New House Rules

With Republicans taking over the House of Representatives, one can expect a different way of doing business in the people's chamber, according to Rep. Buck McKeon (CA), the incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Speaking at a get-together this morning with reporters on Capitol Hill, McKeon said:

Under the new Congress, we're going to try to put more authority back into the committees; we're going to have a schedule that allows committees to function more -- you know, in this last year or two, sometimes we're in a hearing with the secretary of defense, and we have to leave to go vote to name a post office. We're going to have a lot of change in that regard, so the subcommittees will also be more enthroned, so to speak . . . The Speaker's office is not going to be telling us what to do, and we're told that we should be prepared to bring bills to the floor under open rules, so it'll be a different process than we've seen in the last few years.