Typically, all the members of the majority party in the House of Representatives vote for the rule to bring legislation to the House floor for debate, even if some of those members plan to vote against the legislation after the floor debate. Meanwhile, minority party House members typically all vote against the rule. But, on occasion, some majority party members think there is something wrong enough with legislation or the process by which leadership is seeking to bring the legislation to the House floor that they rebel, voting “no” on the rule.
Tag: vote
On May 25, I wrote about how the Republican leadership of the United States House of Representatives had put off until the House would return from recess in June a vote on ending the Iran War. It had appeared that the war termination resolution would win a majority vote on the House floor
The Iran War has been unpopular among Americans since the beginning. Now it has reached the point where it appears it would be voted down in the Republican-majority United States House of Representatives — if House leadership would just allow a floor vote on the matter.
During consideration Thursday of the Consolidated Appropriations Act (HR 7148), United States House of Representatives members rejected by a vote of 268 to 164 an amendment to offered by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), along with cosponsors Reps. Scott Perry (R-PA) and Chip Roy (R-TX). The amendment would eliminate funding to implement a mandate included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (HR 3684) that President Joe Biden signed into law in 2021. That mandate requires vehicles to be manufactured so they include a “kill switch” that empowers government to remotely disable the vehicles if surveillance technology the mandate also requires to be included in the vehicles indicates there has been “impaired” driving.
Former Republican House of Representatives Member John J. Duncan, Jr., in a Thursday editorial published at the Miami Herald, urged current Republican members of the House to oppose impending war against Venezuela just as he and five other Republican members voted in 2002 against the Iraq War before it began.
The United States government has gone far astray from following the policy of nonintervention overseas espoused by Founders, including George Washington in his presidential farewell address in 1797. Instead of avoiding intervention abroad, the US has pursued it with vehemence in recent decades, with the turning point arguably being the US going to war against Spain in 1898 — just over a hundred years after Washington’s farewell address.
Special interests are continually finagling to gain more support from the United States government that oversees a vast trove of money and power. A vote just after midnight Friday morning in the US House of Representatives suggests that the government of Israel is at the top of the heap of special interests when it comes to being able to extract benefits from the US with very widespread support from American legislators.
On Wednesday, the United States House of Representatives approved yet again legislation (this time H. Res. 352) to counter “antisemitism” — something the US government has been redefining for its purposes as going beyond being related to race, ethnicity, or religion so that it also includes criticizing the government of Israel. In its concluding section the resolution states, in addition to a couple other demands, that the House “calls on elected officials, faith leaders, and civil society leaders to condemn and counter all acts of antisemitism.”
On Thursday, the United States House of Representatives approved legislation that would threaten nonprofit organizations’ exercise of free speech rights. The legislation would accomplish this goal by empowering the US government to selectively clamp down on nonprofits to an extent that targeted organizations may cease to exist. This is all being done in the name of countering terrorism, a trusty standby excuse for the US government exercising authoritarian powers.
There has been increasing talk about the potential restoration of a gold standard arising from people and governments across the world seeking to protect themselves from the weaponization of the United States dollar’s world reserve currency status. How long can dollar hegemony last when the government behind the dollars is sanctioning people and governments around the world with abandon? There must be a way out of this mess, and the many centuries long history of using gold as money points to one tried-and-true path.