New House Rules for the 112th
The new House Republican majority will force lawmakers to vote when they want to raise the nation's debt ceiling, publish committee attendance records, ban former members from lobbying in the House gym and require new mandatory spending to be offset by cuts to other programs.
Via Politico: GOP unveils strict new House rules
The new House Republican majority will force lawmakers to vote when they want to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, publish committee attendance records, ban former members from lobbying in the House gym and require new mandatory spending to be offset by cuts to other programs.
These proposals, which are subject to amendment, will not be official until the new House is sworn in in January. It should be noted that rules changes for a new Congress, especially when there is a change in partisan control, are quite normal.
The most difficult to implement will be the one about spending and cuts:
On the spending front, Republicans plan to implement a series of rules called CUT/GO — a conservative answer to the PAY/GO rules instituted by Democrats. Under CUT/GO, increases in mandatory spending would have to be offset by spending cuts in other programs. Mandatory spending refers to the autopilot portion of the budget covering Social Security, Medicare and other programs designed to make payouts based on eligibility criteria rather than a set dollar figure each year.
Under CUT/GO, offsets could not be achieved by raising taxes, according to the summary.
More power to them on this subject, but it is one of those rules that tends to be more gimmick than anything else. At least, that’s my position until such a time as the House proves otherwise.
@ Steven
Ok I’m of the same opinion, hold their feet to the fire as we say here in Texas.
Sounds like a good start, we should build some terminator like Androids to enforce them>>>>>
>”Under CUT/GO, offsets could not be achieved by raising taxes, according to the summary.”
Gotta love them Republicans. Instead of facing the reality that there is no balancing the budget w/o raising taxes they will give this instead:
“Tax cuts for the rich! Social Security cuts for the rest of us.”
As drafted, “CUTGO” is impossible for the GOP to implement without cutting Defense Spending, Veteran’s Benefits and/or Medicare. How they think they can manage to do that without losing their base is beyond me.
@Alex:
Indeed. This is why I consider it a gimmick, as the rule as described is a lot more difficult to implement than it sounds.
these types of things are always gimmicks… PayGo was a gimmick too. They just declared everything as “emergency” spending and therefore waive the requirement. I would assume a similar thing to occur here.
Realistically I am interested to see if the house actually passes its first budget with just some kind of cuts at all even if very modest. And then see if the dems in the senate will go along with even the most modest reductions in spending. That would be start.
PAYGO would have been a good enough rule had it been followed in the last Congress. I don’t really see any point of CUTGO; instead it makes more sense to me to just enforce PAYGO.