After 15 ballots, the 118th Congress elected Republican Kevin McCarthy of California as House Speaker on January 6, setting in motion a series of changes to the House Rules — concessions that McCarthy agreed to in order to secure the Speaker’s chair.
Starting with 20 House Freedom Caucus members who opposed McCarthy’s bid, successive Speaker’s votes had whittled the opponents down to 6, as various major agreements were made to update House Rules, committee makeup, and possible legislation to give Freedom Caucus members more input in exchange for support for McCarthy’s bid.
Many of the Rules changes reverse previous rulings by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, such as proxy voting and allowing 72 hours to consider legislation, no masks/fines, and opening the House chambers again to the public.
On January 9 in a partisan vote (220 to 213), the House approved the Rules as agreed upon, including a 1-member “vacate the chair” provision, which allows any one Representative to move to replace the Speaker (a majority vote is required to accomplish the task).
Another major rule change “replaces current ‘pay-as-you-go’ requirements to reduce federal spending with ‘cut-as-you-go’ requirements” through a provision to cap spending at 2022 levels that “prohibits consideration of a bill, joint resolution, conference report, or amendment that has the net effect of increasing mandatory spending within a five-year or ten-year budget window.”
The negotiated rules package includes an order of business providing for “consideration of a bill to provide for the development of a plan to increase oil and gas production under oil and gas leases of Federal lands.”
In addition, the rules package provides for bills:
- to rescind certain balances made available to the Internal Revenue Service
- to authorize the Secretary of Homeland Security to suspend the entry of aliens
- to prohibit the Secretary of Energy from sending petroleum products from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to China
- to amend the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act to direct district attorney and prosecutors offices to report to the Attorney General
- 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
- to prohibit taxpayer funded abortions
- 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.