The Ukraine aid bill has finally passed the House Rules Committee so it can come to the floor for a vote:
The House Rules Committee is pretty much what it sounds like: a committee that formulates the rules of debate before a bill is allowed on the floor. Back in the day, the chairman of the Rules Committee was one of the lords of Congress because every bill has to pass the committee before it gets a vote. Piss off the chairman and your bill dies.
And yet, even though I've been reading about politics for something like 50 years, this is the first time I've heard that rules are always passed on a party line vote. Apparently it's a "remarkable breach of custom" for the minority party to vote for a rule.
But the Rules Committee has been stuck lately because the deal that elected Kevin McCarthy to the speakership placed three members of the Freedom Caucus on the committee. It currently has nine Republicans and four Democrats, so if the three Freedom Caucus members object to a bill and defect, the vote is 6-7 and the bill fails. This gives them an effective veto over everything. This time around, however, all four Democrats voted for the rule and it passed 9-3. On the floor of the House (the topic of the headline above), Democrats also voted for the rule and it passed 316-94. This means the Ukraine aid bill can now get a vote in the full House, where it will almost certainly pass.
I confess I'm flabbergasted. There's been a lot of chatter lately about Speaker Mike Johnson getting ousted if even a few Republicans vote for a motion to vacate the speakership. This is because the vote for a Speaker is always done on a party line. It really would be unprecedented if Democrats loaned him a few votes so he could survive a challenge.
Fine. I get that. Neither party really wants the other one interfering in the selection of its Speaker. But sticking to a pointless custom in the Rules Committee that's stalled the Ukraine bill for months? That I don't get. Why didn't Democrats do this long ago? Is the party line custom in the Rules Committee really all that important?
We didn't have a bill before, right? That's why Dems didn't do this earlier.
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Yes. At least not one that the speaker was willing to bring to the floor
It hadn't come up before. That is why the Dems didn't do it long ago. The chairman would not bring it up for a vote. It has been clear that Dems would give the vote in the Rules Committee as well as voting for the Rule for some time, which is why it was stalled. The GOP wouldn't allow any votes on it.
Mike Johnson didn't want a vote on the Ukraine aid bill until recently. First he demanded it be linked with fixing the US-Mexico border. When the Senate came to an agreement on that, Trump ordered it killed. Johnson finally realized he had held the Ukraine aid bill hostage as long as he could and he could not find another ransom after Trump killed his ransom demand.
I think Democrats on the rules committee would have been willing to support this all along, but it wasn't until recently Johnson sent it to the rules committee.
Jeffries has been saying for quite some time that his caucus would vote against a motion to vacate if that motion was predicated on bringing Ukraine aid to the floor for a vote.
I think it has probably taken a lot of the House R caucus (not the MAGAs) this long to reconcile themselves to the idea that there's nothing they can offer the MAGAs to get the bill to the floor and passed. So they are making the best deal they can make, given that they actually want Ukraine aid passed.
Forget about it Jake, it's Chinatown
Exactly right someBrad and newtons. Until now, there was nothing to vote upon, because Johnson wouldn't bring the Ukraine funding measure before the Rules Committee. Because he had no freaking clue how to proceed.
Now, as to why he suddenly decided to move forward now, really hard to say. Was it pressure due to Iran's attack on Israel? Finally realizing how dire the situation is in Ukraine? Running out of f***s to give about whether they vacate the chair? Some combination? Honestly, who cares? At least Ukraine won't be left hanging much longer (assuming this passes today).
The comments above are on target. For some reason that only God knows, Johnson has had a change of heart. Here is a good article in Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/19/house-democrats-mike-johnson-foreign-aid
Furthermore, I can envision a few Democratic votes to save Johnson's speakership. He only needs two or three. Golden of Maine is an obvious possibility who would be glad to vote this way in his red district.
Israel backed down from a full-scale attack on Iran. Johnson is doing the "right thing" (his words). Suddenly I am sensing a path for a bi-partisan muddling through.
Can't the Dems just vote present or not show up and let the R's vote for Johnson on their own?
Really, only a handful of Democrats would have to vote "present" -- the rest could vote to vacate if it would help them politically. My speculation -- and it's only speculation -- is that Jeffries has already gotten word to Johnson that those "present" non-votes will be there if the motion to vacate comes as a result of bringing the Ukraine aid bill to the floor.
Seriously. It wasn't going to happen until Johnson agreed to let it happen.
I don't even thing this is that "unprecedented" considering something like 90% of Republicans in the House also support Ukraine, even if the other 10% are active collaborators and sympathizers who want to see the former Soviet Union reconstituted.
This looks like an own goal for Trump. Republicans could have gotten a border bill that Democrats didn't particularly want to pass in exchange for Ukraine aid. They could probably have gotten a border bill without Ukraine aid because the Democrats were terrified of being attacked on the issue. Trump clearly wants no aid at all for Ukraine. But he demanded that even a standalone border bill be killed because he wanted to accuse the Democrats of being soft on immigration rather than actually do anything about it. So now we have a standalone aid bill, which Trump doesn't want, and the onus of killing the immigration bill is on the Republicans.
This is why he needed a ghost writer for Art of the Deal . . . and why it should be stocked on the fiction shelves.
Because he had no freaking clue how to proceed.
Oh I disagree. He knew how to proceed but the problem was that to proceed would require actions that would threaten his Speakership.
GOP speakers since Newt Gingrich has been presented the opportunity to operate the House in coalition fashion to get things done but have not done so for fear of the political backlash, especially from Conservative INC. Thus what you got was the "Hastert Rule" which a majority of Republican support (or it could have been 2/3rds I forget) before letting a bill get to the Rule Committee to be voted on. And when the rub came on certain bills and policies, Speakers like John Boehner quit or like Paul Ryan declined to run for re-election rather than take that step and if they did even just moved their foot an inch in that direction like McCarthy and now Johnson, the motion to vacate was the response.
The Dems are doing this because they've decided to be partners they need to be in any coalition rather than just sit on the sidelines and eat popcorn while the Republicans duke it out once again. Letting Johnson go down will not help them and there's just not enough Dems and rogue Republicans to allow Jefferies to take over right now. So this is the best they're going to get until November. And for the people of Ukraine and Taiwan, none-to-soon. Call it the "uniparty" if you wish but I think a lot of people are getting tired of all the performance art hippie crap politics from the extremes whether its from MTG or the protestors at Columbia. Enough is enough!
The party line vote in Rules committee is a binder of party loyalty--us against them. Party loyalty is the way you govern 435 people representing diverse interests, or rather organize the 435 cats. If you break the party line vote consistently, then you have to get a majority together starting almost from scratch on every significant bill. Pretty soon you're no leader, because no one is following, and you're spending all your legislative time wheeling and dealing to assemble a majority. How long has Johnson been working on this issue?
Yes, agree. The House is a majority body and the speaker's job is to maintain a working majority. Parties have been the tool to do that for 200 years now, roughly. And since the Civil War the majorities have mostly been big enough that speakers could afford to let stray dogies run away from the herd when they needed to.
Right now, though, we're looking at an R party that's been completely at odds within itself for close to 20 years, to the point where only the R label lets it claim to be the majority party. But it's a meaningless label and they've been engaged in this slow-motion knife fight for the past year, with the craziest of the crazies holding the whole country hostage over just about everything.
In this particular situation you can break the glass and bring out the fire extinguishers to spray on the crazies. But long-term you can't run a legislature where you have to put together a new coalition for every single bill or issue. That's too crazy and would take too long and involve too many deals and promises to keep track of.
Democrats can save Johnson's speaker-ship by simply not showing up for the vote to vacate. If enough democrats don't vote, the motion will fail. Not showing up for the vote is politically more acceptable than voting to save Johnson.
Is it? I would imagine that openly saving Johnson's Speakership would be like throwing a nuclear bomb into the Republican caucus. The howling and screeching would be loud enough to be heard from orbit. Around Alpha Centauri.
Everybody who points out that Johnson never let any previous bill get to the point where it needed a rule, is right. The speaker controls the floor, with the notional exception-- never used in my memory-- of a discharge petition. Johnson refused to let the senate bill on the floor, so no vote on rules. That's one of the most important powers of being speaker. It's really, really, really hard to force a speaker to do anything.
Why now? I've thought for a long time that sitting in the same room for hours every week with people who are serious about governing, and getting the super-secret top-level pinkie-to-the-skies hot-shot intel, would work on this guy. He's nutty and devious at a lot of levels but he also has some rationality to him, and he has a major Air Force base in his district so he's inclined to take military views seriously. And the briefers tailored their pitches to him, I'd bet. So he finally got some urgency about Ukraine.
Also, I think he sees this as a chance to back the Krazy Kaukus Kidz into a cage and keep them there for at least a while. He knew he'd need D help to do that, and to get that, he had to ripen something that really matters to them. Ukraine matters, and the Iranian air assault made Israel a lot more salient for a lot of Ds and also for most of the not-crazy Rs.
In this situation he can let Ds save his bacon and have the MTGs and Gaetzes of the world shoot their wads to no effect, and if needed, Jeffries will help him on a vote to vacate. They will each owe each other, and maybe the rest of the session (such as it is) won't be quite as crazy, and the next Congress can get off on a better footing. That's the benign view, anyway.
Excellent. However, while I don't at all mind thinking about certain humans and wads, Marge and Gaetz are definitely not included in that group.
Just to add, this has been the obvious solution all along-- just look back at a bunch of threads here on Kevin's blog. But trump's meddling is mostly what drew it out, and it was magnified by the primary process running for almost the whole time this issue has been live, because he could hold the threat of having people primaried over their heads and enforce his momentary will over them that way. Dominance is his game. And a lot of Ukrainians have paid the price for his deep psychological infirmities.
"remarkable breach of custom"
Great Caesar's Ghost!
Does this mean wigs on the green?
Pistols at dawn?
Heaven forfend!
"Why didn't Democrats do this long ago? Is the party line custom in the Rules Committee really all that important?"
Kevin following Murc's Law.
Specifically about the party-line vote in Rules, that Kevin queries-- it's a demonstration that the speaker not only had majority backing when the House organized, but is maintaining it. That's why you can get members voting *for* the rule, but *against* the bill itself-- they're behind the speaker and leadership on the general question of running the House, but don't agree on the specific bill.
In a way, it's the equivalent in our system of the Westminster confidence vote. It implies nothing about a specific bill, but shows support for the speaker's overall leadership.
It meant something different for the Ds to vote for the rule here, though. That was a tactical vote to force the bills onto the floor. It doesn't commit them to support Johnson's leadership in any way, though it probably signals they'd be willing to keep him in the chair if the motion to vacate drops. They're free actors in this.
The so-called "Freedom Caucus," or whatever they call themselves, are apostates who will only support their leader if he gives them what they want. that's upside-down omerta. How long would people like that last in the mob?
It never happened when Kevin McCarthy was speaker because the Democrats quickly learned he was a lying bastard who couldn’t
be trusted. We will see if Mike Johnson is any better.
I think he has already demonstrated that he does not practice bad faith in the manner of Kevin McCarthy. This is a big improvement. It's what we need in a multiparty system to function.
As a side note, McCarthy had a bit of pique at Nancy Pelosi over his ouster. And I observe that they did not bring the discharge petition right away, but waited until she was in California for Diane Feinstein's funeral. Perhaps there had been something like "a nod and a wink"?
At the same time, I recall reading that Jeffries called her about the vote to discharge and she told him it was his call. She might have said more that wasn't reported - to the effect of "yeah, I said X to him, but I don't think it binds you. After all, you're the Minority Leader, not me."
How are those numbers determined? Doesn’t seem to reflect the split of the House, so what is used?
The are determined by the rules of the House. They specifically mandate that a disproportionate number of seats on the Rules Committee are controlled by the majority party, and that seats in the Committee are chosen exclusively by the Speaker. The intent is that the Committee should be entirely under the Speaker's control and that his party have a large enough majority in the Committee that an individual member cannot block rules.
Kevin McCarthy completely subverted this intent when he guaranteed the nut jobs three seats on the Committee as a part of the price for becoming Speaker. I doubt that we're going to see any prospective Speaker make this mistake anytime in the near future.
It's remarkable that anything gets done in Congress.
They didn't do it a long time ago because Kevin McCarthy is a liar who will make a deal and then break it before he leaves the room. Why on Earth would Democrats save that shithole?
I would ask why there's a Rules Committee in the first place. Can't the House simply formulate one rule that applies to all legislation, the way legislatures in other countries do?
They could, but have chosen not to.
Remember that, unlike the Senate, which has unlimited debate, the House limits the time that a bill may be debated. Establishing the limit for each bill is one of the Rules Committee’s powers. It would be inefficient to have one debate limit for all bills. (The Senate ends debate by voting cloture, which requires a supermajority for ordinary bills, currently a three-fifths majority).