Legislative Housekeeping, 118th Congress – 2-9-25

This week the GPO printed the text of one of the last two bills that I am tracking from the 118th Congress:

S 5468, the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2024

The GPO is continuing to have problems keeping up with the number of bills being introduced in the 119^th Congress. There have been 1,864 bills introduced so far this session. I am currently tracking 30 of those bills. Only six of those bills have had the text printed (3 are disapproval resolutions that are extremely short). The earliest date of the bills without text is January 17^th. Interestingly, it seems that the backlog is worse in the House introduced bills than in those from the Senate, the oldest un-texted bill in the Senate that I am following is January 25^th.

1-6-23 – 4 Votes – Finally a Speaker –

Tonight, in a late fourth vote, the House elected Kevin McCarthy the Speaker of the House, by a (finally) party-line vote of 216 to 212.

Two votes during the afternoon session showed that the Republican’s ‘Freedom Caucus’ had finally reached agreements with McCarthy, giving him 214 of the 218 votes necessary for a majority. The six ‘Never-Kevin’ Republicans continued to vote for Jordan. The McCarthy team decided that it was time for more backroom discussions, so the House adjourned until 10:00 pm.

The vote at 10:00 that McCarthy vowed that he would win (with the returning votes of two representative-elects that were absent from Washington earlier in the day). While two of the ‘Never-Kevin’ faction {Boebert (R,CO) and Getz (R,FL} changed their vote to ‘Present’, the remaining four continued to vote for Jordan and Biggs. This left McCarthy one vote shy of the needed 217 votes (50% plus 1 of the 432 votes cast for someone) to become Speaker.

Watching on CSPAN, there were tense words exchanged on the floor during that vote between McCarthy and Getz.

After the vote the Republicans moved to adjourn until Monday at noon and a recorded vote was demanded. At about the time that 15-minute time limit on that vote should have ended (with the unofficial electronic scoreboard showing 216 votes for adjournment and 212 against, another quick round of conversations could be seen on the floor in the area around McCarthy. McCarthy moved to the front of the House and filled out a red card changing the his recorded vote from ‘Yeah’ to ‘Nay’. A large number of other Republicans quickly joined him in changing their votes.

Another (and ultimately final) vote for Speaker was started at 11:45. This time, all of the ‘Never-Kevin’ Republicans voted ‘Present’ changing the total vote to 428, making the 216 votes for McCarthy a majority of the votes cast for a person.

1-5-22 - 5 Votes – Still No Speaker

The fiasco on Capitol Hill continued today with five additional votes. The Democrats remain steadfast at 212 votes for Rep-elect Jefferies, but at this point they have nothing to win or lose. McCarthy’s vote total dropped by one during the day from 201 to 200. According to reporting by Olivia Beavers of Politico, Rep-elect Buck (R,CO) returned to Colorado today for a "planned non-emergency medical procedure,".

Here are the vote totals from the Clerk of the House web site:

	Jefferies	McCarthy	Donalds	Others	Present
Roll Call #9	212	201	19	1	1
Roll Call #10	212	201	17	3	1
Roll Call #11	212	200	17	3	1
Roll Call #12	212	200	13	7	1
Roll Call #13	212	200	12	8	1

The “Others” column includes votes for Donald Trump and Kevin Hern.

The news all day (see my Short Takes post later tonight) had been about deals between McCarthy and some of the holdout Republicans, but none of those deals were reflected in any of today’s votes. The House will resume deliberations tomorrow at noon.

1-4-23 – 3 More Votes – Still No Speaker

Yesterday, the fiasco in the House of Representatives continued. Three additional votes for the Speaker of the House were held, and again no one achieved a majority vote.

	McCarthy	Jefferies	Donald	Present
Roll Call #5	201	212	20	1
Roll Call #6	201	212	20	1
Roll Call #7	201	212	20	1

Yesterday, Member-elect Donald (R,FL) was the stand-in candidate for the twenty rebellious Republicans instead of Biggs and Jordan from Tuesday. This name-changing of candidates from the rR’s continues to show that this is not a serious attempt to substitute a candidate that has an actual chance at winning the post. What is not yet clear, however, is if the rR’s want to stop McCarthy from being Speaker, or just want to ensure their power in the 118^th Congress.

If McCarthy ultimately becomes Speaker by making further concessions to the rR’s, they will have the ability to influence the content of every piece of legislation that comes to the floor of the House. And they have made it clear that they have no desire to compromise their principles to craft legislation that could be passed in the Senate or signed by the President.

Representative-elect Jordan made this clear in his floor speech (pg H5) on Tuesday:

“So we need to pass legislation that address all that [border, spending, ‘woke’ military, ‘weaponized’ government, government debt, etc]. And I hope my Democratic colleagues will join me, I really do. But I have my doubts; and if they don’t, and if CHUCK SCHUMER says no, we are not going to take up that legislation that we pass, and if Joe Biden won’t sign it, so be it. They will have to answer to the people in 2024.”

The interesting possibility that is beginning to be seriously discussed is McCarthy {or some fantasy candidate; the name of retired-Representative Upton (R,MI) has been frequently mentioned} working with the Democratic leadership to elect a Speaker. The deal that would allow that (probably by having enough Democrats vote ‘Present’ to allow an election by less than 218 votes) would cancel out the power of the rR’s and make the road clear for a more middle-of-the-road 118^th that could possibly pass significant legislation. It would also cause the rR’s to go all out in a campaign of legislative obstruction and delay for the next two years and to mount serious primary challenges against the entire Republican leadership in 2024.

1-3-22 – 3 Votes – No Speaker

Today, the 118^th Congress conducted their first day of business. The Senate swore in new members, no problems. The House was a different story. After conducting a successful roll call to establish that all 434 representative-elects were present, the House failed at their first real piece of business, electing a Speaker. Three attempts were made to vote for a Speaker and three times the Representative-elect McCarthy (R,CA) failed to reach the necessary 218 votes, even though there are 222 Republicans in the 118^th Congress.

	McCarthy	Jefferies	Others
Roll Call #2	203	212	19
Roll Call #3	203	212	19
Roll Call #4	202	212	20

On the first vote (Roll Call #2) the ‘Others’ category included the nominated Biggs (R,AZ) and four ‘write-in’ votes. On the two subsequent votes Jordan (R,OH) was the third nominee and received all of the ‘other votes’. After the third leadership vote, the House adjourned until 12:00 pm tomorrow. The House will continue voting until they elect the Speaker. No other business will be able to be conducted until the Speaker is elected.

A new version of the draft resolution amending the current House Rules has been published on the House Rules Committee website. The earlier version had been posted on January 1^st and the latest version was posted today. I cannot find any significant differences, but I do not have 

1st Vote in 118th Congress

The first roll-call vote of the 118th Congress is now complete. As expected, the vote for Speaker of the House ended with Rep McCarthy (R,CA) did not reach the 218 votes (203 with 19 Republicans votes for someone else) needed to become the Speaker {in fact he ended up behind Rep Jefferies (D,NY) in the vote (212), but Jefferies did not reach the 218 total either}. A second vote is expected to begin shortly.

The House Rules Committee site has a copy of the current (as of January 1^st) proposed House Rules for the 118^th Congress. I would expect that further changes could be made to that text to get additional votes for McCarthy. Or, if the final vote goes to someone else, a completely different set of Rules could be considered.

One interesting provision of the draft rules is to add ‘Cybersecurity’ to the legislative jurisdiction of the House Homeland Security Committee under Rule X, clause (1)(j)(3) under the House Rules. This addition would only specifically apply to “Functions of the Department of Homeland Security”. The word ‘cybersecurity’ does not appear any where else in the House Rules.