ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER CR JAM House Republicans are set to close out the week with nothing to show for a week of scrambling on spending — continuing their sorry series of appropriations antics. With a Democratic majority in the Senate and a Democrat in the White House, it was always going to be difficult for the GOP to achieve its spending goals in the 118th Congress. But the slim House Republican majority has repeatedly failed to coalesce around its own plan, leaving leaders to rely on Democratic votes to keep the government open time and time again. Now, with Republicans preparing to get rolled once again ahead of Election Day, GOP lawmakers are left to wonder if anything will ever change. “I don't know where we are right now,” said Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), a top appropriator. “As far as the grade for the appropriations process for the 118th Congress, it's a D-minus.” Let's review: While Republicans claim small spending wins, Democrats have repeatedly been able to run roughshod over the GOP because Republicans have not been able to pass any plan of their own. Last year, conservatives rejected then-speaker Kevin McCarthy’s plan to pair a stopgap with border legislation; this year, a similar group said no to Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan to attach a voting bill. The effect stands to be the same: a short-term patch passed on Democrats’ terms with mostly Democratic votes, setting the stage for big multi-bill packages that most Republicans profess to hate. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who voted present on Johnson’s plan Wednesday, said he had no regrets, saying he didn’t believe Johnson’s plan was viable: “It’s a fake bar fight with … wood chairs and sugar bottles,” he said. “This was all theater.” What’s next: Things appear unlikely to get much better in the 119th Congress. Even if Republicans can win majorities in both the House and the Senate (and have one of their own in the White House signing the bills), dictating terms will be difficult. Their House majority is likely to be small, with a conservative rump disinclined to vote for any spending legislation, and a Senate majority is likely to be constrained by the 60-vote filibuster margin — meaning they’ll need to negotiate with Democrats regardless. “I think the day of supermajorities from both sides is over,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said. For appropriations bills, he added, “You got to thread the needle, and that makes it a little more difficult.” But Cole said he was optimistic that the process would play out the way it always does — with serious members of both parties sitting down in good faith and trying to hammer out an agreement. “You just negotiate a deal and try to deal with the timelines,” he said. “Look, we're going to have a new player at the table after the election, because we’re going to have a new president, one way or the other. It’ll work.” Democrats, of course, feel differently, having watched the GOP flail with both amusement and frustration. “We need to pass a clean CR and go home so we can talk about … how [our constituents] need to give us the reins back so we can create some more certainty and steadiness than the Republicans,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.). — Daniella Diaz, Katherine Tully-McManus and Nicholas Wu GOOD EVENING! Welcome to Inside Congress, the play-by-play guide to all things Capitol Hill, on this Thursday, Sept. 19, where we’re glad it’s almost Friday. RULES RUMINATIONS The start of the next Congress is still more than three months away. But lawmakers are already thinking about how they’d like to change how the chamber operates — and what they want to see stay the same. The early preview came up today in the Rules Committee, where several members came and pitched their ideas. The suggestion ran the gamut, but here’s a few that stood out to us: Motion to vacate: That most infamous of House rules unsurprisingly made an appearance during the hearing — and it previewed the fight Republicans will have on their hands if they maintain the majority. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, told the committee that he wants to keep the ability for a single member to trigger a vote to try to oust the speaker — a tool that was used successfully for the first time last year against Kevin McCarthy. Speaker Mike Johnson and a broad swath of his conference want to change that rule if they win in November, but it could boil down to the size of their majority. Ogles isn’t the only House Republican who wants to keep the single-member trigger in place. Discharge petitions: Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) wants to go back to the future and return to a system where signers of discharge petitions remain anonymous, as they were prior to 1995. The current system where signers’ names are public, said Foster, allows for leadership strong-arming that discourages members from supporting floor votes on legislation that is not favored by their party brass. Security clearances: Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), who sits on the Intelligence Committee, made a recommendation that’s been heard many times before: giving all members the ability to have a staffer with the appropriate security clearance join them for secure briefings. The Senate made this shift in 2021, allowing each senator to make one aide in their personal office eligible to receive a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance. Proxy voting/parental leave: Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo) drew on her personal story in recommending that the House allow proxy voting for new mothers. Pettersen is 20 weeks pregnant and is set to be just the 13th member ever to have a child while serving in Congress. She said she is contemplating what the weeks after giving birth will look like: “Am I going to be home taking care of my newborn or be here and representing my constituents?” Committee seating: Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) wants all House committees (except Rules) to be split between Democrats and Republicans in the same proportion as the chamber as a whole. “Fractional people go into the majority party,” Griffith told his colleagues. Currently the majority party sets the committee ratios, and they tend to give themselves an extra seat or two on each panel. To give one example, Republicans started the current Congress with only 51 percent of seats; currently they hold 56 percent of the slots on the 61-seat Appropriations Committee — meaning they’d give up two seats to Democrats under Griffith’s proposal. — Katherine Tully-McManus and Jordain Carney ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL DISCHARGE PETITION There are now the requisite 218 lawmakers signed on to a discharge petition led by Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) and Garret Graves (R-La.) for the Social Security Fairness Act., a bill that would eliminate rules that reduce benefits for many Americans receiving government pensions. “Our work is far from over. We will be dogged in making sure the Social Security Fairness Act passes in the U.S. House, passes in the U.S. Senate, and finally gets signed into law. We must get it done,” Spanberger and Graves said in a statement. Why it matters: It’s the second successful discharge petition this Congress. In May, 218 members backed a push to advance a measure providing tax relief for victims of hurricanes, wildfires and the East Palestine train derailment. The longshot procedural move attracted lots of attention when lawmakers considered using it to break a logjam over Ukraine funding earlier this year. But discharge petitions are rarely successful, and Democrats have introduced other, less-successful petitions this Congress to force votes on gun safety and abortion legislation. — Nicholas Wu and Daniella Diaz
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