House Rules:
The House will vote on its rules package after the January 4 swearing-in of the 109th Congress.
1) Republicans will control this process, voting first privately within the party conference on various provisions, and then en bloc on the House floor for the whole package. Party discipline is normally very strict for such votes, meaning that anything included in the final package by the leadership is likely to pass.
2) The conservative Republican Study Committee submitted a variety of rules proposals, including a provision that would allow money stripped from appropriations to be devoted directly to deficit reduction. Under the current system, any money removed from a spending bill by a floor amendment goes up for grabs immediately for another spending bill. The RSC proposals also include a cap on entitlement spending, and an emergency reserve fund that would go on-budget and at least partly eliminate the need for off-budget emergency supplemental bills.
3) Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R.-Tex.) has also proposed other major changes in how the appropriations process works. DeLay wants to reduce the number of appropriations subcommittees from 13 to 10, and change the grouping of spending bills so that agencies that are more or less related to one another in purpose are contained in the same bill.
4) The current system of 13 bills, DeLay argues, encourages bipartisan coalitions for higher spending - for example, between veterans??¢â???¬â???¢ groups and public housing advocates. The arrangement has previously thwarted conservative efforts to force various constituencies to fight amongst themselves for limited funding instead of simply cooperating to boost spending overall by massive amounts.
Senate Reorganization:
On the Senate side, a new arrangement for allocations of committee seats and funding must be made through negotiation between the parties.
1) Majority Leader Bill Frist (R.-Tenn.) has enraged the Democratic minority by pressing for two-thirds of the Senate??¢â???¬â???¢s internal budget to pay committee staffers, though Republicans control only 55% of the Senate. If Frist gets his two-thirds share, Democrats claim they would lose 80 staffers. When Republicans had only 51 out of 100 members following the 2002 election, they were given 51% of most of the budget.
2) The move is regarded as part of Frist??¢â???¬â???¢s intent to take tougher positions as majority leader after gaining four Republican senators in the 2004 elections. Minority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) is incensed by the fact that this proposal is already well known on the Hill, yet Frist has yet to approach him with any offer.
3) Frist??¢â???¬â???¢s argument for two-thirds funding is based in precedent: in 1994, when the GOP controlled only 44 U.S. Senate seats, they received one-third of the funding. Because Jim Jeffords has not switched parties to become a Democrat, Republican staffers argue, Democrats deserve only one-third of committee funding.
4) The organizing resolution also determines the parties??¢â???¬â???¢ numerical representation on Senate committees. A simply majority is needed to pass the reorganizing resolution once the new Congress convenes. Democrats could filibuster the resolution, thwarting any changes in committee assignments and funding from those of the last Congress. But this would harm them as badly as a new reorganizing resolution, plus deprive new senators of committee assignments.
5) Failure to produce a new resolution (the last time this happened was about 80 years ago) would result in the same one-seat GOP majorities on all committees, but with the attrition of all exiting members. No new members could be appointed to any committee.
