House Speaker Nancy Pelosi raises a gavel during a session on January 3
The House of Representatives on Monday approved a set of rules for the new session of Congress that dilute minority voting initiatives, pass budget rules and gender-neutral terms that help progressive legislation.
The package in the new Congress ended by a vote of 217-206. The rules are set by the majority leadership and must be passed at the beginning of each session of Congress.
The new rules are accused of strengthening Congressional oversight and protecting whistleblowers, and specifically defining rules under which any current and former White House employees can be subpoenaed. It has also updated proxy voting, which allows members of Congress to designate an mp to vote remotely on their behalf during an outbreak. Many Republicans oppose the remote voting rule and have raised objections in meetings, and some Republican lawmakers have chosen to use it.
The new package also helped get the gender-neutrality bill passed. According to Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, and James McGovern, the chairman of the rules committee, the rules include “changing the pronouns and family relationship terms in the House rules to gender-neutral terms to respect all gender identities.”
In a specific change, the new rule would eliminate the gender pronoun “he or she herself” in English and use the gender-neutral “Themself” and change “Chairman” to “Chair.” The rules have also changed the family language to make them gender-neutral, for example, changing “uncle” and “aunt” to “brother and sister of parents”, “husband” and “wife” to “spouse”, and “son” and “daughter” to “child”.
Democrats said the rule changes were intended to reflect the growing diversity of Congress, but Republicans called the move absurd.
“They are trying to limit our First Amendment rights,” minority leader James McCarthy said on Fox News. “You can no longer say ‘father, mother, son, daughter. ‘”
The changes affect the language in house rules, but do not apply to members’ own language or legislative proposals.
Notably, the new rules also include changes to house procedures, including a procedural vote motion to help the minority, which can be used by minority parties in the final amendment to change legislation before it passes. The rules approved Monday will prevent procedural votes from changing bills on the floor immediately before they are approved. Under the changes, the minority can only use the motion to send bills to committee.
Republicans used motions effectively in the last session, shepherding parts of legislation to a vote in the House and, occasionally, rules approved by Republicans through Democratic-controlled institutions. Before a vote to expand background checks for nearly all gun sales, for example, 26 Democrats supported a Republican motion that added a requirement to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement when illegal immigrants try to buy guns. The relevant provisions were also adopted.
The package also changes the long-standing pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) rules, which require that legislation that increases the deficit must be offset. Progressives have tried to repeal this provision so that they can push legislation that cannot be directly offset, such as universal health care or a green New Deal. According to a senior Democratic aide, moderate Democrats oppose and advocate specific exemptions rather than ending pay-as-you-go altogether.
After a compromise, the chairman of the budget committee declared that bills to deal with the epidemic or seek to deal with climate change would be cost-free, exempting them from the PAY-as-you-go rules. The bill was passed on January 4th. Progressives and moderates in the Democrats see this as a victory.
In addition, the bill requires the ethics committee to come up with a proposed rule within a year that would target members of Congress for sharing “distorted or modified images, audio or video” through official accounts on social media.
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