House Rules and the "Church Committee"

Here are the highlights of the House rules voted on by Congress, taken from the newsletter of our Congressman, Dan Bishop-

  • 72 Hours to Read Bills Before Voting – It’s shocking that this wasn’t already in place and was only magnified by the recent $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill 

  • Single Subject Bills – no more monstrous omnibus bills with thousands of unnecessary provisions crammed in. 

  • Open Floor Process – This will allow any member to offer an amendment on the floor while considering appropriations bills. This gives every single member the chance to more effectively represent their constituents. 

  • No More Omnibus Funding Bills – The House will pass all 12 appropriations bills separately and on time. 

  • Debt Ceiling to Include Fiscal Reforms – No debt limit increase without a budget agreement or other fiscal reforms 

  • Eliminating the Gephardt Rule - requires Congress to take a separate and accountable vote on raising the debt ceiling. 

  • Balanced Budget Amendment Vote – The FY 24 Budget Resolution will also balance within 10 years. 

  • Term Limits Vote – No more career politicians. 

  • The Holman Rule – allows Congress to ZERO OUT the salary of any misbehaving federal bureaucrat. 

  • Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government - a powerful investigative subcommittee to uncover and remedy the Deep State’s extreme abuses of power and violations of Americans’ civil liberties. 

  • Conservative Members on Key Committees - conservative members will now have a voice on powerful House committees, including the Rules Committee.  

  • Restores Jeffersonian Motion to Vacate the Chair – Restores a lever of accountability to the House. If needed, one member may offer a motion to remove the Speaker. 

  • Ending All COVID Mandates - The House will end these mandates and fight to reinstate all troops kicked out of the military due the COVID vax mandate. 

This is a welcome change to normalcy. I'm not sure which one is my favorite rule but the Holman Rule seems like a really good one in the right hands.

You have may have heard reference to a "Church" style investigation. What does that mean? I was a junior in high school during the original Church Committee hearings and there was no internet or 24/7 news service back then, so I only vaguely remember it. So, here are the details(from Wiki)-

The Church Committee (formally the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) was a US Senate select committee in 1975 that investigated abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church (D-ID), the committee was part of a series of investigations into intelligence abuses in 1975, dubbed the "Year of Intelligence", including its House counterpart, the Pike Committee, and the presidential Rockefeller Commission. The committee's efforts led to the establishment of the permanent US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

The most shocking revelations of the committee include Operation MKULTRA involving the drugging and torture of unwitting US citizens as part of human experimentation on mind control;[1][2] COINTELPRO involving the surveillance and infiltration of American political and civil-rights organizations;[3] Family Jewels, a CIA program to covertly assassinate foreign leaders;[4][5][6][7] Operation Mockingbird as a systematic propaganda campaign with domestic and foreign journalists operating as CIA assets and dozens of US news organizations providing cover for CIA activity.[8]

It also unearthed Project SHAMROCK in which the major telecommunications companies shared their traffic with the NSA (while officially confirming the existence of this signals intelligence agency to the public for the first time).