I’m my own Grandpa
I’m my own Grandpa,
It sounds funny I know
But it really is so
I’m my own Grandpa
From the Country Song “I’m My Own Grandpa” written by Dwight Latham and Moe Jaffe
Have you ever heard the old country music song entitled “I’m My Own Grandpa”? It was written in 1947 by Dwight Latham and Moe Jaffe, reportedly based on a Mark Twain anecdote which described how a man could be his own Grandpa. If you read the lyrics, you find that a series of semi-plausible occurrences result in an absurd conclusion. This kind of reminds me of what is going on in our own US House of Representatives, most currently resulting in the removal of Representative Kevin McCarthy as Speaker. The reports about the machinations that have actually been going on for several months, often reference “House Rules”. I would imagine that taken individually, the various House Rules that come into play here make SOME sense. But when placed into action as a whole, they have resulted in an absurd and destructive outcome. To Wit:
• Following House Rules, apparently a single representative can bring a motion to remove the Speaker and get action on this motion within two days. And this is exactly what happened. Representative Matt Gaetz (D-Fla), apparently angered over what he considered to be an outrageous action by McCarthy over the weekend, filed the motion Monday and the vote was taken yesterday. What was the heinous crime that McCarthy was guilty of? He had the audacity to agree to a bipartisan vote to continue the operations of the US government.
• Following House Rules, up to the extraordinary actions of the weekend, a group of about ten representatives, representing less than two percent of the population of the country, successfully thwarted any action desired by the other 425 representatives to keep the government in business.
It is reported that there is great animosity between Gaetz and McCarthy relating to some personal slights last year. But apart from this, the goals of the dissidents have not been widely reported on. In this instance, they were enraged that the McCarthy would in any way commit the horrible crime of working with the Democrats to get a bill passed. But there has to be more to it than this, doesn’t there? And what are these “Rules” that everyone is talking about?
The authority for the House of Representatives to make rules for how they conduct their business is enshrined in the Constitution (Article 1, Section 5). Apparently the need for rules became evident very early on in our history. None less than Thomas Jefferson grappled with the need for rules and drafted a document laying them out in 1801 entitled “Jefferson’s Manual of Parliamentary Practice”. At the beginning of each Congressional session (every two years), the party in majority in the House proposes “rules” for how the House will run. This is done by offering a resolution on the floor of the House, devised in advance by the caucus of the majority party, for adoption by the full House. Of course, the motion is guaranteed to pass because these days there is always absolute fealty to the party. The rules are mostly carried over from the previous session and include the so-called “Standing Rules”. The Standing Rules include what you would think, establishing committees, defining how bills are introduced, voting procedures, quorums and attendance, adjournments and recesses – pretty mundane stuff. But here is where the mischief starts, and it is notable that BOTH parties have a history of creating the rules in such a way that the other party is disadvantaged. For example, the Democrats changed the rules that had previously required that no motions to the budget bills could be made to increase the budget, with a new rule that allowed this. When the Republicans took the House, they promptly reinstated this requirement. This sounds like it is beginning to get complicated, but in reality, the summary document that wraps all of this together is more than complex, it is overwhelming. It includes the Standing Rules and believe it or not, it actually includes Jefferson’s Manual as well. When you add all of this together it results in a document called “The Constitution, Jefferson’s Manual and the Rules of the House of the Representatives” and is typically MORE THAN A THOUSAND PAGES.
But the complexity doesn’t end there. Each bill of any substance must have its OWN rules. And the bill goes nowhere until the Rules Committee establishes those rules. It is easy then to understand how powerful the Rules Committee is and how it’s majority party leader can move ITS party priorities along and thwart the goals of the minority party. There are few safeguards here other than the rules cannot be unconstitutional. This helps me to understand why having the majority in the House is so crucial to the political parties. It is very, very difficult for a single House member from the minority party to get a bill through the various committees unless the majority party agrees.
In preparing the rules this year and making preparations for who would be the Speaker, an interesting dynamic played out. A small group of Republicans demanded certain changes to the proposed rules, or they would withhold their support of the Speaker candidate that had been selected by the Caucus – Representative Kevin McCarthy. Because of the historic occurrences of the last couple of days we now know one of the critical rule changes that allowed McCarthy to be elected, namely that the Speaker could be put to a no-confidence removal vote if only ONE representative demanded it. This was a radical departure from past rules on no-confidence votes which sometimes required a majority of the majority party. But what were the other demands of the dissidents?
In general, they want to change the way Congress operates, to “drain the political swamp” as they say. They feel disempowered to influence things as individual representatives. They demanded more time to review bills before voting – seventy-two hours was agreed to. They wanted more rights as individual representatives to make amendments to spending bills on the floor of Congress (thus the amendment that passed to reduce Defense Secretary Lloyd Austins salary to $1.00). Much of the work on the budget happens at Committee level and the dissidents feel that this disempowers them. They wanted restrictions on how elected officials trade stock. They wanted term limits – twelve years is what they are seeking. They oppose the usage of so-called omnibus bills. These are unwieldy pieces of legislation that combine enough things that legislators like and just enough things that they hate that they can tolerate, to get things done. And they are impatient with the process that empowers the long-standing members both in their party and in the opposition party who actually KNOW what is in those hundreds and hundreds of pages of rules and how to use them to accomplish THEIR goal and to thwart the goals of newcomers with no seniority who DON’T know the rules as well or have the seniority to make things happen.
Well, taken on their face, these things DON’T seem all that unreasonable. I can fully get behind a lot of them, term limits in particular. So, what’s the problem? As usual things are a little more complicated than they appear on the surface. Given the absence of some of the guardrails included in the Rules, mischief would abound. I don’t think that most Americans would agree that reducing General Austin’s salary to $1.00 is good for the country. Some of the rules are in place for a good reason. The problem here is that the rhetoric and actions of the dissidents scare nearly everyone else in the institution, even members of their own party. And there is some reason for their fears, the concessions that were granted at the beginning of this session are already coming home to roost, with potential government shut-downs and the chaos of having the US House with an interim Speaker in mid-term.
If half of what Representative Gaetz has been accused of is true, and if he really wants half of what he sometimes demands, I want no part of him and hope that the Republicans who want to expel him are successful. But can there be a kernel of truth in what the dissidents are upset about? As much as I hate what has been going on, the chaos and uncertainty of things, I believe that the rule-making process does need be changed. Wise men and women from both sides of the aisle have understood this for years and in 2019 a bipartisan committee was established to explore how Congress operates and to recommend changes. The committee had a wide mandate to “investigate, study, make findings, hold public hearings, and develop recommendations on modernizing Congress” in a number of areas, including rules, procedures, staff diversity and more. The committee ultimately submitted recommendations for some modest changes but in a hopeful sign the Select Committee was reauthorized by the present House.
It is ironic that Representative Gaetz used a quirk in the rules to upset this culture of rules. It seems clear that the House MUST have rules for its operations. Many of the rules have been adopted for good reasons over the years. But when the rules are twisted to disempower duly elected representatives from either party, to allow a very small minority to block the will of the majority, to throw the institution into disarray, something must be done. Because we all know, we are NOT our own Grandpa. As citizens we can’t give in to the tribalism that is being advocated these days. We have to elect men and women of good will who want FAIRNESS in the process not ADVANTAGE in the process, men and women who will formulate and USE the rules to insure the welfare of the citizens. In all of the bluster between the parties and who gets their way, all of the discord and confusion, it seems like the welfare of citizens really isn’t a primary consideration. IT SHOULD BE THE ONLY CONSIDERATION regardless of what the rules say.
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Words from a radical moderate.