The Congressional Connector
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More than 100 Lawmakers to Introduce Legislation to Reform the House of Representatives Rep. Levin and more than 100 other House Democrats plan to introduce a 14-point package to reform the operations of the House of Representatives. The package is designed to weaken lobbyist influence, strengthen fiscal discipline, curb abuses of power, outlaw the use of earmarks to buy votes for questionable legislation, create more time for serious Congressional oversight, and prevent last-minute legislative items from being slipped into conference reports between the House and Senate without a full public vote by the conference committee. gIt has never been more clear that the House of Representatives needs to clean up its act,h said Rep. Levin. gA band-aid approach wonft work. The abuses have grown year after year and must be pulled up by their roots.h Among its other provisions, the House Reform Package would: Prevent lobbyists from having anything whatsoever to do with paying for, sponsoring, or arranging Congressional travel; Prevent former members of Congress from using their access to the House Floor to lobby; Increase fiscal discipline by prohibiting any budget reconciliation measure from being considered by the House if it would increase the size of the federal deficit. The budget reconciliation rules were originally designed to make it easier to enforce budget discipline, but in recent years that have been used to blow a hole in the deficit; Curb abuses of power by ending the practice of using special project earmarks to influence membersf votes on questionable legislation and holding votes open long beyond the time required in House rules in order to change the outcome. Normally, votes in the House last 15 minutes; in recent years, votes on controversial bills have been held open as long as two hours to allow time to twist membersf arms to switch their votes; Prohibit legislation from being voted on until printed copies have been available for at least 24 hours so House members will actually know what it is they are being asked to vote on. The House Reform Package will be introduced when Congress reconvenes later this month. |
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