House Democrats have proposed that, as part of their changes to the House of Representatives’ rules, income-tax increases on the lowest-earning 80% of taxpayers would require a 3/5ths majority in the House of Representatives. This proposed rule has been attacked as antidemocratic and as an obstacle to passing future, Democratic legislation. However, this rule change would […]
Even though the U.S. Senate is on recess, Senate Republicans held hearings on judicial nominees, which only Senate Republicans attended. Senate Democrats opposed the hearings as an attempt to prevent serious questioning of the nominees. Unlike the Brett Kavanagh nomination, Senate Democrats have several ways to prevent most of the nominees from being confirmed. First, […]
Congress and President Trump have increased the deficit by simultaneously increasing spending while cutting revenue. The Department of Treasury found that the deficit has ballooned to $779 billion per year. Partly in response to the ballooning deficit, Congress formed the Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform to propose reforms to the appropriations […]
President Trump recently wrote a letter to Congress explaining why he will eliminate the scheduled cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) for federal employees. President Trump argued that “[w]e must maintain efforts to put our Nation on a fiscally sustainable course, and Federal agency budgets cannot sustain such increases.” However, President Trump’s decision to eliminate the COLA is likely illegal. […]
With many Democrats already opposing Nancy Pelosi as speaker and many Republicans having already opposed Kevin McCarthy as speaker, whichever party wins the House of Representatives could struggle to get the 218 votes required to win a Speaker of the House election. Seeing an avenue to exchange their votes for reform, the bipartisan Problem Solvers […]
In the spirit of Professor Nielson’s recent post on in-line versus footnote citations, I wanted to mention a personal pet peeve regarding references to the U.S. Code. The U.S. Code is roughly half non-positive law and half positive law. Even though there are important legal distinctions between the two types of law, attorneys often refer to titles […]
Senator Mitch McConnell recently announced that he intends to eliminate much of the August recess so that the Senate has more time to confirm nominees and pass funding legislation. Senate Republicans want this extra time because even if Republicans have the votes (i.e., 60 for legislation and 50 for nominations), they still need 30 hours […]
When the Senate lowered the threshold for nominees to a simple majority, it kept the 30-hour requirement to overcome a filibuster. While the Republican Senate has been willing to devote 30 hours to overcome filibusters on nominees to more important positions like cabinet secretary and circuit court judge, the floor time has added up quickly. […]
The House of Representatives plans to vote this Thursday on a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget. To ensure that a future Congress does not use budgetary gimmicks to avoid balancing the budget, I suggest including two additional provisions: (i) prevent the shifting of costs into future fiscal years and (ii) enshrine the independence of […]
President Trump has recently complained that Senate Democrats have prevented his nominees from getting confirmed. Even though the Senate eliminated the 60-vote threshold to end a filibuster on a nominee, the Senate still requires 30 hours of debate before voting on the nominee. While Republicans have been willing to devote 30 hours of floor time for higher-level […]
The federal government recently shut down for three days because the Senate could not pass an appropriations bill with a filibuster-proof majority. In response, President Trump and House Republicans suggested eliminating the filibuster for appropriations bills. However, eliminating such a filibuster would likely have prevented the Senate from considering the failed continuing resolution that Republicans […]
With the government reopening soon, I thought now would be a good time to examine some of President Trump’s actions regarding the shutdown. To mitigate the immediate impact of the shutdown, the Trump administration did not shut down agencies that still had unused funds. However, this decision likely violated appropriations law. The Constitution specifies that “[n]o […]
Paul Ryan has proposed that in the new year he will tackle entitlement reform. With Democrats likely to be united in opposition, Republicans again will have to turn to the reconciliation process to avoid a Senate filibuster. As the reconciliation process is tied to the budget process, Republicans must wait before they may consider new […]
In an earlier post, I suggested that Republicans should wait until January 2018 to pass tax reform so that they can delay a Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) sequestration. President Trump appears to have taken this idea to heart and decided that if Congress did not waive the PAYGO sequestration, he would wait until January 3, 2018 to […]
In January, I wrote that recess appointments would likely return this year because the same party controls the presidency, Senate, and House of Representatives. With an upcoming recess, I thought now would be a good time to revisit the subject and figure out why I was wrong. The Constitution gives “[t]he President [the] Power to fill up […]