WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Jamie Raskin (MD-08) today released the following statement opposing House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s House Rules package.
“After showing America how not to pick a Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy and his team are now showing America how not to design the Rules of the House.
“The GOP’s Rules package has nothing to do with making policy progress or building efficiency into the process and everything to do with catering to the same extremist faction which just humiliated Kevin McCarthy before the entire world, badly undermining the power of the Speaker’s office for years to come.
“The package proposes a new Select Subcommittee on the so-called “Weaponization of the Federal Government,” and grants this dubious new Subcommittee immense investigatory powers over the federal government, including the authority to investigate the Department of Justice and its “ongoing criminal investigations.”
“This anti-law enforcement proposal means that the far-right faction of the House GOP—which likens the January 6 assault on Congress to a “tourist visit” and considers people convicted of assaulting federal officers and seditious conspiracy to be “political prisoners”—will have a running vehicle for undercutting the January 6 criminal investigation.
“House Republicans seek to reinstate the ‘Holman Rule,’ which allows lawmakers to insert provisions into appropriations bills to fire individual federal employees or target them with giant pay cuts. Revival of the Holman Rule would enable right-wing extremists in the House to target federal employees, many of whom—thanks to the landmark laws enacted under Democratic leadership in the last Congress—will be working on the most pressing issues of our time, from tackling climate change to ensuring the affordability of prescription drugs.
“These are efforts to weaponize Congress against the U.S. government, the federal work force and the American people.
“The House Republicans’ Rules package also guts the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) with arbitrary term limits for members and aggressive new staffing requirements, both of which will undercut the OCE’s ability to fulfill its mission of combatting corruption, ensuring transparency, and protecting the integrity of Congress.
“Finally, House Republicans have commandeered the Rules package to attempt to jam through twelve contentious measures outside of regular order, including bills to further attack women’s reproductive freedoms and criminalize abortion, empower polluters, and protect tax cheats.
“I will stand strongly against this dangerous Rules package, which drives Congress further into the clutches of the most extremist agents of chaos and division in our House.”
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