way to the floor.
I spoke to Don 6 or 8 months ago. Said, do you know if they
ever got it fixed? Because I never got any word back that it
had been fixed. He said, you know, I don't know. I probably
ought to check into that.
The Members have no way of knowing. We fix things on the
way to the floor. And it is very efficient in the sense of
getting things moved, but it is why sometimes you all get bills
here in this committee that are not yet ready for prime time.
If that bill is not yet ready for prime time, if two Members
raise an objection based on a good legal--this was not
philosophical at all. The bill was a good bill overall, this
would have--fixing of this doctrine of necessities issue would
have made the bill better. And, in fact, in the Virginia
legislature, chair would have looked--because you couldn't send
the bill after it was ready for prime time because it was going
to show up on the floor 3 days later. The chair would have
said, all right, Don and Morgan, the rest of us don't
understand this, you all go out and figure out a fix. We would
have gone out in the hallway and come back with a fix in 15
minutes.
It will make the committees work to get a bill that is in
fact ready for prime time instead of saying, let's push it off
to rules and let them fix it on the way to the floor. We should
do our job. In every committee, we should do good legislation.
Don McEachin stood for that. He was a great lawyer. Again, I
disagreed with him on a lot of issues. This one had no
philosophy to it other than trying to get the law right. And
Dr. Burgess mentioned that earlier, that that was one of Don's
hallmarks: Let's get the law right even if I don't agree. I
feel the same way. This rule would allow you to do that.
Now, 10 legislative days is enough; you need 14, but it
shouldn't be unending. Then there comes up the issue where we
send bills to multiple committees. So I created a safety valve
for that. So if the primary committee reports it out, then once
it is out of the primary committee, the remaining committees--
and I have got to figure what I picked out here--I think I gave
them seven--yeah, 7 legislative days. All of the other
committees have to make a decision on what they are going to do
within 7 legislative days.
Now, these committees are wanting to do. They may come out
with different versions of the bills. The Rules Committee,
after hearing from the chairperson of that committee--of each
of the committees involved in the various versions or their
designee, can then form the final bill. Figure out what the
differences are in the bills and conform them to one bill, but
then get sent to the floor. I allow additional time so that
Rules can work on that and get that done before the bill has to
be reported to the floor, but it still has to be reported to
the floor.
Or in the alternative, the Rules Committee can say these
things are so different and they are not ready for prime time.
They can re-refer it or refer it back to the committees of
jurisdiction to straighten it out and explain, this doesn't
work, or we don't understand what committee A is trying to do
here. Committee B and A get together, you all figure it out. We
are sending it back. Have every right to do that. As does the
floor, in the case if a bill gets to the floor that is not
right. We can always send it back to rework it.
So that is the purpose of the timing on the--timing action
on all bills, but that way the bill gets out of committee.
People know there is going to be action. It is not going to go
into some black hole that nobody ever sees again. And
oftentimes it is not philosophical. It is that leadership,
because they feel like they have to look at everything and time
everything, they oftentimes don't have time to get to all of
it. And so some good bills get left on the sidelines that the
committee has already approved.
Now, sometimes the leadership is trying to get a good press
conference going and they want to pick a special day. You know,
we got a bill that deals with, you know, people falling in
love. Then they want to time it for Valentine's Day. Well, this
just says get your bills out. Let's do good legislative work.
Let's not worry about the press conference. Press conferences
are important, it is a part of our business, but legislating is
a more important part of our business.
All right. Last, but not least. I might be the only person
in the entire House who loves this one. Proportional seating on
committees. It is language that was taken out of the Virginia
rules. Virginia adopted this rule in 1998. It is a tough rule.
It is a tough love situation. And what it says you have got to
do is, is that if the House is divided, because we are a
democratic republic--or a Republic based on democratic
principles. If the House is divided 60/40, the committees ought
to be 60/40. If the House is 51/49, committees ought to be 51/
49. There is a formula to take care of half people, because you
can't obviously have a half person on a committee. So all of
the fractional seats are rounded towards the majority. Whoever
has the majority gets that extra seat. It doesn't apply to
Rules and it doesn't apply to Ethics, but you got to have--I
think to get good legislation.
Now, you know, people don't like it because you can't get
things done. But let me just give you a classic example of why
this isn't right. And I am not trying to pick on either side.
It is just the one that I happen to know right now.
When we came in 2 years ago, the Democratic majority was 51
percent. So it was 51/49. But the Energy and Commerce
Committee, on which I served, had a larger majority numerically
for the Democrats than the Democrats had on the floor. Now, I
am not saying Republicans haven't done similar things. I am not
trying to pick on either side. I am just trying to get a system
that works for everybody and does what our Founders and what
the prior people wanted us to do, which is to respect that we
are a Republic, but that we are based on democratic principles.
What is better than that than saying the committee that is
working on legislation and sending it to the floor is divided
exactly the way the voters--or it is as close as you can get it
to a whole person, the way the voters intended it to be done
when they sent us here.
It is hard. But when we started this--and, of course, it
changes as people retire or unfortunately pass away, as we have
had mentioned both today of Don McEachin and Jackie Walorski.
Those numbers shift. So you go with the beginning of the term
and you figure out those proportions. And unless they shift
dramatically, you leave them along during the term. I would say
you leave them alone even if it shifts dramatically, but
usually it is not going to be much.
We started it at 51/49. The Energy and Commerce Committee
was 55/45. It is just not what the people back home expect us
to do. If you asked them, what does common sense tell you to
do? They would say, they knew about it, and they don't. I will
borrow my friend's here line. He always says he is the 435th
most important man in Congress.
Mr. Burchett. Most powerful man in Congress.
Mr. Griffith. Powerful man in Congress. You ought to pay
attention. I am feeling that way on this amendment. I am the
435th most influential on this issue. Probably not going to
happen. But if you ask people back home if they knew about it,
and if they said, do you think the committees ought to be
divided up the way the voters sent us here for good, bad, or
other, they would say yes. Yes, they would. Independents are
also covered and they get counted in the majority number. If
you have independents. I don't think we have any this time, but
we will ultimately, I am sure, in the future have a few
independents. And so that has taken care of in here as well.
That being said, that is a brief summary, as you can
probably tell, and I didn't use my notes much. Because I am
passionate about all of this stuff, I want this place--and it
is not exclusive. There are lots of other amendments that you
all are going to hear today that I would support. But I think
that we need--that Washington doesn't function well. It is not
a product of Republicans, it is not a product of Democrats. It
is a product of years and years of piling on, of precedent, and
nobody is examining things and saying, how could we do it
better?
These are just a handful of ideas. Like I said, I know a
lot of others that are going to be put in today that are good
ideas as well. These are a handful of ideas that I personally
feel ought to be given careful examination and adopted. I don't
speak for any group on these, although some groups may like
parts of it. As I said, I put stuff in there that irritates
everybody in one way or another, but I am trying to get
Congress to operate better. And I hope that this in some small
measure has helped.
I yield back.
[The statement of Mr. Griffith follows:]
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Let me just give everybody the plan here because we have
this rail bill coming up. So, Mr. Burchett, we are going to go
to you next. And then we are going to do questions. And then we
are going to go to the rail panel. And then hopefully that will
be quick.
But for those who--if you want, you can go in the office.
If you need to make--
Ms. Ross. I can go back to my office.
The Chairman. Yeah. But for the people in the audience, if
you want to go in the side office there to make calls or do
whatever you have to do, feel free to do that.
So we will go to you next. Okay. All right. Welcome.
Mr. Burchett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for
allowing me to be here. It is sort of a significance--I know
this isn't significant for you all, but it is for me. I wish my
parents were alive to see me today that I am actually
testifying before Congress. [Inaudible] I am not going to name
those or anything. Pretty good option around here. Mr.
Chairman. I am not even a suspect.
[Inaudible] Mr. Chairman, you may have heard of this thing
called the Commitment to America, we promised the American
people, the government that is accountable to them----
Voice. Could you turn your mike on, please.
Mr. Burchett. Sorry. Do you want me to start over with my
jokes? Did you get them all? You good? All right. I have some
ideas on how to make that promise a reality, Mr. Chairman.
Right now the American people don't trust us about as--they can
only trust us about as far as we can throw the dome off the
Capitol. And under this Democratic control of government,
Americans I feel like have been lied to. They have been misled
and left entirely in the dark on a legislation that made their
lives worse. We need to earn back their trust. And it starts
with real transparency and accountability on our part.
My rule proposals are based on a simple concept: America
should always have access, easy access to information about
what is happening in Congress. My first proposal rule requires
us to use bills that titles that describe what our bills do. In
the Tennessee State legislature, which was under Democratic
control when these rules were enacted, and they stayed in when
the Republicans took over, the State legislature already had
this rule in place. And if a bill is called the Dog Catcher
Act. And daggone it, the bill needs to be about dog catchers,
not about pay raises, not about anything else. We have made a
habit out of passing multi-trillion dollar spending bills. And
I feel like they have been packed with woke wish lists. No one
had any idea what was in them until after they were passed.
And take the so-called Infrastructure Investment and Jobs
Act. It cost taxpayers $1.2 trillion, but only about 11 percent
from our figuring of the spending went to roads and bridges. We
don't need to sneak secret pay raises or rogue climate equity
programs in the bills behind our constituents' back. That is
some Democrat nonsense, and it has no place here in Congress,
Mr. Chairman.
I have another proposed rule. And if Republicans do it, I
will be back up here next year saying it is Republican
nonsense. I have another proposed rule which will require the
Clerk of the House to read the bill's Congressional Budget
Office score immediately after the title. In Tennessee we would
call that a fiscal note. In Tennessee, we have the best run
State in the Nation. We have zero debt. Zero debt, Mr.
Chairman. Taxpayers should hear how much a bill will cost
before it is passed in Congress. It is their money, and they
should know what is in it.
I am also proposing rules that would prevent the House from
passing bills using methods that are easier to hide behind. No
more en blanc votes. No--and I don't know how to even pronounce
en blanc. I am not sure exactly the pronunciation, enblanc. No
more passing separate legislation in a procedural vote. No more
amendments in nature of a substitute that substantially changed
the bill's original purpose. I am also proposing a rule to
prevent us from bringing a bill straight from introduction to
the floor without going through the committee.
Bills should not be written by a few leaders behind closed
doors. They should be a discussed amendment before being
brought to a vote. If Americans can easily find out what bills
were passing and how much they are costing them and whose
voting for them, then daggone it, they are going to pay a lot
more attention, Mr. Chairman. And I think that is a good thing.
If more Americans are in tune with what is going on here in the
people's House, then we are doing something right.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit, for the record, my
letter to Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, that outlines my
rules, proposals. I am hopeful we can start to rebuild some
trust with the American people, and these rules are a good
place to start.
Mr. Chairman, I want to close with one thing. The Democrat
Speaker of the House is a man named Jimmy Naifeh, and he is
still a dear friend of mine. And he was very strict. He was
very fair. But he had a rule. He said, if you didn't want to
work, you shouldn't have hired on.
Mr. Chairman, we need to start working, because we have
hired on. And I think these rules are a good move in that
direction. So thank you all for allowing me to be here.
[The statement of Mr. Burchett follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you very much. You know, let me just
say, Mr. Griffith, I appreciate your Holman rule explanation.
You mentioned something to do with the organizing the CDC. You
know, I just have to say that in my experience, the Holman rule
has been used to attack staff. That is how my friends have used
it in the past. But I have a question about your committee
ratio proposals. If you believe in a fair ratio reflecting the
House, why would you exempt the Rules Committee, one of the
most, you know, powerful committees in the House, I understand
the Ethics Committee. But on the Rules Committee, under your
proposal, I mean, if we were not exempted, we would be seven to
six up here. I could live with that. You know, but why is the
Rules Committee exempted, because it seems to me that is
where----
Mr. Griffith. Typically, in most legislative bodies the
Rules Committee is a little bit different makeup than the rest.
The Chairman. But the Rules Committee in the legislative
body is not like the Rules Committee in the House of
Representatives.
Mr. Griffith. I know, but if you adopt all my rules, it
would be more like most of the other legislative bodies because
I am taking away your ability to do anything with bills that
come directly from a committee of--a primary committee without
a substitute or a different bill coming from a different
committee. So I am actually taking power away the Rules
Committee by sending things straight----
The Chairman. But you specifically made an exemption from
the Rules Committee so----
Mr. Griffith. I did. Because of the history and
legislative--in most legislatures, the Rules Committee is, in
fact, generally more leaning towards the majority so that they
can work their will. I would recognize--if somebody wanted to
make a charge, I am not saying I would be against it. What I am
saying is I am recognizing the facts that usually the majority
wants to be able to control what happens. But if you adopted
the entire package, on any bill that came out of the primary
committee, the Rules Committee would have to just forward it
on. They are just a conduit. They are not taking action. They
don't do amendments on a bill that comes from the primary
committee unless you got multiple differing versions coming
from differing committees.
The Chairman. But it sounds like every bill--but it sounds
like what you are describing is every bill would be a closed
rule.
Mr. Griffith. No. Everything would go to the floor. In my
world, it would go to the floor under the rules of the House.
No need for a rule at all. Rules just sends it forward.
The Chairman. So just an open rule for everything?
Mr. Griffith. For everything that comes out of a primary
committee, everything that comes out of a primary committee
without a competing bill from another committee in the same
area. In other words, if House resolution 1234 was sent to--or
House bill 1234 was sent to six committees, then rules would
have a role to play. If it is sent to one committee, it goes
straight to the floor. The Rules Committee can just figure out,
okay, we have got 10 days--10 legislative days to get it on the
floor, it makes sense that we do this on Thursday. That would
be the Rules Committee's job; send it forward to the floor.
That is it. It would be a conduit. It is basically the
patrolman directing traffic in a case where the bill comes
straight out of committee.
The Chairman. Well, look, I appreciate both of your
testimony. And, look, I mean this is--the purpose of this
hearing is to have everybody express their ideas in how we can
improve the operation of this House. And so I, again,
appreciate you being here.
Mr. Cole.
Mr. Cole. Mr. Griffith, I want to thank both our witnesses.
I have got some reservations on the vacate the chair idea.
Mr. Griffith. I understand.
Mr. Cole. And I would be less than honest to say that. And
I like your committee ratio thing a lot more 2 years ago than
right now. So it has less appeal to me than it did in the past.
Mr. Griffith. That is why it is fair.
Mr. Cole. Well, we will have that discussion I am sure
tomorrow at great length.
With that, I will yield back, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Mrs. Torres.
Mrs. Torres. May I suggest a change to your changes----
Mr. Griffith. Sure.
Mrs. Torres [continuing]. Proposal that next time you
actually bring papers so that we can follow along.
Mr. Griffith. Oh, I sent them in advance.
Mrs. Torres. We have them. We do not ask you to come here
at a specific time. So our notes are not in a specific order
that, you know, you are presenting. You have some interesting
comments, and I would have liked to follow along with you.
Mr. Griffith. I apologize.
Mrs. Torres. But thank you for being here.
Mr. Griffith. Because I have not only specific proposals,
but I actually drafted the rules as I believe they should
appear and the location they should appear inside of the rules
package.
Mrs. Torres. Thank you.
Mr. Griffith. I will leave a package here.
The Chairman. Dr. Burgess.
Dr. Burgess. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, Mr. Griffith, I
am compelled to ask you if the Holman rule as currently
applied, has it worked? Has it actually rescinded spending in a
particular area? I appreciate that it has been around since
1876.
Mr. Griffith. There have been, I would say, a half dozen,
maybe a dozen--somewhere between a half dozen and a dozen times
when it has worked. One of those actually went to the Supreme
Court, I want to say, about 1940, give or take a couple of
years. And the Supreme Court upheld that this was proper
within--proper process within the House.
Dr. Burgess. Well, I also think it is an important tool to
return power to the people who are supposed to represent their
districts. And it has been a shame that we haven't had it
available. I recognize that it is sometimes difficult. It is
unwieldy. But at the same time that is probably for a purpose
as well.
I do have to say, and I may completely agree with Tom, with
the Ranking Member on the ratios on the committee. I mean, it
was--it was offensive to me, and you remember this, we sat
through those reconciliation bills in committee, dutifully
listening, and holding the votes, and we would lose the
majority in the committee was six votes. The majority on the
floor was five votes. And that was always particularly
disturbing to me. Not that we would have won any more votes.
How could there be greater proportion on the committee than
there was on the floor of the House? And I do think that is
something that really should be given some consideration.
As far as the number of people on the Rules Committee, Mr.
Chairman, if I remember correctly, Sam Rayburn, when he was
Speaker, actually enlarged the Rules Committee. He wanted to
replace some Democrats on the Rules Committee, but his
conference wouldn't permit that. So he expanded the Rules
Committee in order to overcome the no votes of his recalcitrant
Democrat Members who were going to stand in the way of JFK's
rather progressive agenda that he was going to institute after
the 1960 election. And it was a very close vote on the floor.
It changed the ratio.
So I guess we could have that discussion. But as we kind of
sit here on the dawn of the next Congress, I would rather like
the 9:4 ratio. It has a certain appeal to it. Just an
observation for you. But I do think we really ought to pay
attention to the ratios on committee. You are right. If the
people at home knew what was actually taking place, they would
be concerned that there could be such an imbalance of power
when the people spoke and elected Representatives in a certain
proportion, the committees actually should reflect that.
Mr. Griffith. And while we haven't been perfect and we have
never had a rule, I will say that over the last decade or so,
it has gotten worse. Historically, over decades and centuries,
Congress has been pretty close on the committees. Maybe off by
one person. It is only within the last decade or so that we
started to get away from that, which is why I feel it is
important that we start to put it in the rules and codify that
is what we are shooting for.
Dr. Burgess. Well, I thank both of you for your
participation today. It is going to be a long day. So, Mr.
Chairman, I yield back.
The Chairman. Mr. Perlmutter.
Mr. Perlmutter. Thanks. Mr. Griffith, I appreciate your
different comments on these rules. Colorado has--follows a lot
of the same things that Virginia does, but we do operate very
differently here. Whether we are supposed to be like a State
legislature or not, that is the sort of the 64-dollar question.
Germaneness, though, really is a roadblock.
We have got a bill coming up today when you all finish on
railroads and strikes. I want to add, I have got some
cosponsors of my bill, safe banking, where I want to add some
compensation, improvements for us as Members of Congress to
that bill. And I know I am going to run head-long into
germaneness. So it does ultimately come down.
Now, you talked a lot about single subject. In Colorado, we
have a single subject rule. And you have a tight title or an
open title. And you can add things like crazy. Having been in
front of the parliamentarian on a number of things that I have
wanted to get in the bills, I know that there is a germaneness
element to this.
So I appreciate a lot of the things that you talked about.
And I do think it would make us in the Congress look more like
a lot of the State legislatures if that is what we want to do.
And I think your point is, well, that is what people expect.
So that will be the conversation that we have. You know, I
appreciate that you want to bring all these things up as we
head into a Republican House. It will tie your hands a little
bit and, you know, I appreciate that. And we have talked a lot
about a number of these points in the Modernization Committee
of Congress so that we empower individual Members and not so
much leadership. And I think that is one thing you are trying
to do. So I appreciate your comments. I don't think you are
right on the germaneness, but I do understand a lot of what you
are suggesting.
And I yield back.
The Chairman. Mr. Reschenthaler.
Mr. Reschenthaler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to
just thank both of the witnesses for coming in. I know there is
a lot of other members who would like to speak, so for brevity,
I am going to yield back.
The Chairman. All right. Mr. Raskin.
Mr. Raskin. No questions, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Mrs. Fischbach.
Mrs. Fischbach. I yield back, Mr. Chair.
The Chairman. Mr. Morelle.
Mr. Morelle. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate both
gentlemen and their thoughtfulness about how to proceed. I just
want to make one observation. I think a part today that I
would, I think, generally disagree with relative to passage of
bills out of committee--and I did serve, like many of you, in
the State legislature in New York for a long time. And there
are different bodies. I mean, Congress is much, much different.
And the breadth of such diversity in the Congress and
geographically and all kinds of ways that I think just makes it
a different place.
But the idea that a committee discharges a bill, and it
immediately goes to the floor within a period of days, it seems
to me too simplistic. There may be many reasons that you report
a bill out of committee. You may want encourage debate with the
Senate. You figure by moving a bill, you can get a real
conversation. You may not want the bill to go to the floor for
consideration as the committee chair, as the Members. There may
be a whole host of reasons to do that. And, frankly, I think it
eliminates some of the judgment which I hope we collectively
make as 435 Members. And to turn this into sort of a series of
if this happens, then this happens, then this happens, then
this must happen, I think it removes so much judgment from us
and, frankly, creates an enormous, I think, bottleneck that the
Rules Committee is intended to help address.
I just think--that is my general observation of it that
there needs to be room for judgment here. The Members of the
majority, whoever that majority is, the leadership ought to
play a role, the Rules Committee ought to play a role. I think
this is the oldest committee in the House. And it was intended
to be sort of the traffic cop to help make judgments about what
bill goes to the floor now.
You know, we are going to change in a few weeks, and maybe
the new majority will think that these are the ways to proceed.
But I suspect they are going to want the leadership in the
Rules Committee, and Rules Committee chair and others will want
to have the ability to weigh in and measure whether every
single bill that gets out of committee is worthy of going to
the floor, just as it is reported out of committee. I guess
they won't think that that is a great idea, but we will see.
The other--and, finally, I just say that you pointed to
these elements around surprise billing. And one of the--I don't
know what committee you were referring to reported out. I know
that was a bill that had jurisdiction in multiple committees.
That must have been--was that Energy and Commerce.
Mr. Griffith. It was. It was.
Mr. Morelle. But what you said is that the committee
leadership chose to ignore the point that had been raised or
said it would get fixed. And whether or not it was fixed, I
don't know. But I am not sure that is an argument for doing
this then. That because you might have the same dynamic where
someone who says, well, we will get an amendment at some point
to fix it. Whether that ends up happening, I don't know. But
the waiting period or the time to go through another committee
to exert, to consider the elements of it or the provisions of
it would be lost. There would be no sort of barrier. There
would be no way to slow it down under the example you used,
which I thought was frankly an odd use of the example.
It was, again, an imperfect bill when it came out of
committee. I wouldn't want that to go to the floor. I would
want additional steps to look at whether or not there was a
mechanism to make it more perfect or make it better.
Mr. Griffith. And my point is that it shouldn't be lost
forever. And that the committee ought to have--the committee
ought to have the discipline to make sure they answer all the
questions, because they are supposed to be the experts in that
particular area to answer all the questions necessary to get
that bill ready for prime time.
Mr. Morelle. Yeah, I----
Mr. Griffith. If it gets out of here, it is going to be on
the floor, and it could become the law of the United States.
Let's make sure we have it right. But particularly when you
have--there was not a political--there was no political
mischief. And that is the reason I use that example. You have
got a Republican, a conservative Republican and a liberal
Democrat who generally don't agree, but both recognize that in
their States where both of them were licensed to practice law
at one time in their lives recognized that this bill had a
glitch in it. And it should have been fixed before it left our
committee. And I don't think the chairman was saying, you know,
oh, we don't care about it. I think what he was saying was, oh,
the process here is they will get staff to look at it, and we
will fix it somewhere along the way.
Mr. Morelle. But isn't that a better approach than--when I
served as majority leader in the State Assembly in New York,
people would--bills would get reported out of the committee and
come to our Rules Committee, and then they would have to come
to me to determine whether or not we put the bill on the floor.
And I would say to my legislative counsel when it came to us we
were playing with live ammunition now because the bill could
actually pass out of the House. I am not sure that the
committee chair took that responsibility to heart--I am not
sure given human nature, I think people liked the idea this has
to go through multiple levels of review. And so you can catch a
provision or a problem with a bill that is about to go out of
committee, which legitimately has support to get out of the
committee. There are some technical issues. Let's make sure
that the Rules Committee or Ways and Means Committee, or
wherever it needs to go, is aware of those changes so we can
make them. I think the multiple reviews are actually one of the
things that makes it a better process. So, anyway, I just make
that observation. I don't want to belabor the point.
Mr. Griffith. When I was the majority leader in the
Virginia legislature, I would catch those things, and the floor
would send them back. They came straight to the floor. I would
look at the calendar for the day. I would read the bills. If I
caught something, we would ship that thing back to the
committee and said, you all, don't have this ready yet. Get it
ready for prime time. It makes your chairman and your committee
more accountable for the stuff they are putting out and sending
to the floor.
Mr. Morelle. Well, I don't disagree that they should do
that. I mean, I think every time you put out a bill you should,
particularly if you are committee chair and you are reporting
the bill, affirmatively you should do so with the expectation
it could get on the floor and could become law. So let's make
sure it is as good as it can be.
I don't think the multiple levels of review--and, frankly,
it would be harder to find those changes to be made if there
were suddenly dozens of bills coming all at once to the floor,
and each of them had the okay of the committee chair. But there
wasn't a process in between to start looking at them and make
sure that they were in the proper form. So, anyway, I didn't
want to belabor it, but I did want to share my concerns about
doing it that way.
The Chairman. Mr. DeSaulnier.
Mr. DeSaulnier. I have nothing to add.
The Chairman. Ms. Ross.
Ms. Ross. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just for thought, and I
have nothing to add. I yield back.
The Chairman. Thank you. Any other questions for this
panel? If not, you are--thank you for being here. You are free
to go.
Mr. Griffith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Burchett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just the lack of
comment on my thoughtful legislation being total endorsement,
is that what I understand?
The Chairman. I am not going to write this.
[Recessed for bills hearing.]
The Chairman. At this time we are going to close the
hearing portion of this meeting and recess our Rules Committee
and reconvene our Members' Day Hearing.
And so now I want to call up the panel: Ms. Bourdeaux,
Representative--Representative Bourdeaux, Representative
Radewagen, Representative Davidson, Representative Timmons,
Representative Latta. So come up, and----
And, Representative Bourdeaux, we will begin with you, so
wherever you--just make sure your mike is on. Yeah, okay. Okay.
You may proceed.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. CAROLYN BOURDEAUX, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF GEORGIA
Ms. Bourdeaux. Thank you.
Good afternoon, Chairman McGovern, Ranking Member Cole, and
members of the House Rules Committee. Thank you for the
opportunity to testify today regarding the potential rules
changes for the 118th Congress.
While I will not be here, I am here to express my support
for strengthening Pay-As-You-Go rules and restoring a sense of
fiscal discipline in Congress.
Prior to running for Congress, I spent most of my
professional career working to advance fiscally responsible
policies at the local, State, and Federal level. Over the years
I have worked on a number of projects, evaluating State fiscal
discipline and budget processes. And for years I have taught
public budgeting. And from 2007 to 2010, I served as director
of the Georgia Senate Budget and Evaluation Office, where I
worked with members from both parties to balance the State
budget during the Great Recession.
At the State level, States work under balanced budget
requirements, which means that budget choices involve
tradeoffs. An increase in one part of the budget requires a
revenue increase or spending decrease in another part of the
budget.
While researchers often invoke the balance budget
requirements as the reason that State budgets are balanced and
the Federal budget is not, in fact, the State budget balance
requirements are quite easy to violate. They are enforced not
so much because of the letter of the law but because many State
governments have developed a culture of fiscal responsibility
that honors the spirit of the law.
What I saw in Georgia during the Great Recession was that
legislators, despite enormous political pressures, generally
adhered to good fiscal practices and would invoke policies like
the balanced budget requirements to push back against policy
proposals that would have had the effect of undermining fiscal
stability.
We need to restore both the rules and culture that support
fiscal responsibility in Congress. The paygo rule is a key
check on congressional spending. However, at this point, it
seems like it is waived so often that it is not even a speed
bump in the face of each party's spending or revenue
priorities.
As we face historic inflation, it will become important for
the long-term economic health of the Nation that future
Congresses restore regular order around decisions that increase
the deficit and, by extension, add to our national debt.
There are several ways in which the 118th Congress can
reenforce and strengthen our commitment to fiscal
responsibility.
First, remove the broad paygo exemption categories, like
exceptions for tax cuts or COVID or climate spending, as has
been done by both parties in recent Congresses.
In the Inflation Reduction Act, we showed that we can
responsibly pay for and offset critical investments to lower
the cost of healthcare and address the effects of climate
change. We just have to choose to do so.
Require a standalone vote to waive paygo. Too often bills
are passed under rules which waive paygo and remove the need
for the House to debate the fiscal cost of legislation we are
considering. Requiring a standalone vote to waive paygo would
mean that Members have to debate and consider the cost of
legislation that we have to pass.
Finally, require bills on the consensus calendar to be
deficit neutral. The consensus calendar is a tool for Members
to bring widely supported, noncontroversial bills to the House
for consideration. However, this Congress we have seen several
bills added to the consensus calendar which would have fiscal
impacts in the tens of billions of dollars.
Requiring the consensus calendar to be deficit neutral is a
simple way we can ensure that legislation that adds to the
deficit can be appropriately considered and debated in
Congress.
We know that Congress can act in a fiscally responsible
manner and improve and expand upon paygo rules and principles
because we have done it before. Statutory paygo was created in
1990 as part of the bipartisan budget agreement which sought to
address the large deficit our Nation was facing.
Shortly thereafter, I came to Congress as a staff member.
And during the ensuing years we made great progress towards
getting our Nation on a more sustainable fiscal trajectory,
even enjoying budget surpluses in some years, all the while
allowing for new investments in CHIP, the Child Tax Credit, and
the Earned Income Tax Credit.
As you know, the paygo rule was later created in 2007.
Rather than statutory paygo, which looks at aggregate spending
each year, the paygo rule requires Members to consider the
fiscal impact of individual legislation as it is considered and
passed.
If you enhance the paygo rule and other important budget
constraints, this forces a debate about priorities and
tradeoffs for any piece of legislation, and in my long
experience, working at the local, State, and Federal level,
generally leads to better policymaking.
Thank you again to Chairman McGovern, Ranking Member Cole,
and the members of the House Rules Committee for the
opportunity to discuss this important issue with you today.
I yield back.
[The statement of Ms. Bourdeaux follows:]
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Representative Radewagen.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. AUMUA AMATA COLEMAN RADEWAGEN, A DELEGATE
IN CONGRESS FROM THE TERRITORY OF AMERICAN SAMOA
Mrs. Radewagen. I want to thank you, Chairman McGovern, and
Ranking Member Cole--
Mr. Latta. The mike is not on.
Mrs. Radewagen. I want to thank you, Chairman McGovern, and
Ranking Member Cole, for allowing me to testify today.
Today I come to testify in support of keeping the House
rule that allows a Delegate and Resident Commissioner to vote
in the Committee of the Whole. This has been a right that
delegates have had since the earliest days of our Republic. In
fact, our ninth President, William Henry Harrison, was a
delegate for the Northwest Territory and was able to chair the
Committee of the Whole at times. And as you know, the Northwest
Territory later turned into the States of Ohio, Michigan,
Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin.
The bottom line is a committee is a committee, whether it
be a standing committee that we most frequently engage with, a
special committee for one purpose or another, or the Committee
of the Whole which allows votes for amendments just like a
standing committee.
This matter was litigated 30 years ago, and I take no issue
with the fact that the House indeed has complete right to make
its own rules under the Constitution.
The current rule is not an encroachment on States' rights,
nor does it dilute Members' voting rights or apportion them
from States voting as decided by the Federal courts.
Consistency, plain and simple, is all I ask for the
constituents of the territories, to have a consistent vote in
all committees, and not have to explain to puzzled constituents
why we have this vote in some Congresses but not others.
Thank you for hearing me out on this, Chairman McGovern and
Ranking Member Cole. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Mrs. Radewagen. I yield back.
[The statement of Mrs. Radewagen follows:]
The Chairman. Thank you.
Representative Davidson.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. WARREN DAVIDSON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OHIO
Mr. Davidson. Thank you, Chairman. And I appreciate the
members that are here and online from the Rules Committee.
And I think it is great that you have this Member Day. And
I think personally we like to think that the Rules Committee is
maybe the most important thing we decide, because the House
sets its own rules and those rules are supposed to apply to
everyone. Of course, we have a well-honored tradition of
waiving the rules for virtually every vote.
So in the spirit that we want the rules to matter, I guess
I am here to offer that we might actually be able to operate
the place, you know, more productively. And I think it is great
to see that so many colleagues took the time to draft rules
that offer their take on how we might actually, you know,
operate this place more productively.
So I provided, you know, to Mrs. Torres' comment to Mr.
Griffith, a summary of my amendments here that I am offering
today. And they are numbered. I guess I have offered 125
amendments as of the one I am going to speak to you about first
in this Congress.
This first amendment would require us to have a recorded
vote on a budget resolution that balances. Since I have been in
Congress, I have only voted on one budget that ever balances.
And, of course, that was not an aggressive bill. I think it
balanced in 10 or 15 years. Members of both parties called it
an austerity plan, and we moved forward to continue to spend
well beyond what we were collecting in tax revenue.
So to be sure, both parties would have different
approaches. You know, in general, stereotypically, Democrats
would tax our way to a balanced budget and Republicans would
cut our way to a balanced budget, and the compromise is going
to be bipartisan solution that is bankrupting our country.
So I don't know that we could get yet to a point where we
are going to bind ourselves that we have to balance the budget,
but at least we could vote on a budget that balances. It
doesn't say it has to balance in 5 years, 10 years, or 20
years. It doesn't say how you have to do it, but you do have to
have a recorded vote before you can go on to appropriations.
And it is important that our country has this constraint on
government because, you know, fundamentally, the willingness to
pay the taxes at the end of the day is supposed to be a
restraint on the size of government. People shouldn't get more
government than they are willing to pay for, and right now they
are overdosing on too much government or at least overdosing on
too much spending without offsets.
So this is a step in that direction, and I hope that it
becomes part of the rules for the 118th Congress.
The next is an acknowledgment that earmarks are popular
with many of our colleagues. I don't personally think we should
have earmarks. We could debate about what those are. I don't
think it is wrong for Congress to say that, you know, we are
going to direct the Army Corps of Engineers to prioritize works
on locks or dams or something. But I do think that when we
decide that Congress should fund a Gandhi museum in Houston,
Texas, for example, that probably meets everyone's definition
of an earmark.
And the only requirement here for my amendment No. 126 is
that it has to have a standalone measure. You can't attach it
to appropriations bills. So if you are proud of the Gandhi
museum, you want us all to build from Ohio and Houston, Texas,
then put it on the floor, and we will be glad to vote for it.
Of course, I would vote no, and I suspect everyone else would.
And that is why they don't go with the transparent path on
earmarks.
So I don't know if anyone's mind would be persuaded on
that. But it is a way to say, sure, by all means, offer your
earmark. Just do it transparently and give us a straight up-or-
down vote on it.
Rule number--or my amendment No. 127 I think would be one
of the most consequential amendments for Congress and for
solving a problem for the country, which is this body needs a
healthcare committee. Healthcare is one of the most broken
problems in our country. It is clearly divisive in terms of how
we approach it in a partisan way.
But when I looked at--before I really got to Congress, I
don't think I appreciated how much committee structure explains
why so many solutions are kind of half measures at best. And a
lot of it is because committees of jurisdiction can only go so
far to solve certain problems.
You know, the Energy and Commerce Committee has a massive
jurisdiction, as does Ways and Means. But, historically, the
House Financial Services Committee was part of Energy and
Commerce. But Financial Services became a substantial and very
specialized area and it emerged from Energy and Commerce and
became its own committee.
Healthcare is, you know, right around 20 percent of GDP at
this point. If you look at most households, if it is not the
largest expense in the household, it is the second largest
behind rent or mortgage. It is one of the leading, if not the
leading, causes of bankruptcy in the United States. For small
businesses, it is crippling them.
And every year goes by, we see Democrats in lockstep, in
general, saying we are not going to fix anything because it
takes away from the momentum for single payer. And we see
Republicans continue to be divided.
In general, any organization you are going to be a part of
that is meant to solve problems aligns responsibility and
authority so that there can be accountability. And I suspect
that if we would align responsibility and authority, although
we would initially come into the meeting with different
perspectives, given the partisan nature of this, we would at
least have ownership. The chairman of that committee would own
the responsibility for making healthcare in America better each
Congress.
And so I think we should do that. I respect that it would
change things a lot. And, frankly, that is what the American
people want. It is not necessarily what the lobbyists want.
They have donated generously to preserve the status quo, and it
is pretty broken. Everyone in the country realizes it is
broken, and I think the clear signal we could send that we hear
you is that we are going to create ownership over that and
create a healthcare committee.
My amendment No. 128 would allow a staffer from each
personal office to have a top secret/SCI clearance. Right now
it stops at top secret. It does not get to the SCI level. And,
you know, we often run into things in every Member's office
that, frankly, we should probably know a lot more about. That
is a different problem. But, in theory, there is not a cap on
the level of classification we can be read in on. But we all
know how important it is to have staff support for that work,
and often you can't have staff support from your own staff.
So this would just prioritize the work to get SCI
clearances for every Member who wants them. There is no mandate
that you have to get one. But if you are doing work for your
committee that would regularly involve some sort of clearance
issue, you should be able to get, you know, an SCI clearance.
And the default should be that every Member has that kind of
level of support.
Rule--my amendment No. 129 would require a recorded vote
for spending bills. CBO scores any spending over $500,000, or
they are supposed to. They don't always. And so if you are
going to spend more, you are going to spend something that has
a CBO, it should require a recorded vote. So there are a lot of
bills that go through here, spend a lot of money, and they just
go without a recorded vote.
And then I think the last amendment that I have got is--
doesn't have an amendment number, and it is called the CBO Show
Your Work Act, because it doesn't amend the rules, it just
incorporates a bill that I have had into the rules.
And this deals with how the Congressional Budget Office,
whenever they publish a score, the one thing we know is that it
will be wrong. We don't know for sure how wrong it will be, but
it is meant to be an approximation. It is an estimate.
Sometimes it is wildly wrong.
When the Federal Government took over education funding as
part of Dodd-Frank, they said it would save us 60-some billion
dollars. The reality is we know it is going to cost us closer
to half a trillion dollars when we count up all the defaults.
The question is: How do we remedy that? We are having a
debate. The public never gets to see the models for these.
Every now and then selectively they will reveal this. Often
when we are in the midst of the debate, regular Member offices
can't even get the CBO model so that you could say, well, I
have an idea for amendment. How would I do it? Well, you can't
even get in the queue, especially if you are not on the
committee of jurisdiction.
Some of these bills are hugely consequential. If they were
required to publish their models and, you know, protect
proprietary-sensitive information but publish their models,
then they could get input, not just from every Member in this
body, but from anyone that wants to participate, you know,
whether it is academics or professionals, that would build
models that would say, you know, I think you have a flaw in
your model. You have got an assumption that we are questioning.
We would have a better model. We would make more accurate
decisions, and I think it would be an important way for us to
improve the function of the body.
This is a long list. I could go longer, but I narrowed it
down to these. Thanks for the time of the committee.
[The statement of Mr. Davidson follows:]
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Latta.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. ROBERT E. LATTA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OHIO
Mr. Latta. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
and members of the Rules Committee. Thanks today for having the
Members' Day Hearing for the rules changes in the 118th.
Mine is a very, very short amendment that we do. It would
prohibit having the ability to put a title in the--including in
the short title and introduce legislation. And so you would
only have just the bill number or the resolution number, and
that is it. And for me and for others through the years, I
think it is important because, again, I think a lot of things
have changed. It used to be an area that you would able to say,
you know what, okay, this is an easy way for people to remember
such-and-such bill.
But through the years, these titles and these acronyms, I
am not sure how long some of our staff have to work on some of
these things to come up with them, but they can be weaponized
against other Members of the House.
And not only that, it confuses our constituents back home
because all of a sudden they say, well, how could you vote
against X piece of legislation, because they cite you back what
the title is and say that is not what it was. And so I think it
is important that a Member could go home and you can talk about
your bill any way you want to. You can call it anything you
want, but you don't have it in the title of the legislation.
And so we just go back to just a simple way it is done. You
just have your bill, then the bill number, the bill resolution
number, and that is it. And that is all this would do, because
I think it really would help us and our way that we operate
around here.
You are not weaponizing, again, that piece of legislation.
We are not confusing our constituents. We are not--also, and
sometimes, you know, it makes it tough for Members to vote on
pieces of legislation when they hear a certain bill title. They
say, Well, how am I going to vote for that? How do I explain
that? So you don't have to worry about that.
And the other thing it is going to do, it is going save us
money, because if you are not voting for something that has got
a lot of money attached to it and you say, Well, how could I
vote against that, well, you don't have to because it is not in
the bill title. So it is up--you know, it is up to the Member
who would want to use it. They can go home. They could talk
about their bill.
But in this case what this would do is, again, in this
rules package, would just prohibit the inclusion of short
titles and introduce legislation.
Thank you very much. I yield back.
[The statement of Mr. Latta follows:]
The Chairman. Mr. Timmons.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. WILLIAM R. TIMMONS IV, A REPRESENTATIVE
IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA
Mr. Timmons. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be very brief.
Over the last 4 years, I have been on the Select Committee
for the Modernization of Congress, first two as a member, last
two as vice chair. It has been some of the most rewarding work
I have ever done in my life. Appreciate you loaning Congressman
Perlmutter and Congressman Reschenthaler to us.
We have gotten a lot done in the last 2 years. We made 202
recommendations over the last 4 years, 132 of them have had
substantial implementation. The one that I want to speak on is
about committee calendars and schedules.
So, right now, the chairman of every committee is in charge
of scheduling their subcommittees and full hearings and markups
as they see fit. The recommendation that we made was not to
require anything other than to just use one portal so you can
see the conflicts. You don't have to--it is not instructive. It
is not--you don't have to change anything that a committee
chairman currently does other than to input them into this new
portal so everybody can see conflicts.
For example, average, last Congress, 40.2 conflicts every
day. Average Member serves on 4.5 committees and subcommittees.
It is just a lot of chaos, and we are trying to find a way to
just see conflicts. Hopefully that will facilitate
conversations in the future regarding block scheduling that
would allow us to deconflict committee schedules.
I said I will be brief, so I will leave it at that. But,
again, we are not asking that Rules does anything other than
force committees to put their schedules into this new portal so
we can just see everything and go from there.
Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Timmons follows:]
The Chairman. Well, thank you. And I want to thank you for
your testimony, Vice Chair Timmons. And I want to thank you and
Rep. Kilmer for the incredible bipartisan work that you and
members on the select committee have, you know, have done.
And, you know, that was created as part of our rules
package. And it was originally envisioned as just kind of a
one-term thing, but we extended it to two terms because there
is a lot of good work that gets done there. And it is in a
climate where, you know, people can have discussions that don't
kind of delve into partisanship.
And so I want to thank all of you and your hardworking
staff for all the work that you have done. You guys have paved
the way for enhanced and unified telework practices and key
technology changes that have stood the test of time.
And, you know, as you mentioned, we have Mr. Perlmutter,
who has--I think Ms. Scanlon has been on the committee and Mr.
Reschenthaler.
And I just want to take the time to thank you for your
incredible work. And I hope that the--that when the majority
put their rules package together, that the work that you guys
have been doing gets to continue.
And, Representative Bourdeaux, thank you for your service
to the Congress. We are sad to see you go, and we appreciate
your insight here today but your many contributions.
And, Representative Davidson, thank you for your exhaustive
list of recommendations, but I know that they are all offered
in the spirit of trying to make this institution better.
And, Representative Radewagen, I agree with you. That is
why we extended in our rules package, you know, what you are
requesting. And I hope that the new majority will do the same
thing.
And, Representative Latta, thank you. I mean, I really
haven't thought much about your amendment. But, you know--you
know, I remember being in the minority. And some of the titles
that the Republicans came up with for their bills I didn't
think were necessarily accurate of what we were voting on--
voting on but, nonetheless, were, you know, kind of, to the
average person, you know, who is not paying attention to the
substance of the bill but just the title, sometimes it is
difficult to explain.
And I do think we ought to figure out ways to move away
from this kind of ``gotcha'' mentality where we are constantly
trying to put people into a corner rather than having
thoughtful discussions about the substance of legislation.
So, again, I appreciate all of you being here.
Let me yield to Dr. Burgess.
Dr. Burgess. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank all of our witnesses. Very thoughtful
suggestions you have brought forward.
Mr. Timmons, I am particularly intrigued by your
deconflicting strategy. Fundamentally opposed to cloning, but
there have been several occasions where I feel like I have to
clone myself to be in two subcommittee hearings and a Rules
hearing at the same time.
I don't know how it would work as a practical matter.
Someone would have to pay attention to it and, I don't know,
that may be a bridge too far. But I am intrigued that you have
at least given it some thought and tried to give us a
practical, workable solution.
Do you have any idea as to how it would actually be
enforced?
Mr. Timmons. So right now the CAO and the Clerk's Office
are working to--they have a number of requests for proposals
out to give us the actual--essentially an app. And once the
portal is created, it would create a common calendar that all
the committees would have to put their information into so you
could just see.
And, ideally, eventually we would get to the point where we
would have, like middle schools do, block scheduling where
certain committees meet during certain times.
Unfortunately, Rules is never going to be perfect. We are
never going to be able to dictate. It is just not going to
work. But the rest of the committees can make serious strides.
My big thing is evidence-based policymaking in a
collaborative manner from a position of mutual respect. That is
what we are supposed to be doing. We don't do that because we
never actually go back and forth.
Four years in Congress, I have gone back and forth once,
and that is with Perlmutter in a subcommittee hearing for
financial institutions on Financial Services. And that was one
time in 4 years. And we had a great experience and we learned a
lot, but we sat there for 2 hours. I have only been in one
committee hearing for 2 hours, and I was out because I have to
go to all these different places.
So just putting it all in one place is step one. And once
we see all the different conflicts, sometimes, I would imagine,
a committee chair would say, Oh, well, it looks like three-
quarters of my committee has a conflict right now. And it looks
like we are better up here. We could just do that.
Maybe that happens. Maybe it doesn't. But if we get
everything into one portal, we can then create possibly an
algorithm or possibly block scheduling that will help
deconflict.
That is the idea, and I just think this is the first step
in exploring it. I think we all want to be in our committee
hearings. This is just the first step in the right direction.
Dr. Burgess. Well, I thank you for that.
And I am reminded, when I first got here, the Rules
Committee, I think, met at 11 o'clock at night, which probably
would be a step forward in this.
The Chairman. How lucky you are you have me.
Dr. Burgess. Yes.
The Chairman. Right.
Dr. Burgess. Mr. Davidson, Show Your Work amendment on the
CBO, perhaps as a corollary to that--and one of the things I
have learned over the years--the answer you get depends upon
how you ask the question. And took me a long time to learn that
in many meetings with the CBO to figure out the inner workings
of their process. So you are right, I think it could be a great
deal more transparent and Members would actually get factual
information that they could actually use. And that I think
would be a step in that direction. So thank you for bringing
that forward.
I will yield back, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Let me just add, I think another way that
would make committee work easier is if we didn't call for roll
call votes on every single noncontroversial bill. I hope that
we don't follow the example that has been made by some people
in this current session, because the bottom line is that it
interferes with committee work, and committee work is some of
the most important work that gets done around here. It is not
what always happens on the floor. It is what happens in
committee.
Mr. Perlmutter.
Mr. Perlmutter. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
And I want to thank the panelists for your testimony. I
serve on a lot of committees with all of you. We have got five
members of the Modernization of Congress Committee in the room
right now.
And one of the things that did come up constantly was
scheduling conflicts, and so that I know that is why you
highlighted that. But there are probably another dozen
suggestions from our committee in the rules change requests
that have been made.
I mean, everything--Mr. Davidson and I agree on a lot of
different things. We disagree on some things. And the--one of
the main points you brought up was the scope of healthcare on
our budget, on our issues that we face here in the Congress,
and whether or not, you know, there should be something just
dedicated to that.
In my opinion, I think you are right, because it takes up
so much time and space and costs from a Federal perspective but
in everybody's lives. So I just appreciate the suggestions that
have been made.
Mr. Latta and I differ on some questions concerning
compensation, which I wish were in these suggestions that were
made to the Rules Committee as to housing allowances and per
diems and whether or not we have a dual-duty station which is
something that only Congress faces.
And for those of you that don't understand what dual-duty
station means, I didn't know what it meant until it was
explained to us in our committee. And Congress, unlike anyplace
else in the Federal Government or in the military, where you
live is your primary duty station. And if you go outside of
that, you are entitled to per diem, except with respect to
Congress where we have a dual-duty station. It can make some
sense but not really. It says you have two primary duty
stations, your home and Washington. Therefore, you are not
entitled to a per diem. But, obviously, gets expensive over the
years, maintaining two homes, especially one of them being here
in Washington, D.C.
So I appreciate all of the suggestions that are--have been
delivered to the Rules Committee from the select committee. I
wish we would have seen a little more on the compensation for
Members. But we have, I think, till Christmas. I don't know.
When are we supposed to get out of here, the 16th but probably
more like Christmas?
The Chairman. Yeah, January 2.
Mr. Perlmutter [continuing]. To work on--work--January 2,
okay--to work on some compensation matters that I think would
benefit the institution.
And, with that, I will yield back.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Reschenthaler.
Mr. Reschenthaler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I just want the record to reflect that that is actually my
favorite flavor of Polar water.
The Chairman. Oh.
Mr. Reschenthaler. So Christmas is coming, not so----
The Chairman. It is actually made in Worcester,
Massachusetts, where I come from.
Mrs. Fischbach. Just shameless.
Mr. Reschenthaler. You have got to have some fun.
And, Mr. Perlmutter, for the third time today I am going to
associate myself with your remarks. Well said, my friend.
Mr. Timmons, I just have a quick anecdote. I don't know if
you remember this, but real early when we got to Congress, you
got really frustrated on the floor; you just threw your hands
up and said, we have got to fix this. And I think it is amazing
that 4 years later, you have actually fixed a lot of the things
that you were complaining about within literally the first 2 or
3 weeks of us being here. So not everybody can say that, so
congrats to you and everything you did on ModCom. It has been
an honor to serve with you on that committee.
Mr. Latta, love your idea about the naming. Incredible
idea.
Mr. Davidson, we are just not going to agree on earmarks,
but I don't want to belabor the point.
So, with that, I am going to yield back.
The Chairman. All right. Mr. Morelle.
Mr. Morelle. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I actually want to also associate myself again with Mr.
Perlmutter. You know, I have the benefit of being an empty
nester. In terms of financial compensation, it is really not an
issue here, but I think for younger Members with small
families, small children, particularly those who are traveling
all across the country, I think the lack of congressional will
to have a cost-of-living adjustment or somehow to compensate
Members for cost. I know this is not very popular. No one is
going to, you know, jump up and down about it, but I think this
is a missed opportunity to do something to fix it.
I think when there are private sector jobs that are paying
three, four times what Members make, and there is half, you
know--some Members come here with an eye already on how they
are going to monetize their service here. You are not going to
get rich as a Member of Congress. That is not the point of it.
But I think it is when you, you know, maintain two households
and you don't get the benefit of a tax break. I really think in
terms of modernizing and encouraging people who are mid-career
to come here, to leave what they do as their chosen profession
to represent communities with no guarantee that they are going
to be able to stay here for a long time or that they will even
want to, but to go back into their profession is a hardship.
And I think to really--you know, again, I know it is not
popular, I know no one is going to jump up and down, we are not
going to get a letter sign on with 300 Members calling for it,
but I just think we are going to make it harder and harder to
attract talented people to come to Congress if you are not
willing to compensate people for something that is not what
they would make in the private sector but is commensurate with
other Federal officials, Federal judges and others who make
significantly more. And I don't think it is--I think this is a
missed opportunity.
Again, I am not speaking for me personally. I have been
blessed. But for a lot of other Members, I think it has got to
be a real struggle. And you would want them to be able to serve
without having to make significant financial sacrifices to be
here.
As it relates to the amendments, again, I want to thank
people for their thoughtfulness about what they bring here. Mr.
Timmons and Mr. Kilmer and the committee have done, I think, a
really solid job. I may not agree with all of the amendments
and all of the thoughts, but I think it is really thoughtful
about how to move us forward.
Also wanted to commend the idea of having a healthcare
committee. I think that--you know, healthcare has now become
such an important part of the American economy, frankly, you
know, although there are 50 different States that all, you
know, regulate it differently. When it comes to ERISA plans and
a lot of what we do, it is now becoming a national agenda item.
And I think dividing it up by multiple committees that have
jurisdiction, whether it is Ed and Labor or Energy and Commerce
or Ways and Means, I just think it is a disservice. It is
really hard to have a thoughtful conversation about healthcare
policy in the United States when you have multiple committees
weighing in, and I just think given the growth in what it means
to GDP.
And frankly, we are going to be--and I say this a lot back
home talking about Medicare, Social Security, we are entering a
stage in American life where two-thirds of baby boomers are now
on Medicare. It is going to be the other third will be in in
the next 6 or 7 years. It is going to put an enormous, enormous
burden and responsibility on those programs. And to think about
how to provide healthcare in a way that has better outcomes
from a healthcare point of view, from a medical point of view,
lower costs, how you make sure that patients have a--have a
system that values them and also providers have a system that
values them, the so-called quadrupling of healthcare. I don't
see any meaningful efforts at getting to a better system here.
And I think that is partly because the way we have designed the
Congress and the way that we deal with these responsibilities.
So I, you know, I am sure my friends who are committee
chairs of the jurisdictions that have it now probably wouldn't
want to hear it, but I think it is something we really ought to
give serious thought to, and I want to thank you for
recommending it as well.
And I will yield back.
The Chairman. Mrs. Fischbach.
Mrs. Fischbach. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And I would just like to talk a little bit or just kind of
add to what Mr. Morelle was talking about with the healthcare
issue. I was shocked when I got here and there wasn't a
committee just devoted to that, because it is such a gigantic
issue. And so I agree. And, you know what I am going to do? I
am going to associate myself with the remarks of Mr. Morelle.
So, you know, we messed up the----
Mr. Morelle. I urge you to continue that thought in the
months and years ahead.
Mrs. Fischbach. Well, I just wanted to mess up, you know,
the trend, you know, associating myself with Mr. Perlmutter. So
I am just kind of changing things up a little bit to keep
people awake.
But, no, the other thing that I really, really like is the
scheduling issue because, again, I was shocked when I got here
that every--it seemed like every one of my committees met at
the exact same time. I mean, there was never a chance to, you
know, make sure that you got to them. And so that I think some
kind of scheduling, if it is blocked or whatever or just some
kind of coordination makes so much more sense, because it is
disappointing when you are not able to stay at a committee the
entire time because you are on the committee, because you are
interested in the topic and you want to make sure that you are,
you know, there. So I appreciate bringing that forward and the
healthcare issue too.
Thank you. I yield back.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Any other question of this panel?
Seeing none, you are free to go. Thank you very much.
Representative Cammack, Representative Massie,
Representative Joyce.
Do you want to go first? Mr. Joyce, why don't you go first?
Okay. You know, people are coming and going, I am having a
tough time keeping track of everybody.
You may begin. Yes.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. DAVID P. JOYCE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OHIO
Mr. Joyce. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I have an amendment that would establish a bipartisan
Ethics task force to conduct a comprehensive review of the
Ethics rules and regulations and report the recommended
improvements to the bipartisan leadership.
Why now you might ask. Well, it has been 30 years since the
House established a comprehensive Ethics task force to improve
its rules and regulations. The last time this was done in 1989
by then-Speaker Jim Wright and later Bob Michel. The 1997 and
2007 task force were process, not rules focused.
The rules should be improved to ensure Members are not
personally profiting from their official position. If the
current rules allow a Member to accept a $35,000 charity event
ticket for free, it is time to change the rules. If the current
rules allow a Member to sell for any price his or her life
story as intellectual property, it is time to change the rules.
If the current rules allow a Member to accept a wedding gift of
any value from a lobbyist and not disclose the gift, it is time
to change the rules.
The rules should be improved to reduce the confusion and
promote compliance. Example one: There is three different rules
to apply to three different posts they may put out on social
media. Now remember, 30 years ago, we didn't have social media.
So from official press releases, the 72-hour rule applies
before the same language can appear on campaign social media
without taking the original press release down from the
official site. From press outlet videos, videos quoting,
referencing, or featuring a Member of Congress, the exhausted
use test applies and your office gets to decide when an
interview or video has exhausted its official use and can be
posted by the campaign, and this can be less than 72 hours. For
social media posts, these posts, not in the form of a press
release, neither the 72-hour rule nor the exhausted use test
apply.
For another example: In September, the committee announced
the guest policy for change in attendance at events. Before the
change, the type of event you were attending determined the
type of guest you could take, maybe a spouse, a staffer, adult
child, or a minor child. We have a chart here that gives you
the different examples of different events and all the
different ways in which someone might or might not be eligible
to be able to attend with you. I think the times have changed
as well on that type of example. But it is confusing how a
simple invitation to an event, now a Member can take any kind
of guest to any of these seven different types of event.
Lastly, how would the task force be set up? Equally
bipartisan, similar to the Ethics Committee, with three
Republicans and three Democrats, current Members, and two
bipartisan former members serving in an ex officio capacity,
participating in the substantive conversation but not voting on
the recommendations. Task force staff would include current
Ethics and House Administration Committee staff, who would
conduct a comprehensive review of ethic rules and regulations.
The task force will complete recommended improvements--report
the recommended improvements to the bipartisan leadership, and
all will take a confidentiality oath on the things that they
listen to, hear, see, or do during the time of putting together
such a commission.
[The statement of Mr. Joyce follows:]
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you.
The Chairman. Mrs. Cammack.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. KAT CAMMACK, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA
Mrs. Cammack. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you
to all of the members here today for the opportunity to speak.
Several of the amendments before you----
Voice. Will you turn your microphone on, please?
Mrs. Cammack. Oh, there it is. I thought it was already on.
So I am glad the committee is hosting this hearing today as
the rules of the House affects all Members in their ability to
best represent their constituents. House rules probably isn't
the most interesting topic for people back home, but, trust me,
everything that we do here in the House--debate, offer bills,
amendments, our committee activity--it is dictated by the House
rules. And I think it is fair to say that many across this
country feel that this place is broken. So we are starting here
with rules.
The most important part of this job is casting a vote on
each bill on the House floor on behalf of our constituents,
deciding whether or not it should become law or not. This
responsibility should never be taken lightly, as each bill has
the potential to impact Americans all across this country.
Every Member should have the opportunity to know the content of
each bill that is considered, its cost, and how it will impact
their constituents. It is a very simple concept. That means
every Member of Congress should, at minimum, have the
opportunity to read each measure prior to consideration.
However, in current practice, we often find ourselves with
mere hours to read the bills that are hundreds or even
thousands of pages long. Lately, I have found that the longer
the bill is, the less time that Members have to read it.
Providing Members with sufficient time to read each bill is one
method to ensure that every Member of Congress on behalf of
their constituents has made the best decision.
In the 118th Congress, we should strengthen the rules of
the House to give Members of this body time to analyze and read
each piece of legislation. This rule should be upheld for every
bill with no exceptions or waivers unless two-thirds of the
majority support.
I strongly support this change to House rules and request
its inclusion as part of the House rules next Congress.
And I would also like to touch briefly on single issue
bills. In the same vein, I believe another necessary change to
House rules that would strengthen Members' input in the
legislative process is limiting bills to single issues. This
change would bring much needed transparency to Congress for
Members and the public alike, and it would ultimately expedite
the legislative process.
Since I have been in Congress, the most expensive and
consequential bills are massive and touch every single issue.
In such bills, there are policies throughout that would have
broad support of Republicans and Democrats alike, but each
include riders that require Members to tacitly decide if the
good outweighs the bad. I can't tell you how many times I have
had to go home and say, it was all bad, but I had to decide
which was worse.
Legislating in such a way is frustrating to me, to our
colleagues, and certainly to our constituents. Each policy
should be considered on its own merits separately. The House
Rules Committee should require that every bill be single issue,
focusing on one subject at a time. In doing so, Members can
easily discern the policy being considered and cast their vote.
And on a personal note, I would say that I probably
wouldn't be here in Congress today had it not been for a
program created through one of these massive bills that was
rushed through on the House floor.
In 2008, the affordable--the Home Affordable Modification
Program, as many of you know it, HAMP, was included in a bill
that was hundreds of pages long and modified numerous Federal
policies. This program was a disaster and ultimately cost
millions of homeowners across the country their homes.
However, this provision, like every provision we vote on in
Congress, should have been considered on its own merits, and
legislators should have had the opportunity to debate this
program. But they didn't. The American people deserve
representatives who have the opportunity to read, debate, and
consider each policy on its merits. And had this been the case
for the HAMP program, it is possible that my family, along with
the 6 million other families across the country, we might not
have lost our homes.
Again, I believe that single-issue bills will bring much
needed transparency to the legislative process and restore the
broken trust in this institution. I encourage the committee to
include this change in the 118th rules of the House.
Thank you again for the opportunity to speak on these
recommendations today. And I would also like to associate
myself with the comments that Representative Massie is about to
deliver. So thank you.
[The statement of Mrs. Cammack follows:]
Mr. Massie. Boy, that is a good----
The Chairman. Yes. Right.
Mr. Massie. Well, I am going to change the topic of what I
was going to----
The Chairman. Yeah. You don't even know what he was going
to say, but----
Mrs. Cammack. We are living dangerously.
The Chairman. Mr. Massie.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. THOMAS MASSIE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF KENTUCKY
Mr. Massie. I do want to associate myself with the remarks
that Mrs. Cammack made, because we sat down here and realized
that we were making the same proposal. Must mean it is a great
proposal to change the rules.
The American people--and this proposal is for the American
people. I haven't found a single American who disagrees with
this proposal. In fact, I am a little bit embarrassed at how
modest it is, because back home they are going say, that
doesn't go far enough. Yet here, I am afraid, it is going to
seem radical and take a lot of work to convince people to adopt
it, but it would increase the integrity of this House, and the
work product would be better that comes out of it.
My amendment is simple. We have a lot of rules here, very
good rules; I just think we should follow one of these rules
more frequently. And so what my amendment would do is require a
two-thirds vote of the full House to waive the current 72-hour
rule that gives us 72 hours to read the bill.
Now, a little bit of history on the 72-hour rule: It used
to be 3-day rule under Republicans. And I would guess a lot of
the reasons you were here at 11 o'clock at night is the text of
the bill was not available until 11:50 on the first day, but
the Parliamentarian said that counts as a day in our 3-day rule
and so we could shorten it. And then on the third day, we would
vote in the morning, so you could collapse the 3-day rule into
maybe a 30-hour rule.
The Democrats, I have to give you credit.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Massie. I will probably never do this again, but you
changed it from a 3-day rule, which we cheated on all the time,
into a 72-hour rule, which required an honest to goodness 3
days, 72 hours, between when the text was available and when we
voted on it. And I was a little bit incredulous at the time
because it seemed like such a good change to me, something that
I had advocated for a long time, but it wasn't but a few weeks
until that rule got suspended and then regularly has been
suspended for 4 years.
And so I think if we put this two-thirds requirement in
before suspending that rule, that will help things. The two-
thirds requirement on the 72-hour rule would include floor
votes on bills that go through regular order, floor votes on
bills that bypass committees and go directly to the floor, and
conference reports as well.
I had a chairman of a committee that I served on once, and
I will--he committed candor so I won't give you his name. He
might be prosecuted for candor. That is a sin in Washington,
D.C. He had a bill ready right before August recess, and we
asked if we could--members of the committee asked if we could
get a little peek at that bill because we were going to vote on
it when we came back from August recess. And he said,
legislation is like roadkill, the more it sits out, the more it
gets picked apart. And so we didn't get to see the bill until
we came back from August recess. He was being honest.
Now, that is the view from inside of Congress. I don't know
why a chairman would call his own bill roadkill, but what he is
conceding is that when you open a bill up to public scrutiny,
the bad things in it will be found. And I am under no illusion
that if you give us 3 months to read a bill that all of our
colleagues will read the bills. I mean, you all are on the
Rules Committee. You are probably the most informed of any of
the Members of Congress, because you have to read the bill and
know the bill to write the rules for it. But our colleagues
aren't going to read all these bills, but their constituents,
if we give them 3 days, 72 hours, the bill text goes up, the
media can report on it. And then by the third day, we have that
vote. And there is a chance to get this feedback mechanism
going that is so important in a Republic like ours or a
democracy, whatever you want to call it, representative
democracy.
So this is what I am proposing. And in the spirit of my
proposal, I am giving you a full month to review it before we
have to vote on it. And the objections that I expect to
encounter will actually be from the majority, regardless of
which party is in the majority, because their argument will be
from the majority that, oh, you are making us go to the
minority's side of the aisle, you are making us go over there
if we want to pass legislation quickly. And we worked really
hard to get to majority, to get this power, and we are not
going to give any of it up.
But I would suggest to the majority that if we take the
high road, America will be better off, the institution will be
better off. And we will produce better legislation, and we can
set an example. If we buckle up and do this for 2 years,
regardless of who has the majority next time, it will be hard
to undo this, because the American people will get used it, and
they will demand that, you know, maybe we don't read the bills,
but we have time to read the bills, that they have time to read
the bills before we take action on the part of 750,000
constituents back in our district.
So I urge the adoption of this amendment, and thank you for
indulging me.
[The statement of Mr. Massie follows:]
The Chairman. Well, thank you all. Thank you very much for
your testimony.
Mr. Joyce, I haven't really thought much about your
proposal, but I don't think--it sounds okay to me. So I don't
know what the Ethics Committee [inaudible] look into these
jurisdictional, you know, it is my turf--but I mean--but I
think simplifying the, you know, processes and rules and
regulations around here, I think everybody would appreciate
very much. And so, I mean, we can see.
And I appreciate the kind words about the McGovern rule,
the 72-hour rule. And, you know, I think, you know, precisely
because of what you just said is why we instituted it to begin
with. And, you know, 90 percent of the bills considered
pursuant to this rule and Congress have complied with that
rule. So contrary to mythology that, you know, it is the other
way around. I mean, that is the way it has been. And I hope
that you will be successful in persuading the new majority to
keep the McGovern rule in place. And, you know, if you have a
real problem with the 10 percent that we waived it on and you
want a better record by the Republicans, that you will press
the leadership here to do that.
You know, I don't regret the few exceptions either that we
had to waive the rule to move bills to the floor quickly to
deal with emergencies, like the infant formula emergency for
example, or Russia's unjustified war against Ukraine. And as I
have said many times before, there are also some bills that,
you know, no one needs that long of a time to review, but
providing a few extra days to resolve any disputes or to answer
any questions I think it important.
I also agree with you that we can have, you know, a 720-
hour review process and that doesn't mean Members are going to
read the bill. I don't know whether you have read the bills
that we brought up before the Rules Committee today for
consideration this week, but they have been available for over
72 hours. I am willing to guess that you haven't, but that is
okay. But so, again, I hope that the new majority will keep the
McGovern rule in place if, you know--and 90 percent is like an
A, right? A minus. You want an A plus, then that is something
you ought to strive towards. And I hope that we can--and I am
happy to be supportive of that.
Yeah.
Mr. Massie. If I may, in the 10 percent where you had to
subvert or short circuit the 72-hour process, I think there are
cases in there where you may have had two-thirds of the vote
and this wouldn't have been a hindrance, I think, on most of
the Ukraine votes that got two-thirds.
The Chairman. And, you know, and maybe, you know, I mean,
and these guys will have to weigh that and decide whether, you
know, that is the right thing to do. You know, I am not here to
speak against that. But I am just simply saying that we have
tried to change this so that Members have more time, because
you are right. I mean, I--you know, I mean, previously it was 3
days, and you could count at 11:59 p.m. as 1 day and, you know,
then you could vote on it at 3 in the morning on the third day,
and so no one has time to look at this stuff.
I just will also say, you know, and this is not necessarily
a rules change, but it is a cultural change or an attitude
change is that, you know, I don't think that every single bill
has to have a roll call vote. There are some bills that we know
are going to pass 435 to nothing, you know, noncontroversial
post office bills, you know, or something that, you know, is
not terribly Earth shattering. Sometimes it is like less than a
paragraph, and yet to demand votes on everything cuts into
committee work time. And a lot of the best, most important work
that is done here is done in committee. And it creates this
kind of hostile attitude.
And by the way, I say that not just as a Democrat who has
been subjected to endless roll call votes by some of my
Republican friends, but I know a lot of Republican Members who
come to me and say, why don't you fix that in the Rules
Committee? Because they too want to spend their time debating
important legislation in committee.
And so, I mean, you know, I think if everybody has the
attitude of that our job here is to govern, is to get stuff
done, and sometimes disagree when we don't agree on things, but
just move the process forward, I think things could be a lot
better here. But, you know--anyway, but I appreciate everybody
being here and I appreciate your recommendations. I look
forward to this rules package being put together.
You know, I will say one thing that I did, you know, when I
was--first became the chair, is I went around to all the
different caucuses, not only talking to Democrats, but also to
a lot of Republicans, and solicited their input. And we
actually had a bipartisan vote. We had a few Republicans
actually vote for the rules package when we first passed it,
which is unprecedented. You know, we had some stuff in there,
like the consensus rule to bring bills to the floor. Someone
suggested that we ought to modify that so that it is revenue
neutral. I mean, that is something we ought to talk about so we
have an offset on big spending bills. You know, this
Modernization Committee, the committee on Diversity and
Inclusion, all those things kind of came out of discussions I
had with people on both sides of the aisle.
And so I hope that the process in the next few weeks, you
know, follows, you know, that example. I am not saying we did
everything perfectly. I am not saying that--you know, there
were things that I would have liked in our rules packages that
couldn't sell to everybody. But again, your being here, your
presenting these ideas I think is very constructive.
So, Dr. Burgess.
Dr. Burgess. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank our
witnesses for sharing their valuable ideas with us.
Mr. Chairman, I want to ask unanimous consent to insert
statements from Representatives Boebert and Steube----
The Chairman. Without objection.
Dr. Burgess [continuing]. Into the record on their Rules
suggestions. And I yield back.
[The information follows:]
The Chairman. Yeah. And let me ask unanimous consent to
insert into the record statements from Representative Jackson
Lee and Chairman Grijalva. Chairman Grijalva's statement is in
support of remote committee proceedings, which I want to state
for the record, I have heard from several Members that remote
proceedings in committees have been helpful in obtaining
witness testimony without the worry of travel or cost to the
taxpayer.
So without objection.
[The information follows:]
The Chairman. Mrs. Torres.
Mrs. Torres. I have no questions.
The Chairman. Mr. Reschenthaler.
Mr. Reschenthaler. I yield back.
The Chairman. Mr. Perlmutter.
Mr. Perlmutter. Just a couple of comments.
So, Mr. Joyce, on your Ethics review, I absolutely agree. I
think we are up to 600, 700 pages of Ethics provisions. And
there are some things that are going to be needed, and there
are going to be some things that I think this commission or
this group will find are redundant, are confusing, need to be
cleaned up. And so I absolutely agree with that.
Mrs. Cammack, the thing I wanted to say to you and Mr.
Massie, so in any Congress probably the two most important
votes you make are, one, for the Speaker and, two, for the
rules package, because the rule--and in this last Congress, for
me, the three most consequential votes I have ever taken in my
life, and I have voted on a lot of things, the Speaker, the
rules package, and the certification of the Presidency of that.
And the reason being and, I think, you know, our experience--
you all are going to want to do this differently, I imagine,
but you should learn from our experience. With a very tight
majority, those rules are particularly important. And for us,
the ability to operate during COVID by taking advantage of
technology--and I know that you are probably going to reject
any kind of proxy voting or remote voting even for committees.
You know, you ought to think twice, especially about the remote
voting and the ability to use witnesses remotely. It just
allows you to conduct business around here in a way that is in
the 21st century and not in the 18th century.
And so the 72-hour piece is really, you know, important,
but on the other hand, I am going to tell you, you are going to
have some emergencies where that is not going to be available,
to your point, then two-thirds of the people ought to be able
to move something forward.
So I appreciated all your comments. But particularly every
Congress needs to really understand their rules package,
because outside of the election of the Speaker, it is the most
important vote you are going to take.
And, with that, I will yield back.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mrs. Fischbach. All set.
Mr. Morelle.
Mr. Morelle. I do. I just have a couple of thoughts.
First, I agree with you, Mr. Joyce. I have actually just I
think last week, the week before, did one of the required
Ethics trainings. And every time I go through it, I scratch my
head about certain provisions. And I think to myself, why am--
to give you an idea, I have a very well known food cupboard in
my community, not for-profit 501(c)(3), they are doing a food
collection. I think I was told I couldn't put a basket in my
district office because that violates the House rules. I was
like, okay, I don't know what possible benefit that gives me by
having.
So, you know, it is a small, silly example, but there are
so many times and I will say, that is an Ethics violation but
this isn't? So without any prejudging what the results would
be, I think it is just--it is incumbent upon us, particularly
since you cite social media and some of the things that were
not around probably when the original, maybe even the current
ones were written, I think really it does behoove us
periodically to look at where our Ethics standards are and to
think about this. Does this make any sense and who is it
intended to benefit, what is the intent of this.
So it is funny, I had this list of proposed amendments that
I had written yes next to yours before hearing you speak, so
thanks for offering that. I would certainly support it.
Sort of curious on the 72-hour issue. So part of this is
based on my experience in the State legislature. So in New
York, we had a rule, if a bill was introduced on a Monday, it
would have to have what we call the order of third reading--
first reading, second reading, third reading--and you couldn't
vote on it till Thursday. Similar to 72-hour rule.
But in our legislature, if a bill was amended, the clock
started again. So an amendment changes the nature of the bill.
Right? If an amendment is agreed to, the bill is different than
the original form. And every single time you amended a bill, it
had to go through another 3-day waiting period. The only way we
could get around it under the New York State Constitution is if
the governor issued a statement to us that said, you know, you
waive the reading. So in an emergency, the governor could do
it. I don't think it works well here. You are not going to have
the President sign it. But two-thirds, in my mind, is--so first
of all, the question I was going ask is, if an amendment is
passed on the floor that changes the text of the original bill,
is there a 72-hour waiting period that you envision, then, with
the new bill before it could be--have final passage?
Mr. Massie. I can't speak to Mrs. Cammack's text, but my
text just takes all of the rules of the existing McGovern 72-
hour rule. I will give you due recognition there.
The Chairman. I hope you will keep the name if you keep the
rule.
Mr. Massie. We might just change it to ``govern.''
The Chairman. Okay.
Mr. Massie. It will be a nod to your chairmanship and your
great contribution to this rule.
So how does the existing 72-hour rule work if the bill gets
amended on the floor?
The Chairman. It doesn't apply to that.
Mr. Massie. Okay. So it wouldn't apply to that.
Mr. Morelle. Which seems to me, then, kind of an end around
on the--I mean, essentially--because an amendment could be the
elimination of every word in the substitute of a--right? That
is what we do when we have an amendment to the nature of a
substitute. So it is not foolproof, because you change--
effectively, by amending the bill you could change the nature
of----
Mr. Massie. You are already looking for a workaround.
Mr. Morelle. Well, I am just saying it exists. I mean, it
is sort of like, you know----
Mr. Massie. No. I appreciate that.
Mr. Morelle. Yeah. I mean, any fence with a gap in it isn't
a fence; it is just like a series of posts. And so it seems to
me like that--that is the end around.
The other thing that I would say is, while I would struggle
to maybe find a way to pierce the 72-hour rule, I think two-
thirds of the House is just a bar too high to get over. If you
really had an emergency and you had to pierce the 72-hour rule,
two-thirds of the Members having agreed to it, seems to me that
would be such that you might find yourself in a position where
you really need to do something and you are not able to because
the two-thirds is just too high.
So, I mean, I think--I understand what you are trying to
do, but I think the two problems are the two-thirds, it is too
high a bar. And the fact that you can amend a bill and change
the text of it really leads you with no 72-hour rule at all.
I don't know if you want to respond to that or just
acknowledge that I am right on the second one.
Mrs. Cammack. Oh, bless your heart. That is what we say in
the South.
Mr. Morelle. I know. It is what my friend Louise Slaughter
would say, bless you.
Mrs. Cammack. No. And to the point about the 72-hour rule,
I know that there are other proposals on the table that go
further than the 72 hours. There is--you know, the 3 business
days, you have the 72 hours as a whole, you have even less.
I am not saying that 72 hours is the end all be all. But I
can't remember the last time that we have had an open amendment
process that we could participate in that would actually
trigger a situation where----
Mr. Morelle. No. But you could have a structured--well, we
do a lot of structured rules here where amendments are on the--
we are voting on amendments all the time. If you were to adopt
three or four amendments, it might dramatically change the
underlying text of the bill, in which case there is no waiting
period for that. You are going to move to immediate passage,
which seems to me sort of defeats the 72-hour rule.
Mr. Massie. I would ask this, please adopt the amendment
and we will see if that is a problem. And if it is, we will
take your recommendation and clamp down on that loophole.
Mrs. Cammack. I second the gentlemen's----
Mr. Morelle. Well, I mean, the other way to do it to
address it would be any time the bill is amended, it starts the
clock again. I am just not sure people want to do that. That is
the way to guarantee you the 72 hours. You would still have the
question of how to pierce the 72-hour rule if you had a real
emergency and you needed to get it done. And to that point, I
think two-thirds is just too high a bar. It is a standard that
you would almost never be able to achieve.
Mrs. Cammack. But to the point that Mr. Massie was making
about the two-thirds rule, and, Chairman McGovern, you were
saying, you know, there were situations where the 72-hour rule
had to be waived, and Ukraine was one of the examples. Two-
thirds of the conference voted in support of those pieces of
legislation. So I think that your point about the two-thirds is
actually far more viable than what you have stated. So----
Mr. Morelle. What did I state?
Mrs. Cammack. That it wouldn't be--that it is too high of a
threshold.
Mr. Morelle. Oh, yeah. I mean, well, there are certainly
some instances where you could reach it, but I think there are
many times one side might view it differently, but I
acknowledge it.
Mrs. Cammack. I mean, if it is truly an emergency
situation, two-thirds of the majority--I mean of the
conference.
Mr. Massie. When I wrote this amendment, I anticipated we
would have 60 percent of Congress, the big red wave. And I
wanted to make sure it would be bipartisan, so I thought we
should set it at----
Mr. Morelle. You could always have a waiver of the leader
of the other side, which doesn't require two-thirds but just
waives the----
Mr. Massie. I don't trust the other side any more than I
trust our leaders.
Mr. Perlmutter. Well, there you go.
Mrs. Cammack. Well, and if I may, I just want to say, I do
appreciate the remarks that you have made about some of the
Ethics recommendations today. When Hurricane Ian rolled
through, I immediately tried to do a supply drive of simple
things like food and water----
Mr. Morelle. No, you can't do it.
Mrs. Cammack [continuing]. And basics, we couldn't do it.
Mr. Morelle. Right.
Mrs. Cammack. Which is absolutely absurd. So there are a
lot of things that I think we need to fix within the Ethics
rules.
And then also to your point about diversifying Congress. I
am married to a firefighter. I come from a very blue collar,
working class family. If we are going to develop more talent
within the ranks of Congress, we need to be able to provide an
environment that people can do that. Otherwise you are going to
have one group of people that are independently wealthy that
can do this job. So I appreciate your remarks.
Mr. Morelle. Well, I appreciate you all being here and your
thoughtfulness. And I will----
The Chairman. Let me just say, final things. One is, you
know, the 72-hour rule is a good rule, you know. And to the
extent that, you know, it needs to be waived, it should be
sparingly and for emergencies. And if you guys decide that you
want to--a vote to be able to waive it, that is up to you. But
the idea of giving people really--3 days and, you know,
midnight, 11:59, that is one day, you know, the next day, and
then, you know, 1 a.m. in the morning and that is your 3-day,
that doesn't work. It should be 72 hours.
For example, the rail bill that we are dealing with today,
no matter what he said, I mean, we don't like where we are, but
it is an emergency. I mean, you know--so, I mean, there is an
example. I don't know whether it would get two-thirds to be
able to either bring it to the floor earlier, but whatever.
But putting that aside, let me just say one other thing.
The number of people excited about these single-issue bills,
bringing bills to the floor that are just on one particular
topic, my experience here is that life is complicated. And if
you really want to solve a problem, sometimes it doesn't fit
into this neat little silo, you know. You know, I do a lot of
work on food insecurity and hunger.
Mrs. Cammack. I know, we serve together.
The Chairman. Right. Agriculture Committee, right? But to
solve that problem is not just SNAP, it is not just our food
and nutrition programs; it is other things too. It is housing,
it is whether people have a job, whether people get paid a
decent wage. So sometimes these issues intersect with a whole
bunch of other issues. The farm bill in and of itself, you
can't really say that is just one topic. It covers a whole
range of things. Not just aid to our farmers, but it covers our
food and nutrition programs, it covers a whole bunch of stuff.
So I get this idea that, you know, people want to kind of
simplify things and make things easier to digest, you know, for
people who may be watching. But if you really want to solve
some of these problems, sometimes it requires bringing in other
topics. Again, not to confuse things but, you know, to actually
effectively legislate and get something done. I mean,
otherwise, you are talking about, you know, doing nine
different bills for what you could do one bill for.
So as you figure out with your leadership what that--how
you narrow down these topics, I mean, just I think we need to
be cognizant of the fact that, you know, solving problems
doesn't always fit into one nice, neat, little discrete
category. It involves a lot of different things. And again, the
bills like the farm bill is an example. It is multitopics.
And so anyway, does anybody else have any----
Mr. Morelle. I just want to--I am sorry--speak on his
amendment.
The Chairman. Go ahead, please.
Mr. Morelle. I was going to close before I yield just to
say that on the--I actually think that the 72-hour and a period
of time for Members to look through it, have ample opportunity,
I think is a great idea. I just wanted to raise the question
about how you trigger when you go--when you need to pierce it.
But I think it is a great idea.
And I yield.
The Chairman. Mr. Massie.
Mr. Massie. I just want to thank Mr. Joyce for offering his
amendment. I think the American public would be appalled if
they saw our Ethics manual. I mean, it looks like it was
written with a typewriter, it is so old. Predates the internet,
it has got conflicts. And the real Ethics manual isn't really
compiled. It is like a bunch of emails and addendums and
hearsay. Like, we are operating under hearsay.
Somebody needs to take all that, compile it, and do a new
Ethics manual. And it conflicts with some of the other stuff,
like House Admin. So I would just speak in support of his
amendment to update that manual.
The Chairman. Mrs. Torres had a----
Mr. Joyce. Thank you.
Mrs. Torres. Yeah. I just want to say how much I have
appreciated this--I wouldn't call it debate, but this back and
forth, everyone using their indoor voice and everybody
respecting each other's opinion. And I really hope that, you
know, today's meeting of Members' input can really set the
stage for how we conduct ourselves moving forward.
I really appreciated the three of you--or appreciate the
three of you being here today and how we have exchanged ideas.
Thank you.
Mr. Massie. Thank you.
The Chairman. Any other questions of this panel?
Hearing none, you are free to go.
Are there any other Members who wish to testify on the rule
change proposals?
Seeing none, that closes our Members' Day hearing. All
right.
So, without objection, the committee stands in recess,
subject to the call of the chair.
We are not quite ready yet, but we will probably meet here
before votes.
Mrs. Fischbach. Before 6:30 but after 5 o'clock?
The Chairman. Yeah. Like an hour or so. That is a good--
that is a good--that is our hope.
And the Rules Committee is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:48 p.m., the committee was adjourned,
subject to the call of the chair.]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[all]