Rep. Kevin McCarthy has finally, after 15 rounds of voting, secured the votes necessary to become the next Speaker of the House. But he had to make some big concessions to convince holdouts Republicans and end the House Speaker fight—one of which is a huge win for fiscal conservatives.
The rules negotiated would mandate that bills be released 72 hours in advance of a vote. Why is this so important?
Remember, just in December, Congress rammed through a $1.7 trillion budget omnibus without most members even having enough time to read the legislation they were forced to vote on. The omnibus ran 4,155 pages and was given to members less than 24 hours before the vote.
As Congressman Dan Bishop explained, to have read the bill by the time the Senate voted to begin debate, “you would’ve needed to read 4+ pages per minute, without a single break, for 16 hours straight.” As a result, they weren’t even sure how much the bill would actually cost, with estimates differing by tens of billions of taxpayer dollars.
And it certainly wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. In fact, the status quo is Congress is them voting away trillions of our dollars without even knowing where it’s all going. That’s an absolute disgrace, a dereliction of duty, and an insult to the American people.
The holdout Republicans have received withering criticism for their stunt and the delay the House Speaker fight caused in letting Congress get to work. But at least now, the House will actually have to do its job.
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