Eyewitness To History

2023 selection of a speaker was historic

This year, 2023, the selection of a speaker was historic, but also clearly significant. Anyone paying attention could see from the first failed vote that big issues were at stake. Not since the 2008 federal budget effort has there been a budget process that followed regular order. A 1921 law requires the president to submit an annual budget to congress which is supposed to be completed by the end of the fiscal year on September 30. The Constitution requires any monies spent by congress to be specifically appropriated by a committee before it can be spent. This serves to keep a check on excessive spending by forcing a public accounting of the spending. That is, it serves as a check if the House follows regular order. When Barack Obama became president in 2009, Nancy Pelosi had already been Speaker of the House for the last two years of the Bush 43 presidency. It was during the years 2007-2009 that the budget process in the House was deliberately run off the rails. Using the threat of shutting the government down, a growing confrontation over the budget and over debt limit increases led to the breakdown. When the fiscal year deadline approached in 2007, Democrats cited the danger of a government shutdown to force acceptance of their budget demands. Being far better at using a looming shutdown as a tool to bring compliance, they went beyond the deadline to force continued funding of the government by a continuing resolution, which is a “temporary stopgap” measure to keep the government operating as usual without a regular order budget. The federal government has been funded using a series of continuing resolutions ever since. That’s correct. For more than fourteen years, there has been no regular order budget. Stopgap continuing resolution measures, often called omnibus spending bills, have funded government operations since then. Pressure to accept these has been especially effective prior to elections and just before Christmas. Any kind of military threat merits a speedy spending bill loaded with hundreds of non-military spending provisions. The most recent “omnibus” spending bill came just before Christmas in the lame duck congress. This one was for $1.7 trillion to cover a few months. It was loaded with every imaginable kind of spending. It was 4,400 pages long. Speaker Pelosi brought it out for reading a few hours before the vote and demanded it be passed so people could see what was in it. They did.

Weak Republican leadership from John Boehner and Paul Ryan left the budget process broken and under Pelosi’s effective control

The threat of government default on bonds comes anytime there is resistance to raising the debit limit. The debt limit is the corollary to increases in spending. It should serve as another way to prevent reckless spending, but it rarely does. Democrats have become so skilled at blaming government shutdowns on Republican reluctance to raise the debt limit that almost no one hears about them any more. Determination to spend more every year forces the debt limit higher and higher. We’re at $31 trillion in debt now. Think that’s enough? The next debt limit deadline comes in June. The longer this kind of fiscal irresponsibility continues, the more damage is done and the harder it is to return to anything like a reasonable budget process. Even with Republican majorities in the past, weak Republican leadership from John Boehner and Paul Ryan left the budget process broken and under Pelosi’s effective control. Because the power of the legislative branch comes from spending money, both sides covet the power to spend. Boehner and Ryan both went along with the spending and budgeting habits of their Democrat predecessors. They didn’t have the will or the fortitude to change it back to regular order, and everyone assumed that Kevin McCarthy didn’t have the will either. Having finally won the House again facing poor odds, every sign was that it would be another Republican leadership sellout of the people who put them there, with a continuation of business as usual. And then January 3 came along. As of this writing, the Republican majority is 223-212. That’s only six seats, and that is very slim. This slim Republican edge presented an opportunity to conservative Republicans in the House Freedom Caucus (HFC). Normally, there’s a meeting of the party caucuses before the first meeting of the house. In the caucuses the leading candidates for speaker sort themselves so that when the house meets, the selection of a speaker is a foregone conclusion. Then the majority that elected the speaker votes to pass a series of rules to govern house procedures. Having won, the speaker gets to set the legislative agenda and rules for the house. With only a six seat majority, there were enough members of the House Freedom Caucus, fifty or more, to have a major influence on the rules. This influence had to be brought to bear before a vote on a speaker. Once the speaker had been selected, he would have the clout and the votes to get his way.

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What were the demands? The news media and the Democrats howled and called such tactics embarrassing and chaotic

Although there are fifty some members of the Freedom Caucus, some had already been wooed by McCarthy and were prepared to support him for speaker. About 20, however, were not. These stalwarts decided to extract rules concessions before they would support him for speaker. Until they could be persuaded to vote for him for speaker, McCarthy would have little choice but to listen to them and consider their demands. What were the demands? The news media and the Democrats howled and called such tactics embarrassing and chaotic. One Republican called the Freedom caucus holdouts ‘terrorists.’ When I found the list of demands, my spirits soared. There was going to be a fight on principles, and good people who would stand their ground to make sure the good side won, at long last. The most important one was the first one. One of the HFC members said it well:

"For years, however, the House leadership of both parties has increasingly centralized decision-making power around fewer and fewer individuals — at the expense of deliberation and input by the body," they continued. "This results in massive, multi-subject bills that are unable to be amended or fully read, all driven by supposedly must-pass defense and appropriations measures. In the process, we've amassed trillions of dollars in debt, empowered administration bureaucrats who target citizens, and failed to carry out our basic duties to defend the American People."

This is what the legacy media and the Democrats tried to hide

Bingo. That is a two-sentence summary of what had prevailed in the House for the past fourteen years. But there was more. It’s a long list, but it’s what the fight was all about, and it’s glorious. This is what the legacy media and the Democrats tried to hide. From The American Spectator, December 1, 2022:

• Enact a “majority of the majority” rule that legislation passed in a Republican House should be supported by a majority of House Republicans to prevent leadership from cutting deals with Democrats if a bill is not supported by conservatives
• Restore independence of committees by electing committee chairs based on qualifications and effectiveness
• Diversify the Steering Committee so that all House Republicans can have input on committee assignments, which McCarthy has agreed to already
• Open the legislative process to allow for amendments. Members have not been allowed to vote on an amendment on the House floor since May 2016, and the Republican 115th Congress, under then-Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), broke the record for the most bills being considered without amendments
• Ensure fiscal responsibility by blocking consideration of any other bill until the House can pass an appropriations bill by August 1. If the House has not acted by September 10, then the Speaker should be prevented from recessing or adjourning until it has passed a spending bill
• End proxy voting
• Restoring the “Motion to Vacate the Chair’ so any member can offer a privileged motion to remove the Speaker
• Restore a requirement so that a print is made to show how legislation would change existing laws before a bill receives a vote on the floor
• Eliminate the ability automatically suspend the debt ceiling without a standalone vote when the House adopts a budget resolution
• Hold bureaucrats accountable by restoring the “Holman Rule” to allow House members to make targeted spending cuts in spending bills, which would even allow making targeted cuts of bureaucrats’ salaries, including Dr. Anthony Fauci
• End secret deals requiring bills to be made available to the public five full days ahead of a vote and require a two-thirds threshold House vote to waive this rule
• Ban earmarks to prevent taxpayer-dollar spending on lawmakers and lobbyist pet projects

Real Democratic Revolution

It was a real democratic revolution, and in the end the warriors got nearly everything. It was magnificent. Between January 3 and January 7 there were fourteen failed votes to elect McCarthy speaker, and each of the fourteen times meant that the stalwarts had held firm, refusing to give until more of their demands were met. At long last, someone had decided to address some of the most important issues in the federal government instead of sweeping them under the rug and grabbing the power for themselves and their lobbyist friends. They negotiated and fought and voted, then did it again. On some days there were multiple votes, but the sturdy ones held firm. When it was all over the victors had won a brilliant and important victory for the people of the country and for the country’s future. Some called it chaos and some called it infighting and some called it embarrassing, but it was none of those things. It was a battle for the right and for the country. It was a beautiful thing to see. May we always remember the courage and the names of those who stood in the gap for us all.