For the past two years, the House of Representatives has not functioned as it should. We’ve had proxy voting since the start of the pandemic, much of the Capitol has been closed off to the public for months at a time, and Democrats’ mismanagement of the House brought terrible changes to the way Congress does business.
Thankfully, Republicans immediately passed a rules package to restore integrity and commonsense to the House. The rules package, which governs how we do day-to-day business, restores and improves transparency in the legislative process, gives individual members more of a voice in the process, ensures more responsibility for how your tax dollars are spent, and gives us the tools we need to hold the Biden administration accountable for its poor leadership.
One of the most important changes we made is that the text of any bill must be made available at least 72 hours before the House can call a vote on that bill. Gone are the days of us being given several-thousand-page bills just a few hours before being forced to vote on them. We also changed the rules to make sure any bill coming to the Floor must follow single-subject and germaneness rules. This simply means a bill cannot be a bloated mixture of random items.
We also ended proxy voting in the House and remote proceedings in committees. Members of Congress are paid to show up to work and vote for their constituents, rather than Zoom into a meeting from home and ask someone else to vote for them.
Additionally, we changed several rules so we can begin chipping away at runaway government spending and move towards a balanced budget. For example, we passed a rule to allow us to pass amendments to reduce the salary of certain bureaucrats and cut spending to various government programs. We also passed a rule requiring a three-fifths majority vote in the House on any legislation that increases tax rates.
I’m proud to report the House is already functioning so much better than I’ve seen it function during my time in Washington. Just last week, we passed several pieces of meaningful legislation. We voted to strip the IRS of billions of dollars to prevent it from unleashing 87,000 new agents on families and small businesses, to protect our petroleum reserves from the Chinese Communist Party, to investigate federal agencies such as the FBI from targeting innocent Americans based on their religious or political views, to protect babies who survive an abortion attempt, and much more.
It’s about time the House functions properly and works for the American people instead of against them.
House Republicans have much more on our agenda for this Congress, and I look forward to sharing more updates with you as we continue doing the work to get America back on track.