Frank Gaffney pointed out on his show yesterday that every major country in the Americas is now in the hands of the Left – Canada, the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, and Chile. That’s really disturbing when you consider how authoritarian leftist governments become. An island in this sea of misery is the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in the United States which just elected a new Speaker and passed a rules package that will appeal to anyone concerned about the advance of the authoritarian Left in this country.
The full text of the rule package isn’t posted yet on Congress.gov, so what I’m about to tell you is from the House Rules Committee version 3 dated January 6th. (text – analysis). Even if some of the details of my summation are not correct, the point will remain the same – the Republican House is standing strongly against misrule by the authoritarian Left.
The first thing that caught my eye in the rules package is the institution of CUTGO – proposals to increase spending in one area must contain equal or greater offsets to spending in other areas. Put that together with the new rule a 60 percent majority is required in the House to pass tax increases, and you’ve got a start on getting government spending back under control. The Left always wants to tax and spend. Half their mischief would go away if government were forced to live within its means like the rest of us. I also like that this restores the Holman Rule that allows members to offer amendments to reduce the salary of specific abusive federal bureaucrats and to cut specific bloated government programs. I’d start with no more paycheck for DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas who is single-handedly dismantling the nation’s immigration laws.
Other provisions in the package I like include allowing the public to bring ethics complaints directly against House members, and limiting bills to a single subject. The latter will make it much easier for members and the public to follow proposed legislation. Hopefully, this means no more secret deals stuffed into giant bills passed in the middle of the night when nobody knows what’s in them. What Pelosi said during Obamacare – ‘we have to pass it so you can see what’s in it’ – became standard operating procedure under the Democrats, making a mockery of representative government.
Other ideas I’ve seen floating around I hope made it into the final rules:
- Requiring the text of legislation to be made available at least 72 hours prior to a vote in the House
- Ending proxy voting in the House and remote proceedings in committees
- No more automatic suspensions of the debt ceiling when a budget resolution is adopted. A separate vote to raise the debt ceiling would be required.
- No more prohibitions against gender-specific language such as “mother” or “father” on the House floor or in committee. That’s a deserved poke in the eye to the Woke Left.
Best of all are the investigations. One will look into the origins of COVID, the government’s involvement in gain-of-function research, COVID vaccines and vaccine mandates. Others will take up the weaponization of government agencies against the people. The Justice Department will be investigated for going after ordinary parents as ‘domestic terrorists’ for speaking their minds against leftist policies at school board meetings. The FBI and other federal agencies will be investigated for their roles in censoring truthful information about COVID and election fraud. There will also be a Select Committee established to look into the threat the Chinese Communist Party poses to the country – it’s about time. I also hope the investigation into Hunter Biden and the Biden crime family’s foreign business dealings made the final cut. I will be following all these investigations very closely.
Finally, I hope somewhere in all this is the restoration of regular order, that is, a return to actual separate appropriations bills with committee hearings – not just the giant take-it-or-leave-it omnibus budget packages we’ve seen under the Democrats in recent years. Thousand page monstrosities loaded up with all sorts of leftist spending priorities that members can’t possibly read before they vote.
The battle has been joined. May the House Republicans summon the courage to stick to their principles in the face of the onslaught from the authoritarian Left that is coming. Democrat operative David Brock has formed a $5 million ‘SWAT team’ to deflect House Republican investigations of the administration. That’s in addition to another multimillion-dollar ‘war room’ set up by other leftist organizers for the same purpose. Where do they get all this money? Big money versus sound principles and representative government – I know what side I’m on. Do you?
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