[Reinstituted rules in the U.S. House of Representatives allow
members to fire federal staffers and cut programs. ]
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HOW THE ‘HOLMAN RULE’ ALLOWS THE HOUSE TO FAST-TRACK PROPOSALS TO
GUT GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS WITHOUT DEBATE OR MUCH THOUGHT AT ALL  
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Charles Tiefer
March 7, 2023
The Conversation
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_ Reinstituted rules in the U.S. House of Representatives allow
members to fire federal staffers and cut programs. _

, Jackson Lanier

 

Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
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Charles Tiefer
[[link removed]],
_University of Baltimore
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The slim Republican majority in the House of Representatives has just
voted to give itself a streamlined way to fire civil servants and shut
down federal programs it doesn’t like – outside the standard
process of review and debate.

This method, known as the Holman rule
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has been used in the past by both parties to cloak political decisions
in the language and process of saving taxpayers money. It was included
in a package of rules approved as the House began its business in
January.

As a former acting general counsel of the U.S. House of
Representatives
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and the author of a treatise on congressional procedure
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I know that this method has been used in the past to push extreme
political agendas through the political process without due
consideration for the public interest. And it’s likely to happen
again.

Florida Republican Rep. Kat Cammack spoke about the Holman rule’s
adoption
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on the House floor in early January 2023, calling federal officials
“unelected bureaucrats, the true, real swamp creatures here in
D.C.,” saying they had “run roughshod over the American people
without consequence.”

“Today marks our first move, and certainly not our last, to hold
them accountable.”

Jacqueline Simon, public policy director of the American Federation of
Government Employees, sees the Holman rule differently:
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“It goes around everything that protects the civil service from
political corruption — not just federal employees but entire
agencies. It is precisely for theater and to create chaos and disrupt
the operation of federal agencies, including law enforcement
agencies.”

The rule allows House members to transform the normal process of
compiling appropriation bills – normally, lists of amounts of money
to be spent – into vehicles to fire government employees and shut
down programs
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they don’t like.

Anything is ripe for cutting with the Holman rule, from environmental
protection agencies to government efforts for human rights to existing
programs for addressing sales of semi-automatic weapons.

[A blond-haired woman in a red and white dress in front of a
building's entrance.]
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Republican Rep. Kat Cammack says the Holman rule is needed because
‘unelected bureaucrats, the true, real swamp creatures here in
D.C.,’ have ‘run roughshod over the American people.’ Tom
Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
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Fast and furious

Normally, such cuts to staff or programs would have to go through an
extensive review process
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either to restructure or abolish programs.

That process includes initial drafting of a full-scale bill,
subcommittee and full committee hearings and debates, testimony and
evidence presented by the president’s administration, press coverage
of these steps and adaptation of Congress members’ positions in
light of that coverage. Then, votes are held on edits to the bill,
known as markups, after which there is a separate committee vote on
reporting the bill out to the full House, the drafting of committee
report sections by supporters and opponents – and even more after
that.

But Holman sidesteps that considered process.

It allows provisions for altering or abolishing programs to be offered
to and made a part of appropriation bills, as long as the provision
putatively saves money. Under Holman, individual House members offer
amendments during full House consideration of a bill on the floor. As
long as these amendments cut spending
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For example, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022
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created a program
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the technology infrastructure of the IRS and to hire more auditors to
focus on the wealthy and corporations. Estimates are the program will
cost US$80 billion over a decade. Proposed changes to that program in
legislation that goes the normal route through many hearings might get
bogged down in debate.

But under Holman, a critic of the program could just drop a change
into the must-pass part of the appropriations bill that contains
spending for Treasury Department operations and kill or alter the
program. No one could stop that from happening unless they chose to
vote against the entire appropriations bill, which funds that whole
department of the government.

Similarly, the EPA proposes to strengthen regulations limiting the oil
and gas industry’s methane emissions
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a potent greenhouse gas. A House critic of the methane-control program
could just pop into the appropriations bill containing spending on the
EPA a Holman rule provision that either cuts the program head’s
salary to $1 or terminates the program altogether.

Bipartisan tool – for a time

Historically, the Holman rule, named after Rep. William S. Holman of
Indiana
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wasn’t a tool of only the Republican Party. It was first developed
in 1876 when a Democratic House majority faced a Republican president.
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I wrote about the history of the Holman rule in my book on
congressional practice and procedure
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At the time, the Democratic Party held what would later be called the
solid South (today, these areas are usually Republican) and sought to
expel Yankee Reconstruction – and repeal the laws behind it.
Democrats adopted the Holman Rule to get those repeals of law past
President Grant.

The Holman rule could be, and was, put to diverse uses in its early
days.

The Congressional Research Service says
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initial construction of the rule by the House resulted in putting a
great mass of general legislation upon the appropriation bills.”

The Holman rule was used from 1876 to 1895 and again from 1911 to
1983. It was brought back into use by the GOP in 2017
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When Democrats took over the House in 2019, they dropped it
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In one notable attempt in 2017, House Republicans were angry about
evaluations of proposed legislation by
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staff of the nonpartisan Budget Analysis Division
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Congressional Budget Office. So, they used the Holman rule to try to
abolish that division and move its employees to another part of its
parent agency, making the proposal in a wider budget allocation bill.

Holman allowed disgruntled Republicans to rush their proposal onto the
House floor, instead of going through slower, more deliberative
processes of examining whether the Budget Analysis Division was
fulfilling its mission. The vote to eliminate the division failed,
but, significantly, the use at that time of the Holman rule was
promoted by the same faction
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of the Republican party, the Freedom Caucus, that has advocated for
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using the rule now.

Greasing the skids

There are a number of situations that could lead current House
Republicans to use the Holman rule.

First, House Republican leaders may need to unify their party to pass
controversial appropriation bills
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in the face of anticipated unanimous Democratic resistance. Allowing
Holman amendments to be proposed by members with extreme views may get
needed legislative support from the fringe of the caucus.

House passage of provisions to cut or wipe out programs and whole
agencies has two effects. House Republicans can demoralize agency
employees who do not know whether to take jobs elsewhere or stay. And
House passage may presage passage by the whole Congress.

An attempt by the Senate Democratic majority to kill a House-passed
Holman rule provision when it considers legislation sent over from the
House would need 60 votes to move ahead
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That would require votes from almost a dozen Republican members, which
may not be possible to get.

An appropriations bill that contains Holman provisions would then go
to conference
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which is a temporary committee made up of House and Senate legislators
and formed to reconcile differences in legislation passed by both
chambers. Senate Democrats may go along, even with objectionable
Holman or other provisions, to get buy-in from all the factions of the
House Republican party needed for passage of the appropriations bill
and avoidance of a government shutdown.

Which brings us full circle to where the Holman rule started, with the
southern Democrats’ aim to force through House provisions that
Republican President Ulysses S. Grant did not want.

Would President Joe Biden veto all the appropriation bills that have
any Holman rule-passed provisions?[The Conversation]

Charles Tiefer
[[link removed]],
Professor of Law, _University of Baltimore
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This article is republished from The Conversation
[[link removed]] under a Creative Commons license. Read
the original article
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