Bills Introduced – 1-31-23

Yesterday, with both the House and Senate in session, there were 109 bills introduced. One of those bills will receive additional attention in this blog:

S 157 A bill to prevent the misuse of drones, and for other purposes. Grassley, Chuck [Sen.-R-IA]

Mention in Passing

There are three House Resolutions that I would like to mention in passing:

H Res 76 Removing a certain Member from a certain standing committee of the House. Miller, Max L. [Rep.-R-OH-7] 

H Res 79 Electing Members to certain standing committees of the House of Representatives. Lieu, Ted [Rep.-D-CA-36]

H Res 80 Electing Members to certain standing committees of the House of Representatives. Scalise, Steve [Rep.-R-LA-1]

H Res 79 and H Res 80 elected Democrats and Republicans respectively to a variety of House Committees. I have not seen the list yet, but H Res 79 included adding Rep Omar (D,MN) to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. H Res 76 is the promised Republican response to remove her from that Committee due to her antisemitic comments. News reports (including here) have the House considering H Res 76 today. It is not clear at this point if there will be enough votes in the House to remove Omar from that Committee assignment.

The vote on H Res 76 will be the first measure (certainly not the last) of how much control Rep McCarthy (R,CA) has as Speaker. Failure to pass this resolution will signal that moderate Republicans are not afraid of opposing McCarthy, or his more conservative ‘supporters’. Passage of the resolution will show that the conservative wing of the House Republicans is going to have substantial control of the legislative agenda in the 118^th Congress.