Editor's note: This opinion article was originally published at Wirepoints
Plenty of media reaction to the new procedural rules for the U.S. House of Representatives written by its Republican majority was about as hysterical as can be:
“The terrorists have already won,” said the headline on Dana Millbank’s column in the Washington Post. “This is insurrection” by other means, he wrote.
“Insurrectionists mount a new attack on the Capitol by stalling House speaker election,” was the headline on an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune by one of its former reporters.
“Historic chaos” and an embarrassment for the U.S, said Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes.
Similar reaction from the left went on and on, and some on the right were critical, too, though not to that extreme.
But take a look at those new rules.
Ask yourself if Illinoisans in any party wouldn’t overwhelmingly and rightly favor similar rules for both houses of their General Assembly:
- The new U.S. House rules will require 72 hours before a vote rule to give members time to read legislation. Few measures are more needed in Illinois where dumping multi-thousand page pieces of legislation, particularly budgets, with hours at the most left for review, is standard operating procedure.
- The new rules will make it much harder to tax and spend. They impose a “cut go” rule—requiring spending increases to be offset with equal or greater mandatory spending cuts. A three-fifths supermajority vote will be required for tax increases. Imagine such a thing for Illinois.
- Bills presented to Congress under the new rules must be single-subject, not loaded with unrelated provisions or goodies for favored lawmakers. Illinois already has a constitutional single-subject rule but it’s routinely ignored.
- The new rules will allow House appropriation bills effectively to defund the salaries of specific executive-branch officials or specific programs, and require each committee to submit an oversight plan that lays out what action it intends to take on unauthorized or duplicative programs.
- A single Congressman, under the new rules, could request a full House vote on whether to replace the House Speaker. Wouldn’t that have been nice to have when Michael Madigan was Illinois’ House Speaker? Maybe it goes too far to allow just one member to request a vote, but going mostly unreported is that that was the rule until 2019 when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi changed it.
Still other changes are particular to the U.S. House and don’t apply to state proceedings, such as establishment of an independent committee to review use of the FBI and other security agencies to censor news, which also has broad, public support. Other less important changes are still being reported.
The process by which the new House Republican majority came to agreement on its new rules is a different matter. It was brutish. House business was essentially delayed by a week. The results were driven by a small minority that I’d say overused its leverage. Some of the new rules may turn out to be defective in practice — we’ll have to see how they are finalized and whether members use them responsibly.
Directionally, however, the end results put a spotlight on fundamental flaws in how the Illinois General Assembly works.
If support for those rules makes one an “insurrectionist,” as those Washington Post and Chicago Tribune columns say, most Illinoisans should probably be labeled as such for the same reason.