Last Friday, the House passed a resolution approving its internal rules for the 119th Congress along party lines. The resolution largely reinstates the House rules in place in the 118th Congress, but includes some amendments and new orders. The new rules outlined below will dictate procedure and operations in the House for the next two years.
Changes to Standing Rules
The resolution reserves bill numbers H.R. 1 through H.R. 10 for the speaker and H.R. 11 through H.R. 20 for the minority leader.
The threshold to trigger a vote to oust the Speaker of the House has been increased from one to 9 members. The motion also has to be made by a member of the majority party, meaning Democrats aren’t able to trigger such a vote this congress.
House committees are now able to adopt a rule or motion permitting its members to vote electronically, as long as they comply with regulations issued by the Rules and House Administration committees for electronic voting.
The resolution renames the House Oversight and Accountability Committee as the Oversight and Government Reform Committee and removes the “the” from the House Education and the Workforce Committee.
References to the House Diversity and Inclusion Office have been removed. The office was dissolved in last March’s continuing resolution, which defunded it and transferred its to the House’s Chief Administrative Officer.
The rules no longer prohibit appropriations bills from increasing the funding levels for an unauthorized spending item during the first session of that Congress.
Former House Members are no longer permitted to use the House Gym if they are registered lobbyists.
Separate Orders
The resolution continues the “Holman rule,” allowing members to offer amendments to appropriations bills that reduce funding for specific federal programs or cut the salaries of specified employees.
Members can continue to raise a point of order against measures that would increase mandatory spending by $2.5 billion or more in any of the four consecutive 10-year periods after the first 10-year window generally used to assess a measure’s budget effects. The provision would apply to committee-reported bills, amendments to those bills, and conference reports.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) will still be required to review the inflationary effects of legislation that’s determined to change mandatory spending in any year over a 10-year window that’s equal to or greater than 0.25% of GDP. The same rule will apply to legislation affecting the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund that covers Medicare Part A or the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance Trust Fund (OASDI) for Social Security.
The resolution will continue to prohibit rules issued by the Rules Committee from waiving points of order against floor amendments that violate germaneness rules, which require amendments to be relevant to the legislation they would modify. If a rule contains such a waiver, and a point of order is raised, the presiding officer would put the question of consideration before the chamber for up to 20 minutes of debate.
The resolution continues to block the House from implementing H. Res. 1096 from the 117th Congress, which would allow individual member offices to negotiate collective bargaining agreements.
The resolution directs the House Administration Committee, the House clerk, the Chief Administrative Officer, and other officials to integrate AI technologies into House operations. The efforts would need incorporate appropriate guardrails and principles outlined by House Information Technology Policy (HITPOL) 8, the AI policy framework the House Administration panel approved in August. It also requires the House to explore the uses of AI to streamline administrative processes and enhance decision-making capabilities for House staff, and to explore AI tools that support the drafting, analysis, and comparison of legislative texts.
The also continues to require standing committees to hold a “Member Day” hearing during the first session to allow representatives to testify on proposed legislation under their jurisdiction.
The resolution extends the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party for the 119th Congress. It also sets a deadline for the committee to submit final reports to relevant House standing committees to December 31, 2026.
Orders of Business
The resolution provides for closed-rule consideration of 12 draft measures at the beginning of the new Congress. These bills would:
Require participation in women’s athletic programs in schools under Title IX to be based solely on an individual’s sex assigned at birth.
Require the Homeland Security Department to detain non-US citizens arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.
Make noncitizens who commit sex offenses, domestic violence, and related crimes inadmissible to, and deportable from, the US.
Make the assault of a law enforcement officer a deportable offense.
Block federal funding for “sanctuary cities” that don’t comply with the enforcement of immigration laws to provide benefits to noncitizens unlawfully present in the US.
Impose new criminal penalties on drivers who intentionally flee from US Border Patrol agents or other law enforcement officers
Require healthcare providers to provide necessary medical care to a child who survives an abortion attempt.
Impose sanctions on individuals involved in International Criminal Court prosecutions against US nationals or citizens of US allies that haven’t consented to ICC jurisdictions.
Amend the US tax code to reduce double taxation for individuals and businesses in both the US and Taiwan.
Require voters to provide proof of US citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections.
Permanently classify fentanyl-related substances as Schedule I drugs under the Controlled Substances Act.
Prohibit a federal moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”
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