[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

                               __________

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                    Available via http://govinfo.gov
            Printed for the use of the Committee on Rules
            
                              __________

                                
                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
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                           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.]
 
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