Allow us to engage in some inside baseball 11 weeks before Opening Day. The 118^th Congress in the House of Representatives is finally underway, and it’s time to Play Ball!

After electing Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to be Speaker, the House proceeded to vote on the set of rules under which it would be “organized.” Unlike the Senate, the House doesn’t have a set of standing rules. So, each new session of the House sets its own rules. The tenor of those rules gives us all a first look at the priorities of the Speaker and the House majority for the new session.

There are things in the new rules for budget watchdogs and fiscal conservatives to cheer about. For instance:

• A promised return to “Regular Order” where all twelve appropriations bills are moved separately through the entire legislative process and sent to the President for signature.
• Allowing all Members of the House to offer amendments to those spending bills.
• Giving Members a minimum of 72 hours to read draft legislation prior to any votes on it.

These are all things Taxpayers for Common Sense has advocated for, and we’re glad to see them in the rules package. The challenge, of course, is to enforce these rules changes for the next two years. We’ll see.

But there are also two changes to how spending bills will be considered that we are afraid will lead to problems, including:

• Reinstating the Holman Rule, which allows any member of the House to offer an amendment to a spending bill that would target and remove the pay of a specific federal employee who works for any agency under that appropriations bill. This rule would have an intimidating effect on federal workers who should be free to do their duties without having to fear a House member may target their pay.
• Modifying the existing “pay-as-you-go” rule in favor of the “cut-as-you-go” initiative. Under pay-as-you-go, legislation that increases spending in mandatory programs over a five- or ten-year period must be offset with reductions in other programs or increases in revenue. Cut-as-you-go would eliminate the option of increasing revenue to pay for a spending increase in mandatory programs. Mandatory spending makes up the bulk of the budget and can be very popular (think Social Security, Medicare, farm programs, on and on). Trying to rein in deficits while completely ignoring one tool (revenue) will likely lead to more “emergency” spending, which magically doesn’t count in calculations, or future explicit carve-outs for favored mandatory spending increases because rules can be waived with a vote.

And there is a whole slew of changes designed primarily to chum the political waters. One change is the elimination of the so-called Gephardt Rule, where a vote for the annual budget resolution resulted in an automatic increase in the debt limit. This increases the likelihood of a stand-alone vote on raising the debt ceiling, a point of leverage many House GOP members have said they want to use to extract spending cuts.

The rules also declare that any transfer of federal lands to a state, county, or any entity (Federal Land Conveyances) will result in no cost to the government or loss of revenue. Well, that can’t be known without an actual analysis of each land transfer. Simply declaring any transfer as okay may allow for costly transfers without a need to offset that cost elsewhere in the budget.

We’re also concerned about the first legislative vote the House took, which would cut the $80 billion the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 included for the IRS. This is something the Senate is unlikely to go along with, so it’s evidently just a messaging vote. It’s worth noting that the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan scorekeeping arm of Congress, found that while this move would save $714 million this year, it would then add to the deficit every year after, eventually adding $114 billion to the debt in 10 years.

Another of the first legislative actions was to establish a new Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The jurisdiction of this new subcommittee seems boundless, including the oversight of ongoing investigations of the Department of Justice. Combine this subcommittee with a restored power to force a vote on excising the pay of specific federal employees, and we smell a trap for government employees who are just doing their jobs.

So, there’s good, and there’s bad in the first actions of the House of Representatives in the 118^th Congress. To go back to our baseball analogy, you can count on Taxpayers for Common Sense to play the role of umpire, calling balls and strikes and stopping lawmakers from trying to steal bases while we’re at it.

It’s going to be nine long innings, so stay hydrated and get plenty of rest.