🦄 Current Events Monday March 31, 2025 through Sunday April 6, 2025

[Diabolical]

News Nation via MSN: Republicans cancelled all votes scheduled for the week due to Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna (Florida) forcing a vote on Democratic Representative Brittany Pettersen's (Colorado) resolution allowing proxy voting for parents of newborn infants. Nine Republicans joined Democrats to end Republican leaders efforts to stop the effort:

Johnson expressed disappointment at the rare act of Republicans joining Democrats - maybe that should tell him something about the popularity of the effort? This puts off votes until next week:

There might be another effort next week to stop the proxy voting measure.

To be clear, this was the floor vote to approve the Rule laying out the bills for the week.
Specifically: H. Res 242 (text pdf, much easier to parse pdf), which laid the timelines for debate.
Closed rules, so no amendments allowed. The rule was to basically allow for a straight yay/nay majority vote on four measures:

• two joint resolutions that would effectively eliminate some regs put forward by the-now-effectively-defunct CFPB,
• the No Rogue Rulings Act of 2025 which would limit nationwide injunctions,
• the Safegaurd American Voting Eligibility Act of 2025 which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.

The two actual bills? Luna was a co-sponsor.

Johnson needed these to go through the rules process because the only way these pass is on simple majority terms - there is no way any of these get Democrat support to pass a two-thirds majority requirement if the leadership allowed them to be scheduled under suspension of the rules. That’s why they’ve cancelled any more votes.

Why this was important was because of this language in the rule that got voted down by the Republican defectors joining the Democrats (slight edits for readability):

SEC. 5. (a) House Resolution 23 and House Resolution 164 are laid on the table.

(b)(1) A motion to discharge a committee from consideration of a bill or resolution that, by relating in substance to or dealing with the same subject matter, is substantially the same as House Resolution 23 shall not be in order.

(b)(2) A motion to discharge the Committee on Rules from consideration of a resolution providing a special order of business for the consideration of a bill or resolution that, by relating in substance to or dealing with the same subject matter, is substantially the same as House Resolution 23 shall not be in order.

(c) A motion to discharge on the Calendar of Motions to Discharge Committees that is rendered out of order pursuant to subsection (b) shall be stricken from that calendar.

1) H. Res 164 is the Discharge Petition for floor consideration for H. Res 23. (congress.gov).
2) H. Res 23 is the proxy voting House Rule. (congress.gov)

Discharge Petitions allow circumventing the House leadership to get a bill or House Resolution to the floor. They require a simple majority - 218 Representatives - to sign the petition. (CRS report on how they work)

The Discharge Petition (H. Res 164) has 218. These names are public, and can be found here, on the Office of the Clerk house.gov site.

The RULE that they voted down? Would have tabled both the discharge petition AND the proxy voting measure and made it effectively impossible to revisit the issue in the 119th Congress.

Luna is WAS a member of the House Freedom Caucus and generally a person on the Hill I deeply dislike. Don’t get me wrong, she’s still a reprehensible human being, but here she’s standing on principle and effectively killing two bills she signed on as a co-sponsor in the process. And that says something. I’m not sure what. But it’s something.

 

[Diabolical]

How did you learn how to learn about this stuff?

A strong desire to know more, because realizing ignorance in one’s self is scary.
And I am a huge nerd. . And this is one of the things I have chosen to be nerdy about.

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On the news front, the Senate GOP is trying to hand-wave away about $6+ trillion in additions to the debt/deficit over the next ten years by saying, well, if the 2017 tax cuts were permanent (they aren’t, they expire at the end of this year) that would happen anyway. They are saying that the parliamentarian doesn’t get a say and that it’s up to the Senate Budget chair (Graham, R-SC). And if the parliamentarian doesn’t agree, they’ll just vote to change Senate rules - the ’nuclear option’.

Democrats are, of course, crying foul.

The real surprising push back is from the House GOP fiscal hardliners. The Senate amendment to the House budget is really rubbing the “cut all the things” crowd the wrong way because it doesn’t offset any of the tax cuts - Schweikert (R-AZ) got a report back from the CBO saying that the increase to the debt and deficits in the long term under the Senate’s plan of would be… bad. To the tune that in 30 years, the debt would exceed the GDP by 214% to 250%. If those tax cuts go away or are at least offset? It’s closer to 150% of GDP - which is still Not Good _(TM). Now, Schweikert is effectively a red-hat-wearing troll, but he’s been consistent in the messaging on this.

He’s not the only one. I’ve seen quotes from several GOP members stating that such a drastic re-write of the House budget resolution would probably not pass muster amongst the GOP in the House. And since the Democrats are going to vote en masse against it in that chamber?

Yeah.

Roll Call article on the situation as it stands today:
https://rollcall.com/2025/04/02/senate-republicans-get-ready-to-roll-on-revised-budget/

CBO Projection for Schweikert - this one is pretty dense and took me a few tries to parse it. I think I got it, but I could be wrong:
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61255

Senate Budget Committee press release about their revisions to the House Budget Resolution - includes a link to the text:
https://www.budget.senate.gov/chair...m-i-am-confident-we-will-rise-to-the-occasion

 

[Diabolical]

So, the Senate just passed a joint resolution stating the “emergency“ that allowed the Administration to impose tariffs on Canada specifically is now over. McConnell, Paul, Collins, and Murkowski joined the Democrats in approving the measure, 51-48.
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1191/vote_119_1_00160.htm#position

You’ll likely see a lot of headlines about the Senate voting to stopping the tariffs.

THIS DOES NOT MEAN THE TARIFFS ON CANADA WILL STOP.

Why?
Now it goes to the House, where it will never, ever see the light of day.

Under normal rules, this would have to be referred to the appropriate committee and reported to the House floor in about 2 weeks. Except that the House passed that rule stopping time for any resolution trying to end the ”emergency” for the duration of the 119th Congress.

So.
Yeah.
There is that.

The Hill: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5228328-trump-canada-tariffs-resolution-gop-senators/


Note: The ‘stopping time’ tactic to keep a ’declared emergency’ going isn’t just a GOP thing. McGovern, as the Democratic chair of the Rules committee in 2021, did something very similar to keep the COVID-19 declared emergency going when GOP members pushed to end it.

Some details in this Roll Call article about the lates calendar rule shenanigans - about halfway down under ‘Time Tested Tactic’:
https://rollcall.com/2025/03/18/house-majority-rules-when-a-calendar-day-isnt-what-it-seems/