House Considered Spending Bills – 9-27-23

Yesterday, the House continued their consideration of amendments for the three spending bill that they began consideration of on Tuesday, including HR 4365 (DOD spending), HR 4367 (DHS spending) and HR 4368 (ARD spending). The House considered 101 amendments and passed 60. None of the amendments were of specific interest here. However…

$1 Dollar Salary

One of the little noted additions made to the House Rules earlier this year was the reinstatement of the Holman Rule. This allows for amendments to spending bills that would reduce the salary of specific government employees to $1, effectively (hopefully according to author of the amendment) firing the employee without having to go through the impeachment process. This process was successfully used six times yesterday:

H.Amdt.331 (HR 4368) – Boebert (R,CO) – USDA Deputy Undersecretary Stacy Dean,

H.Amdt.371 (HR 4365) – Green (R,GA) – DOD Secretary Lloyd James Austin III,

H.Amdt.381 (HR 4365) – Roy (R,TX) – DOD Director of Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Cyrus Salazar,

H.Amdt.399 (HR 4367) – Tenney (R,NY) - DHS Secretary Mayorkas,

H.Amdt.408 (HR 4367) – Boebert – USCIS Director Ur M. Jaddou, and

H.Amdt.415 (HR 4367) – Greene – DHS Secretary Mayorkas,

Commentary

All of these amendments were approved by voice votes with no attempt made to force a roll call vote. This is one of the problems with marathon legislative session (exacerbated in this case by considering multiple bills), controversial amendments can slip through the process. The Republican managers had little incentive to raise objection to these amendments, they have to be careful about how much they antagonize the radical fringe as every vote counts. And, of course, no one expects these amendments to survive the inevitable conference committee.