The House Freedom Caucus continues to fight the onslaught of Democrat bills that pose an existential threat to America. The Leftists among the Democrats have attacked and continue to go after every fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution and have even changed the rules of the U.S. House of Representatives.
The HFC has spent the last month using the few remaining procedural tools to try and slow the Leftist agenda. For instance, one of our members, Marjorie Taylor Greene, made multiple motions to adjourn the body in order to slow down a bill that spent $2 trillion. For that bill the Democrats allotted one hour of debate.
Other HFC members have forced recorded votes on bills that the Democrats were trying to pass by a voice vote with only half a dozen members present on the floor of the House. One week the Democrats actually pulled back all of those bills. The following week they only brought five of the 28 bills they proposed to pass in this way forward. And, each of those bills had to be voted by a recorded vote. In other words, our tactics delayed more than 20 Democrat bills from passing on voice votes, without a constitutionally required quorum being present. That’s a victory, albeit a modest one.
Why are these procedural tactics important?
First, they are important because the Democrats changed the rules so that the normal committee process of debating and amending bills do not take place. Most of the big bills that you have seen come to the floor for a recorded vote were only heard in the previous Congress. That means that all of the new members in the committees, and the members who do not sit on those committees, never participated in debate on those bills. The bills simply popped up for a short floor debate and vote.
Second, Democrats have taken a hard turn to the Left and are trying to speed up the process to achieve their agenda of radical laws to remake America. For instance, they have passed out of the House bills that emasculate the First Amendment, limit your rights under the Second Amendment, legalized cheating in elections, nationalized local police departments while taking away qualified immunity for police officers, granted amnesty to half of the illegal aliens in America, and a host of other bad ideas. Their attack must be slowed by the procedures left available to Republicans under the rules.
Third, the legislative timeline is one of the few things we can really affect as the minority party. A normal two-year term of Congress works like this: the first three or four months the majority party puts forth its major initiatives, the next few months there are minor considerations and the beginning of the appropriations process. There is a lengthy recess followed by more of the spending and budgeting process. That takes us to the end of the first year of the two-year term. Then we are in an election year and Congress doesn’t do much other than prepare for the election. So, let’s say that the Democrats hope to pass 100 bills that will propel America to the Leftist utopia Democrats are trying to create. If we can slow them down so that they can only get 65 bills through the process, that will be a win.
Slowing the process through use of the procedural rules of the House has its own downsides. By inconveniencing Democrats and forcing them to take transparent, recorded votes, Republicans will also be inconvenienced, but that's okay cause it's our job. We are supposed to fight for our constituents and America.
Also, we can expect that Democrats will use the power of the majority they hold to respond in two ways. They will modify the rules again to limit our ability to slow them down, and they will also create monstrous packages of disparate bills, called omnibus bills, in order to cram a bunch of bad ideas into one vote instead of many.
In any event, the HFC will continue to use every procedural tool we have to fulfill the two objectives of every legislative minority: get in the way of the majority so that they have to be transparent and follow the rules to enact the majority’s agenda, and communicate what is happening to the American people.