You Can't Make This Stuff Up

What you see below was just received by Bodhi.  It's a response to a prank I played on Ms. Greene a few weeks ago.  In that, I:

• pretended to be one of her constituents
• pretended to compliment her on her political positions

Later, I clued her in to what I'd done.  But apparently the clue never registered; I should have expected Ms. Greene's complete incognizance and resulting self-righteousness.

I'll give it one more try.  I'll let her know that her most recent gaffe majeure has been detected.  I'm going to send her a link to this post.

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After being kicked off committees by Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats for the past two years, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is ready to get to work for Northwest Georgia in the new Republican majority. Congresswoman MTG issued the following statements after receiving her committee assignments for the 118th Congress: Oversight and Accountability One of the key agenda items for the Republican majority in the 118th Congress is oversight. That’s why I’m honored to be selected to serve on what could arguably be the most important committee this Congress, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. We will return the role of the Oversight Committee to investigating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement of the federal government, which is exactly what the American people are fed up with. Joe Biden, be prepared. We are going to uncover every corrupt business dealing, every foreign entanglement, every abuse of power, and every check cut for The Big Guy. Homeland Security I'm honored to serve my constituents and the American People on the House Committee on Homeland Security to focus on the security of the United States. Our Southern border is being invaded by millions of illegal aliens, criminals, and potential terrorists. Our People are being murdered by Chinese fentanyl flooding in from the cartels. Our Border Patrol and ICE agents have their hands tied and have been turned into a welcoming committee by the Biden administration. Cyber attacks continue on our nation's people and businesses along with many more threats to our homeland. We will investigate the Biden administration’s violations of our laws and fund (and defund) programs to defend our border and American sovereignty. Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic I’m honored to serve on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. It’s time to reveal the truth on the origins of COVID, the authoritarian Democrat response, vaccines, and Fauci’s NIAID involvement in gain-of-function research.   ____________________________________________________________________________

New Heights in Chutzpah

If one is a MAGA Republican one can, apparently, never have enough power or control.  At least it's easy to arrive at that conclusion.  Elise Stefanik, Chairwoman of the - wait for it - (apparently their instinct for exclusion demands that they have their own conference)  House Republican Conference for the 118th Congress oversaw the formulation, and we assume the publication, of operating rules, not for the House as a whole, but rather for the Republican conference.

These rules are all available here.  At least at first reading, they seem completely MAGA.  For instance, rules 8 and 9 emphasize, not openness, but secrecy.  (Italicization and emphasis in the following are Bodhi's.)

Rule 8—Conference Meetings: Secret Ballot

On demand of one Member, with the support of five others, the vote on any matter properly pending before the Conference shall be taken by secret ballot.

Rule 9—Conference Meetings: Admittance

(a) The Chair may decide whether meetings of the Conference shall be open or closed to the public, subject to an appeal by any Member.

(b) The Chair may designate Leadership staff or other eligible persons to attend Conference meetings which are closed to the public. Those individuals shall be excused at the discretion of the Chair.

(c) Upon timely notice from the Chair, an executive session of the Conference may be called. This meeting shall be closed to all persons except Members of the Conference.

It appears that paranoia strikes deep among Republicans in the House.

First He Invented the Wheel ...

We've seen this movie before, almost always with a hammered Republican in a starring role. Years ago, in anticipation of the Trump juggernaut, Rudy Giuliani dressed in drag; 45 was said to have motorboated Rudy. CNN reports today that another MAGA-ite, George Santos, has been accused of similar behavior.

Santos, an out gay man, allegedly performed as a drag queen in Brazil (He must have been very busy there, given not only this charge but those brought by the Brazilian government of fraud.) One acerbic response on Twitter to today's headline pretty well sums up Mr. Santos: You survived Pearl Harbor, invented the wheel, went to the moon 13 times, married Betsy Ross, parted the Red Sea, and you have 7 Super Bowl Rings.

Mr. Santos. on his government-paid-for and -maintained web site, appears to continue to fabricate his own history. Some of his Republican colleagues from Nassau County NY also question his veracity. Too bad Kevin didn't. The King of Rules put Mr. Santos on two standing committees in the House – the Small Business Committee and the Science, Space, and Technology Committee. Given Mr. Santos' propensity for distortion, the damage he could do in either of those settings is perturbing  ...

Deja Vous All Over Again

While they're certainly colorful, the MAGA Caucus in the House of Representatives are not trail-blazers, at least not in the area of debt ceiling negotiations. Let's start with the basics.

Our federal government can pay what it owes only if Congress has previously approved those expenditure in an appropriation bill. If the proposed expenditure exceeds revenues that have been collected through taxes and tariffs, the resulting deficit can only be financed through the Department of the Treasury, by borrowing the shortfall amount. Further, the amount the government can borrow is limited by the debt ceiling, which can only be increased with a separate vote by Congress.

Prior to 1917, Congress directly authorized the amount of any borrowing. In 1917, in order to provide more flexibility to finance the US involvement in World War I, Congress introduced the concept of a debt ceiling. That allowed the Treasury to borrow any amount needed, as long as it kept the amount borrowed at or below the authorized ceiling.

We need to understand that raising the debt ceiling does not have any direct, immediate impact on budget deficits, largely because our government's yearly federal budget is required to include details like:

• projected tax collections

• projected expenditures

• as a result, the amount of borrowing the government might have to do

Public debt, that is, debt which it is the responsibility of the national government to resolve, has been with the United States since before there was a United States. We incurred such debts during the Revolutionary War and under the Articles of Confederation . Those debts led to the first yearly report on the amount of national debt - $ 75,463,476.52 on January 1, 1791. In today's dollars, that works out to about ($23.56 * 75, 463, 476), or roughly $1,777,919,494.56. That's 1 billion +, with a b. And note the date; this debt was reported almost as soon as the new Constitution was ratified.

The trend to indebtedness, and a debt ceiling, continued throughout our history; in recent years, every president since Harry Truman has added to the national debt. The debt ceiling has been raised 74 times since March 1962:

• 18 times under Ronald Reagan

• 8 times under Bill Clinton

• 7 times under George W. Bush

• 3 times (as of August 2011) under Barack Obama

Ancestors of the MAGA Caucus

In 2009, the Tea Party movement in the House of Representatives emerged, with the goal of reducing government spending and regulation. The Tea Party produced a wave of new Republican office-holders in the 2010 mid-term elections ; the major campaign promises of such folks were – wait for it - cutting federal spending and stopping tax increases. These new Republicans and the new Republican House majority greatly affected the 2011 debt ceiling debate.

Throughout 2011, Standard & Poor's and Moody's credit rating services issued warnings that US debt could be downgraded because of the continued large deficits and increasing debt. According to the CBO's 2011 long-term budget outlook, without major policy changes the large budget deficits and growing debt would continue, which would reduce national saving, leading to higher interest rates, more borrowing from abroad, and less domestic investment – which in turn would lower income growth in the United States. The European sovereign debt crisis was occurring throughout 2010–2011, and there were concerns that the US was on the same trajectory.

The debt ceiling had been raised on February 12, 2010 to $14.294 trillion. Soon after the 2011 budget was passed, the debt ceiling set in February 2010 was reached. The Treasury Department stated on numerous occasions that the US government would exhaust its borrowing authority around August 2, 2011. That date appeared to serve as an effective deadline for Congress to vote to increase the debt ceiling.

Courting Catastrophe

During the debt ceiling increase negotiations between President Obama and (Republican) Speaker of the House John Boehner, Boehner presented the Republican position on raising the debt ceiling as:

• a dollar-for-dollar deal; that is, raising the debt ceiling to match corresponding spending cuts

• make the majority of the budget cuts in the first two years

• introduce and enforce spending caps on entitlements

• a Balanced Budget Amendment

• no tax increases

In 2011, the Democratic positions on raising the debt ceiling included:

• a clean (unconditional) increase in the – e.g., debt ceiling, with no spending cuts attached

• spending cuts combined with tax increases on some categories of taxpayers, to reduce deficits

• a large debt-ceiling increase, to support borrowing into 2013

• opposition to any major cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid

Some Tea Party Caucus and other Republicans, however, (including, but not limited to, Senators Jim DeMint, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee, and Representatives Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, and Allen West) expressed skepticism about raising the debt ceiling, even suggesting the consequences of default had been exaggerated. (An easy excuse, to placate the burgeoning MAGA base.)

Bodhi asks readers to note that, in the outline above, the debt ceiling was raised almost three times as often by Republican administrations as by Democrats. In spite of Tea Party Republicans voicing opposition to what they felt to be frivolities – e.g., Social Security and Medicare – their thinly-veiled approval of raising the debt ceiling recognizes the clear need to meet the country's already-established debts.

Ekos and the Maga-ites

I'm a long-time fan of all incarnations of Star Trek. Yesterday, I again enjoyed one of the best episodes of the original series. Patterns of Force depicted the harm that can be done to otherwise unsuspecting populations by demagogic, malignant leaders.

The ruling party of the planet Ekos, the villains of the episode, couldn't hold a candle to today's MAGA-ites. During only one scene of their Rules-related brouhaha, the 118^th's aspiring autocrats provided for the separate consideration of seven bills, with the seven being allowed one hour of debate.

It should come as no surprise that the seven completely lack compassion. The bills, and their possibly quite destructive effects, are summarized below.

1. A bill to rescind certain balances made available to the IRS

2. A bill to authorize the Secretary of Homeland Security to suspend the
   entry of aliens, and for other purposes

3. A bill to prohibit the Secretary of Energy from sending petroleum products
   from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to China, and for other purposes

4. A bill to amend the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act to direct
   district attorney and prosecutors offices to report to the Attorney General
   and for other purposes

5. A bill to require the national instant criminal background check system to
   notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the relevant State
   and local law enforcement agencies whenever the information available to
   the system indicates that a person illegally or unlawfully in the United
   States may be attempting to receive a firearm

6. A bill to prohibit taxpayer funded abortions

7. A bill to amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit a health care
   practitioner from failing to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of
   a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion

The blatant coldness and lack of humility of these points can be explained by one glance at the MAGA mind-set that produced them.

1. A bill to rescind certain balances made available to the IRS, in order possibly to prevent the IRS from being adequately staffed, thereby in turn protecting uber-wealthy tax cheats like D. J. Trump

2. A bill to authorize the Secretary of Homeland Security to suspend the
   entry of aliens, and for other purposes, in order to re-institute the Trump Admin's Muslim ban

3. A bill to prohibit the Secretary of Energy from sending petroleum products
   from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to China, and for other purposes, the phrase other purposes, here and elsewhere, making Bodhi very nervous because of its ubiquity

4. A bill to amend the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act to direct
   district attorney and prosecutors offices to report to the Attorney General
   and for other purposes, in this case other purposes being a possible Gestapo-like trend toward reporting everyone and everything to every authority

5. A bill to require the national instant criminal background check system to
   notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the relevant State
   and local law enforcement agencies whenever the information available to
   the system indicates that a person illegally or unlawfully in the United
   States may be attempting to receive a firearm; works as long as the info re: legally or unlawfully is accurate

6. A bill to prohibit taxpayer funded abortions, one assumes even if such would cost the life of the mother

7. A bill to amend Title 18, United States Code, to prohibit a health care
   practitioner from failing to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of
   a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion; by codifying under 18 USC, MAGA et al categorize such actions as by definition not only criminal but also a felony punishable by multiple years in a Federal prison, in section 1531 

   Forewarned is fore-armed, folks; be prepared for much more of this hypocrisy ...
   

Burning Down the House

In an audacious reworking of a cliché, a Republican member of the House of Representatives recently claimed that Freedom Caucus members' plan to rewrite the Rules of the House was intended simply to put things back the way they belonged. The FC acolyte claimed further that it was Nancy Pelosi who'd butchered regs, by radically reworking the structure under which the People's House must operate. Hard to imagine a more blatant misrepresentation; a pot calling a kettle black is not even close.

Far-right Republicans have a ravenous appetite for dragging those who disagree with them through the mud. That's the reason for the examination of House rules that is this blog.

 

House Rules and How They Evolve

We'll begin with the Rules established for the 109^th Congress, and continue forward chronologically to today. We'll start with a quick first lesson.

Numbering Congresses

Congresses and their Rules are numbered, not by anything done by the Senate (whose rules are nearly static, changing little from Congress to Congress), but rather by the number of times there'd been an incoming House of Representatives. Since that occurs every two years, some simple arithmetic will orient us. 

2005 (the year of the 109^th Congress) 

minus 1787 (the year of the first Congress) = 218

218 divided by 2 = 109

That's where we'll begin our examination.

Another easy-to-grasp point: the structure of the presentation of the Rules varies little from Congress to Congress. We've looked at all Congresses starting with the 109^th, and the Tables of Contents of each of their compilations of Rules are quite similar. As interesting is the fact that several Congresses largely adopted the Rules of their predecessor – e.g. the 112^th doing so with the rules of the 111^th. As a matter of fact, let the 112^th speak for itself: 

H. Res. 5

In the House of Representatives, U. S., January 5, 2011.

Resolved, That the Rules of the House of Representatives of the One Hundred Eleventh Congress, including applicable provisions of law or  concurrent resolution that constituted rules of the House at the end of the One Hundred Eleventh Congress, are adopted as the Rules of the House of Representatives of the One Hundred Twelfth Congress, with amendments to the standing rules

Other than font face, emphasis, and size, the citation above is completely a copy of the records of the 112^th Congress. We'll point out later how amendments like those just mentioned fit into the flowchart. But remember that, in a nutshell, whatever the number of the Congress in question, a Congress adopts, with adjustments, the rules of the immediately preceding Congress – with, for instance, the 117^th working with the rules package of the 116^th.

That's part of what makes the 118^th Congress an outlier, to say the least. This year, Republicans in the House are giddy, exuberant over taking control of that chamber. These same Republicans intend to use a combination of machete and sledge-hammer on the Rules. Their new Rules Committee has announced a summary of proposed changes. The first thing that jumped out at us? Limitations on passing increases to Federal income taxes: 

A bill or joint resolution, amendment, or conference report carrying a Federal  income tax rate increase may not be considered as passed or agreed to unless so determined by a vote of not less than three-fifths of the Members voting, a quorum (that is, the number of officers or members of a body that when assembled is legally able to transact business) being present.

Again, font characteristics are the only detail in this excerpt that do not originate with the House.

To be more complete, in the House of Representatives, a quorum can be almost whatever the leadership of the House determines it to be. The Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School cites Article 1 Section 5 Clause 1 of our Constitution, and then elaborates:

For many years the view prevailed in the House of Representatives that it was necessary for a majority of the members to vote on any proposition submitted to the House in order to satisfy the constitutional requirement for a quorum. It was a common practice for the opposition to break a quorum by refusing to vote. This was changed in 1890, by a ruling made by Speaker Reed and later embodied in Rule XV of the House, that members present in the chamber but not voting would be counted in determining the presence of a quorum. The Supreme Court upheld this rule in United States v. Ballin, saying that the capacity of the House to transact business is “created by the mere presence of a majority,” and that since the Constitution does not prescribe any method for determining the presence of such majority “it is therefore within the competency of the House to prescribe any method which shall be reasonably certain to ascertain the fact.”

Note that the last time a super-majority was called for in the House was when that body expelled James Traficant in 2002.

Any evaluation of rules changes should be able to incorporate referernces to members of the new Rules Committee. But, as of 2:45 PM EST Monday, Jan. 9, 2023, no list of members of this Committee was available. Nonetheless, actions promoted by, and voted in by, members of this Committee could endanger, if not gut, valuable programs.

We'll examine every such possibility in subsequent posts.