Here’s how U.S. House members voted on major issues during the legislative week of Jan. 9-13. The Senate was not in session.
House
CUTTING IRS BUDGET FOR TAX COLLECTIONS
Voting 221 for and 210 against, the House on Jan. 9, 2023, passed a bill (HR 23) that would cancel Internal Revenue Service funding of $80 billion over 10 years included in the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act. About $45 billion of the sum would be used to expand IRS audits and tax collections and the remainder on improving customer service and modernizing computer systems. The IRS would use the added enforcement funds to hire thousands of auditors focused on reducing an estimated $600 billion-plus annual gap between taxes owed and taxes paid by Americans. Most of the shortfall is owed by businesses and wealthy individuals that fail to report income rather than wage earners whose taxes are deducted from paychecks, according to the Treasury Department. The rate of audits for taxpayers earning less than 400,000 will not be increased as a result of the added funding, and “the additional resources will go toward enforcement against those with the highest incomes,” the department told Congress.
Floor Debate, Pro & Con:
David Kustoff, R-Tenn., said Republicans are “focused on protecting taxpayers and small businesses from overreach and abuse. Blocking the Biden administration from unleashing 87,000 new IRS agents on taxpayers is a crucial first step toward fulfilling our commitment to America.”
Richard Neal, D-Mass., said: “The audit rate for millionaires has declined by 70 percent since 2010. Low-income workers who receive the earned income tax credit, they are audited more now than taxpayers who are making over $1 million a year. All we are asking for is fairness in the distribution of the responsibilities as to how we pay for government.”
A yes vote was to send the bill to the Democratic-led Senate, where it was likely to fail.
HOUSE RULES FOR 118TH CONGRESS
Voting 220 for and 213 against, the House on Jan. 9, 2023, adopted operating rules for the two-year span of the newly convened 118th Congress. Offered by the House Republican majority, the package would be in addition to standing rules that have governed House proceedings since the 1st Congress in 1789. The new rules would, in part:
- Allow a single lawmaker to force a vote on ousting the House speaker;
- Weaken the ability of the Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate complaints of misconduct by members;
- Require increases in mandatory-spending programs including Social Security and Medicare to be offset by equal or greater cuts in other mandatory programs;
- Require the content of bills to be made public at least three days before they are brought to the floor and allow more amendments to be offered;
- Limit bills to a single topic and make it more difficult to consider amendments not germane to the pending legislation;
- Strip about House 9,000 staff members of collective bargaining rights;
- Remove metal-detectors from doors to the House chamber and prohibit mask-wearing requirements;
- Require three-fifths majority votes to approve tax-rate increases;
- Restore the so-called Holman Rule, which allows the use of spending bills to fire individual federal employees or cut their pay;
- Promote fossil-fuel consumption by requiring Strategic Petroleum Reserve withdrawals to be offset by oil production on federal lands;
- Repeal proxy-voting rules implemented by the Democratic majority during the pandemic to permit members to vote from remote locations;
- And disband the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol.
Floor Debate, Pro & Con:
Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said House Republicans “ran on an agenda to change the way that Washington works, to fix this broken system, to get our country back on track, and we were awarded the majority by the people across this country. Today starts that process of fixing what is broken in Washington so that Washington can finally start working for the people of this country who are struggling.”
Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., called the rules “nothing short of a complete surrender to the demands of the most extreme Republicans on the other side of the aisle. Rather than taking this opportunity to bring us together, the adoption of this rules package sets us on a path of division and default. The extremists plan to use these rules to hold the economy hostage in order to enact more cuts to Social Security and Medicare.”
A yes vote was to adopt the rules package.
EXPANDING THE CHILD TAX CREDIT
Voting 210 for and 220 against, the House defeated a Democratic motion that sought to add an expanded child tax credit to the Republican rules package for the 118th Congress (H Res 5, above). In 2021, Congress temporarily included the expanded child tax credit in the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan.
This raised the credit from $2,000 to either $3,000 or $3,600 per child, depending on the child’s age, and eliminated a parental work requirement. Because the expanded credit was fully refundable, it delivered up to $300 per child per month to more than 40 million families, lifting millions of children out of poverty at a cost to the Treasury of $1.6 trillion over ten years. The credit has since fallen back to $2,000 per child.
Floor Debate, Pro & Con:
Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said: “The expanded child tax credit was the largest tax cut for working families in generations, a lifeline to the middle class. It drove the largest decrease in child poverty in history. People could pay their electric bills, fill their gas tanks, pay for childcare…There has never been a federal program that has had such a profound impact in such a short amount of time.
No member spoke against the motion.
A yes vote was to restore the expanded child tax credit.
CARING FOR INFANTS WHO SURVIVE ABORTIONS
Voting 220 for and 210 against, the House on Jan. 11, 2023, passed a Republican-drafted bill (HR 26) that seeks better protections for infants born as a result of failed late-term abortions. The bill also would expand criminal liability for medical personnel who break the law while performing or witnessing such abortions. Democrats said existing federal law already protects such infants.
Under the bill, healthcare providers could face up to five years in prison if they failed to immediately transport to a hospital an infant with signs of life after an abortion attempt. The infant would have to receive the same level of medical care provided “any other child born alive at the same gestational age.” The bill also would require medical practitioners or employees of hospitals, clinics or physician’s offices to report to law enforcement agencies any violation they observed. And it would give the mother of the fetus a civil right of action against practicioners who fail to provide adequate care.
Floor Debate, Pro & Con:
Mike Johnson, R-La., said: “Once again, House Republicans are eager to stand for the most vulnerable among us, the unborn. We are the party of life, and we are proud of it. There is no difference between an infant born alive after a failed abortion and an infant born into the arms of loving parents. Those two babies deserve to be treated with the same level of excellent medical care.”
Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa., called the bill a “grotesque attempt to politicize abortion care and criminalize doctors. Politicians should not be in the business of mandating that women carry dangerous or unwanted pregnancies to term. They should stay out of the doctor’s office when Americans are exercising their fundamental right to decide when or if to have children.”
A yes vote was to send the bill to the Democratic-led Senate, where it was likely to fail.
REJECTING DEMOCRATS’ ABORTION RIGHTS BILL
Voting 212 for and 219 against, the House on Jan. 11, 2023, defeated a motion by Democrats that sought to replace HR 26 (above) with the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that passed the House but not the Senate in the 117th Congress. The Democratic bill would establish a right in federal law for women to receive abortions and for healthcare providers to administer them, notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling in June 2022 that returned control of abortions to the states or any restrictions imposed by states.
The bill would, in part, prohibit state governments from (1) withholding or unnecessarily delaying abortion procedures; (2) limiting a healthcare provider’s ability to prescribe certain drugs; (3) denying telemedicine abortion services; (4) spreading false information about abortion procedures and reproductive rights; and (5) requiring patients to make medically unnecessary in-person visits or disclose to authorities the reason for the abortion.
Floor Debate, Pro & Con:
Diana DeGette, D-Colo., said: “If there is one thing this last election showed us it is that the American people believe strongly that every woman in this country should have the ability to make her own healthcare decisions, including abortion. Sadly, however, if there is one thing this past week has shown us, it is that the House Republicans just don’t care at all about that.”
Ben Cline, R-Va., said that “contrary to House Democrats and the Biden administration, the American people overwhelmingly believe that babies who are born alive should be protected, that a baby born alive, even after an attempted abortion, should be afforded the same constitutional protections as every other American.”
A yes vote backed the Democratic bill.
ESTABLISHING SUBCOMMITTEE TO PROBE LAW ENFORCEMENT
Voting 221 for and 211 against, the House on Jan. 10, 2023, established a special panel for probing allegations that law-enforcement and national-security agencies including the FBI and CIA have conducted investigations of in recent years on the basis of the subject’s ideological or political views. The vote occurred on H Res 12. Under the mantel of protecting civil liberties, the panel will have a mandate “to collect information on or otherwise investigate citizens of the United States” in addition to federal officials. The Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, a unit of the Judiciary Committee, will have eight Republican and five Democratic members. It will have access to the same classified information available to the House intelligence committee and will be empowered to inject itself into past and present executive-branch criminal investigations, including ones against former President Donald Trump
Floor Debate, Pro & Con:
Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the subcommittee chairman, said: “This is about the First Amendment, something [Democrats] used to care about. I had actually hoped we could get bipartisan agreement on protecting…the five rights we enjoy as Americans under the First Amendment: Your right to practice your faith, your right to assemble, your right to petition the government, freedom of press, freedom of speech. Every single one has been attacked in the last two years.”
Jim McGovern, D-Mass., called the panel “a witch-hunt committee where Republicans plan to air their grievances and further incite crazy fringe conspiracy theories from the Internet at the taxpayers’ expense….Just like Senator [Joe] McCarthy looking for imaginary Communists, they are going to find QAnon conspiracies everywhere they look because that is what they want to find. Just like the McCarthy committee, this will become another shameful, disgraceful moment for the Congress of the United States.”
A yes vote was to establish the subcommittee.
ESTABLISHING COMMITTEE TO MONITOR CHINA
Voting 365 for and 65 against, the House on Jan. 10, 2023, established a select committee to investigate “the Chinese Communist Party’s economic, technological and security progress and its competition with the United States.” Comprised of nine Republican and seven Democratic members, the panel will conduct investigations, hold public hearings and make policy recommendations but will lack legislative authority.
Floor Debate, Pro & Con:
Supporter Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., said Chinese Communist Party aggression “is not limited to Taiwan, the South China Sea, Hong Kong or even Xinjiang, where two successive administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, have determined that [it] is engaging in genocide. We see this aggression here at home where the party has stolen American intellectual property, technology and industrial capacity undermining our economy and good-paying American jobs. It is here at home where the party’s extraterritorial [reach] terrorizes Chinese students studying at our universities and targets Americans of Chinese descent. “
Opponent Judy Chu, D-Calif., said the committee “should not be used as an open invitation to traffic in blatant xenophobic, anti-China rhetoric that we know results in physical violence against Asian Americans. We certainly saw this with Trump’s labeling of COVID as the `China virus’ resulting in 11,500 hate crimes against AAPIs [Asian Americans Pacific Islanders] in this country. This committee cannot be used to promote policies that result in the racial profiling of Asian Americans but should directly focus on specific concerns related to the government of the People’s Republic of China.”
A yes vote was to establish the select committee.
BARRING PETROLEUM RESERVE EXPORTS TO CHINA
Voting 331 for and 97 against, the House on Jan. 12, 2023, passed a bill (HR 22) that would prohibit the Biden administration from exporting crude oil from the government’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to China or any entity owned or controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
To increase global inventories during Russia’s war on Ukraine and lower gasoline pump prices at home, the administration has reduced the SPR to its lowest level in decades. Much of the crude was sold abroad because U.S. refineries and pipelines were at full capacity, and a portion ended up in China or under Chinese control. Oil from the SPR accounted for 2% of American crude exports to China last year, with the remainder supplied by private oil companies. In the last year of the Trump administration, U.S. energy companies’ exports to China averaged a half-million barrels per day, according to floor debate.
Floor Debate, Pro & Con:
Supporter Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., said: “America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve is meant for true energy supply disruptions, like those caused by hurricanes and natural disasters, not to help China. Draining our strategic reserves for political purposes and selling portions of it to China is a significant threat to our national security….and it must stop.”
Opponent Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said: “In 2015, when Republicans last controlled Congress, they lifted the 40-year ban on crude oil exports at the urging of their `Big Oil’ friends. This irresponsible policy change allowed companies to export American-owned barrels of oil to our adversaries, including China…. Now, Republicans seem to be complaining about the very circumstances that they created, all to reward their `Big Oil’ friends.”
A yes vote was to send the bill to the Democratic-led Senate, where it was likely to fail.