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January 8, 2023

Much has been made of the fact that it took 15 votes until Republican Kevin McCarthy finally secured the Speakership of the House. Powerline Blog has rounded up a series of the internet cartoons and memes about the long fight. With their salaries on the line, I never imagined the fight would continue much longer. It would appear that the extended debate may at last result in Congress more skillfully playing the role designed for it in the Constitution and a much-needed return to the regular order of business in the House.

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Many emphasized that the fight represented a disastrous split in the party whose hold on the House is but a rather thin majority. Others, like the priceless Babylon Bee, noted it was a very big deal that the House members actually showed up to work for four days. 

As usual, the Bee underlines a serious point. Too many of the members have not shown up in person to work, but have been phoning it in per Nancy Pelosi’s permission to do so.

But that’s not the worst thing about the Pelosi House: Increasingly the Congress has whiffed on its responsibilities to legislate — writing broad laws and leaving it to unelected bureaucrats to fill in the important blanks. On really important legislation like ObamaCare, members never even had an opportunity to read the Bill before voting on it. The level of mendacious doings on the Hill seemed to have reached new heights.

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So, unlike those who made fun of the heated debate which preceded the final McCarthy victory. I think it was healthy and overdue.

It’s too early as I write this to know all the promises and concessions. Perhaps later on Sunday or Monday we will know more. I have read that one of the concessions is that members would get 72 hours advance time to read bills before the vote is taken. With bills now thousands of pages long, that’s the least that should be done. No more the Pelosi garbage about having to pass a bill into law to know what is in it.

The BBC reports, “Mr. McCarthy promised to make bill-passing more like the good old days, with members of Congress outside of the top leadership having more say over how bills are proposed, amended and passed.” No more secret negotiating at the top and shoving it down the throats of members without even an opportunity to read, let alone debate it.

It appears more conservatives will be seated on the important House Rules Committee which means per the BBC “conservatives will be able to shape the kind of legislation the House produces before it fully takes shape — and nip undesired proposals in the bud.” He’s promised fiscal restraints (though he will have to negotiate with the opposition so despite this promise, we can’t be sanguine about the prospects for a much-reduced federal budget).

He promised to prioritize the problem of border security. For some reason he was forced to concede allowing an early vote on term limits, something rather ephemeral and meaningless in my eyes because it would require a Constitutional amendment.

The Washington Post reports that a PAC aligned with McCarthy (the Congressional Leadership fund) promised to  stay out of open House primaries for safe Republican seats.