Tag: House of Representatives

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Senators, Old & New

term limits, Congress, Senate, House of Representatives

The make-up of the next U.S. Senate is taking shape. New committee chairs, for instance. While Senate Democrats do not have a rigid seniority system for choosing committee chairs, seniority is one factor considered and, realistically, the longer a congressman is on a committee the more likely he or she is to ascend to a position of leadership.

Plus, the Democrats don’t have term limits for committee chairs.

Which leads to an average age, so far, of not-quite-Seventy!

Well, that’s what ChatGPT projects. “Using January 3, 2027 — the scheduled opening day of the 120th Congress — as the common reference date, the 18-person working roster of projected Democratic committee and select-committee chairs has an average age of 69.8 years.” 

And boy, does the AI present a revealing chart, a few senators just popping out:

  • Patty Murray (Washington) for Appropriations, 76
  • Ron Wyden (Oregon) for Finance, 77
  • Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts) for Banking, Housing, and Urban (not Indian) Affairs, 77

The youngest on the chair list is 53; the oldest — Bernie Sanders! — is 88.

Now these positions aren’t set in stone. They are in the process of development. These are merely projected names, the most likely names based on august Washington tradition — and the long list of oldsters still in power. 

But, in contrast, we do know for certain the average age of the eight Democratic U.S. Senators who won critical races in Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas. It’s 50 years old. 

Nearly two decades younger than the average age of those running the committees.

Seniority may be a good way to run a gerontocracy.

Term limits are a good way to change it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies partisanship

Invitation to a Beheading

Twitter, Taibbi, hearings, Congressional Committee, stupidity

I don’t gawk at car crashes. I did not watch the ISIS beheadings. Bloody slasher movies aren’t my thing. 

And neither was the recent hearing held by the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. It was so hard to watch I could hardly take more than a few minutes at a time.

Before the committee appeared two of the three heroes of Twitter Files fame: Michael Shellenberger, listed as “Author, Co-founder of the Breakthrough Institute and the California Peace Coalition”; and Matt Taibbi, Journalist.

Or, as Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-U.S. Virgin Islands) referred to them, “so-called journalists” — before she asked her first question.

Mr. Schellenberger testified about “The Censorship Industrial Complex” and Mr. Taibbi’s testimony was a less elaborate narrative about how he got involved in the Twitter censorship issue, and what he discovered in working through the files. But Del. Plaskett and Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fl) were far more interested in discrediting what they said by attacking their qualifications and methods, not dealing with the facts they found.

Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Tx) was the worst. I hand it to you if you can stomach her full interrogation — I came away wondering mostly about her IQ.

My negative reactions? Hardly an outlier. 

“Journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger were a credit to their profession and to all Americans who genuinely care about a free press and the First Amendment,” wrote Maud Maron in an op-ed for The New York Post explaining why she was walking away from the Democratic Party: the party has fully endorsed censorship. The Democrats at the hearing “questioned, mocked, belittled and scolded [Taibbi and Schellenberger] for not meekly accepting government knows best” — proving themselves “an embarrassment.”

It might be good for our side when our enemies make fools of themselves. But it’s hard to watch.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies term limits U.S. Constitution

The Demand for Term Limits

Rep. Matt Gaetz, US Capitol, Term Limits

Lots of talk about term limits last week — in Washington. 

Of all places. 

What bizarre chain of events caused career congressmen to start jawboning and horse-trading about the popular reform that most of them viscerally oppose?

It was the work-product of a small number of hardcore conservative Republican legislators, a mere 20, flexing their strength and commitment at a critical political point — the election of the House Speaker — and armed with concrete demands.

“We offered Kevin McCarthy terms last evening that he rejected,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told reporters last Tuesday. One of those? “We’ve sought a vote in [the] first quarter of the 118th Congress on term limits.”

By week’s end, however, McCarthy had been elected Speaker of the House . . . but only after having pledged to bring to the floor that congressional term limits amendment, authored by Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), one of the 20 holdouts, along with making other concessions. 

Meet the Press host Chuck Todd yesterday cast shade on the effort, calling these “show votes.” 

While it’s true that incumbents are unlikely to vote for the term limits amendment in the 2/3 supermajority the Constitution requires, or for the balanced budget amendment for which the holdouts, mostly Freedom Caucus members, also secured a commitment from McCarthy. 

“We’ve got to start taking steps to make fundamental change in America,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) told Todd. And putting every U.S. representative on record on term limits sounds like a great first step for early 2023.

Worth the battle.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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A Bazooka to Congress

Congress, term limits, chairman

It is “like bringing a bazooka to a sword fight,” complains an anonymous long-serving Democratic congressional aide.

“Democratic leaders are hammering Republicans,” Mike Lillis explains in The Hill.

At issue? The House Republican caucus is “considering term limits,” Punchbowl News was first to report, “on committee leaders of both parties if the GOP flips control of the House next year.” 

Republicans, since taking Congress back in the 1994 term limits wave, have mostly imposed a three-term limit on committee chairmanships, when in the majority, and on a committee’s ranking opposition member, when in the opposition. What may be different in the next Congress is that Republicans are looking to impose term-limits on committee leaders of both parties. 

Democrats, too. By House rule.

Though Democratic Party bigwigs won’t like it . . . especially current committee chairs who would get the heave-ho next year, such as Representatives Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) now in his 34th year in Congress; Bobby Scott (D-Va.), in his 30th year; Adam Smith (D-Wash.) in his 26th year; Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), in his 26th year; and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), in her 32nd year.*

Some younger congressional Democrats, on the other hand, see term limits . . . as an opportunity.

“High functioning organizations become so by building strong benches and limiting the tenure of leaders,” tweeted Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), now in his 4th year. “No matter which party controls Congress in ’23, we should adopt term limits for committee chairs & get serious about developing a new generation of leaders.”

Lillis calls it “a recurring predicament for Democratic leaders.”

But no fuss at all for the rest of us: we’re for term limits. On committee leadership as well as Congress membership.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Even without this change, these Democrats would lose their chairmanships in the next Congress, should the GOP gain a majority in this November’s elections. But with this change they would also be denied the position of ranking member and thus would lose their hold on the chairmanship if Democrats won back the majority in 2024.

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Accountability national politics & policies too much government

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to a Quorum

Thomas Massie, Coronavirus, pandemic, virus, House of Representatives, Congress,

On Friday, the talking heads and Twitterati excoriating Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kent.) were so scandalized that they couldn’t quite get to telling us what terrible thing he had done.

“GOP’s Massie outrages House,” screamed The Washington Post headline. The paper informed that “the Republican from northern Kentucky has frequently voted no on issues large and small, even against the wishes of GOP leaders.” 

Wow, is that allowed?

With Congress poised to shovel $2.2 trillion to citizens and businesses by unanimous consent, i.e., without a recorded roll call vote, Mr. Massie balked, thereby requiring a quorum to physically come to the capitol to vote on the relief package. 

“I came here to make sure our Republic doesn’t die by unanimous consent in an empty chamber,” Massie declared on the House floor, “and I request a recorded vote.”

President Trump urged the “third rate Grandstander” be tossed out of the Grand Old Party. And former U.S. Senator and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry noted — of all things — his complete agreement with Trump, tweeting that “Massie has tested positive for being an a**hole. He must be quarantined to prevent the spread of his massive stupidity.”

Rep. Max Rose (D-N.Y.) offered that Massie was “disgusting” and “inhumane,” and that if the vote was pushed “back 24 hours there will be blood on [his] hands.”  

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) boasted of having asked the congressman, “Why don’t you just back off?”

Facing the biggest spending bill of all time, Massie’s notion of Congresspeople voting on the record? Hardly radical. But in the face of the COVID-19 threat, bringing legislators back to the capitol entailed real risk. 

Yet come back they did. And just to show Massie how wrong he was in alleging a cover-up, they agreed to a roll-call vote so that there was full accountability. 

Take THAT, Massie! 

Wait . . . Congress didn’t go on the record?! 

They came back and yet, as Massie pointed out, “they still refused to have a recorded vote.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: One spending item, which Massie had specifically complained about, was $25 million for the Kennedy Center. Then, mere hours after President Trump signed the legislation, the Kennedy Center honchos fired the National Symphony Orchestra, informing them “that paychecks would end this week.”

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Thomas Massie, Coronavirus, pandemic, virus, House of Representatives, Congress,

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