Washington — Before the U.S. House of Representatives crumbled in a series of elections to choose its leader, Louisiana Republican Rep. announced a packet of resolutions.
Scalise has long focused on legislation that addresses the needs of struggling American families. “Let’s pass the bill” was the main theme of his speech appointing California Representative Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House.
“We would love to have a majority talk about resolving these issues. But we cannot start fixing these issues until we elect Kevin McCarthy as our next speaker.” This week we received bills to address some of these issues…Let’s take those bills to this floor.”
A series of bills and resolutions speaks to a position that is important to Republican voters, but not so important to Democratic voters.
It should also be said that very few, if any, measures are likely to be passed.
The battle of speakerships shows that Republican leadership, including Scalise, has little grasp of the various rival factions among the 222 Republicans who make up the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. It takes 218 votes to pass most laws.
The partisan weaponization of rhetoric does not appear to be aimed at gaining friends among the 212 Democrats.
Scalise regularly accuses Democrats of leading the country’s innocents to the flames of destruction. “We’ve already seen what they’ve done to destroy the economy with huge spending and crazy far-left socialist regulations,” he recently told Fox News.
And, of course, the reality is that any bill that passes the Republican-controlled House of Representatives needs to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate before it can land on the desk of moderate Democrat President Joe Biden.
The first bill in the package aims to reverse increased funding to the tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service that was part of the Inflation Reduction Act. Scalise, McCarthy, and other Republican leaders are wrong, but the extra money he used to hire 87,000 new agents to harass taxpayers every day with more money I keep repeating that I will. Estimates for new hires include not only agents but also support staff for the next 10 years, though not many details are mentioned.
The Republican package also includes two measures on abortion. Although the bill clarifies the details of the law, it does not propose national restrictions on abortion.
Democrats say the Live Abortion Survivors Protection Act requires care for infants who survive abortions, and that right is already enshrined in law.
The Taxpayer Funding Ban for Abortion and the Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act, for example, would create a permanent federal funding ban that would prevent Medicaid from covering abortions.
The Strategic Production Response Act prohibits non-emergency withdrawals of strategic oil reserves without plans to increase energy production on state-owned land. This targets Biden’s decision to release oil it had been stockpiling after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine roiled markets.
The Act Protecting the US Strategic Petroleum Reserves from China also prohibits the US Secretary of Energy from sending petroleum products from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves to China.
This resolution will allow the majority to use its oversight functions to launch investigations into the president’s son, the president’s immigration policies, and the FBI.
The main reason for the race for the chairmanship was that the November midterm elections ended in roughly equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans in the House. The Republican faction was able to postpone the election of Speaker of the House.
Scalise saw the results of the midterm elections as a mission to take the country in a “new direction.”
McCarthy told reporters between meetings on Thursday night that Donnybrook’s choice of speaker was well suited for a conference that needed to work together to win without the help of Democratic representatives. “So we better do this process now so that we can achieve what we want to achieve for the American people,” McCarthy said.
