House Conservatives Who've Complained About Process Have Zero Credibility After This Week's Stunt

The House Went 15 Rounds of Votes for Speaker for Conservatives to Depart from Regular Order, Not the Speaker

Note: Posts going forward are likely to be either shorter than I would like or sparse, as I’ve been slammed lately. That isn’t likely to let up anytime in the near future, except holidays. Although I’m recovering from COVID-19, life has been pretty good. I hope the same for you, dear reader.

Let’s go back to April. I took issue with the willingness of House conservatives, specifically the House Freedom Caucus, to violate the rules of the chamber to bring the Limit, Save, Grow Act to the floor for a vote after making a huge deal about process issues during the floor battle for the Speakership in January. It’s not the only time this has happened this year, but it was, to my knowledge, the first. Given how passionate many House Freedom Caucus members were about process only to throw process out the window, I found the violation of the rules to be completely hypocritical, not to mention wrong. (Don’t mistake me here. Process is an issue. It will always be an issue unless members are willing to hold leadership accountable.)

One of the frequent things we’ve heard all year is that the House needs to return to regular order. It’s an inside baseball thing that the vast majority of Americans don’t understand, nor would they probably care if they did get it. What we mean by regular order is a decentralized process for legislation that includes subcommittee and committee hearings, subcommittee and/or committee markup with opportunities for amendment of the legislation, and a floor process that includes additional opportunities for amendment and various procedural motions allowed under the rules.

When it comes to appropriations bills, regular order is all the things I mentioned above, plus the timetable from Sec. 300 of the Budget Act, which is in statute at 2 U.S.C. §631. The problem is that there’s no stick for when the White House or Congress doesn’t perform a specified action by the required date. For our purposes, the relevant dates for this post are:

• May 15: When the House may begin to consider appropriations bills

• June 10: This is when the House Appropriations Committee is required to report the last of the annual appropriations bills

• June 30: When the House is supposed to complete the last of the annual appropriations bills

• October 1: The beginning of a new fiscal year

Now, nearly every date of this timetable is routinely ignored for political expediency. Congress has developed a proclivity for governing by crisis on major policy matters like the debt limit and appropriations and extensions of various programs like the Farm Bill and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Leadership of both chambers basically waits until a must-pass bill has to be passed to force it through. Appropriations bills have been particularly hard to get through before the end of each fiscal year, let alone by the specified dates in Sec. 300 of the Budget Act. Congressional leadership negotiates these last-minute must-pass bills and controls the process.

To be absolutely clear, this is a huge problem, and it’s one of the primary reasons that Congress is so broken. Budget and appropriations process reform is a priority. Everyone recognizes it, but nothing ever changes. One reason it never changes is that far too many members are comfortable with how things are.

The problem with the appropriations process for FY 2024 is that the House blew through the deadlines in Sec. 300 of the Budget Act. Like, by a lot. The first appropriations bill considered on the House floor came up on July 27, nearly a month after the deadline in Sec. 300 of the Budget. That bill was Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies (MilCon-VA). Now, another appropriations bill—Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies—was on the calendar that week, but it was pulled because the votes weren’t there. So, the House passed MilCon-VA, members left Washington, DC, and returned to their districts for the six-week August recess. Excluding pro forma days, which don’t matter, the House didn’t reconvene until September 12.

By the way, two appropriations bills—Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Related Agencies—Are. Still. Sitting In. Committee. If they do come out of committee, it won’t be until after FY 2024 begins.

Now that all the backstory and context of appropriations are out of the way, I can finally get to the point of this post. I’ll say this now. If I ever hear a member who pitched a fit during the floor fight over the Speakership in January talk about how the House needs to return to regular order, I will scream at the top of my lungs. Let me explain why.

On Wednesday, the House considered amendments to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for FY 2024, H.R. 4365. Among the many amendments filed were amendments that would have stripped funding for Ukraine. These amendments were led by members who, whether they realize it or not, have carried Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s water in Congress. That’s not the point, though. The anti-Ukraine amendments failed by large margins, including one that stripped $300 million in security assistance.

Let’s ignore the dates in Sec. 300 of the Budget Act for a moment because, with the exception of the dates, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act went through regular order. It was marked up in subcommittee, marked up by the full committee, and it had an amendment process on the floor. Some conservative members threatened to vote against the bill if the Ukraine funding wasn’t taken out. The House Rules Committee was forced to create a special rule to strip out the funding so the Department of Defense Appropriations Act could pass, and it passed on Thursday. (The rule is here.) Ukraine funding was put in another bill, the Ukraine Security Assistance and Oversight Supplemental Appropriations Act, H.R. 5692, which also passed. Overwhelmingly.

By the way, the Ukraine security assistance funding was authorized by the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY 2024, H.R. 2670, which passed the House on July 14. Only four Republicans voted against that bill. Now, I’ll concede that there was a side deal made that Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) would name the insane woman from my home state to the conference committee, despite the fact that she isn’t on the committee of jurisdiction. (House Armed Services is the committee of jurisdiction for NDAA.) Her sole purpose on that conference committee will be to strip Ukraine funding from the bill. She will fail. Still, my point remains. The funding was authorized by the House in NDAA. If the Putin Caucus felt so strongly about it, they could’ve voted against it. They didn’t.

At this point in my professional and personal life, I’m interested in consistency. Don’t say you want regular order and then take your ball and go home when your amendment is soundly defeated on the floor. I’m tired of this shit.