The GOP-led House Rules Committee will take up several bills and a resolution this week condemning Biden administration policies and advancing a Republican flash point on election integrity, the latest set of bills that could bring another party-line fight to the House floor.
Two of the bills, focused on protecting appliances from Democrats’ perceived invasive environmental regulations, were supposed to be taken up in April but were delayed due to Iran’s strike on Israel.
The committee will also vote on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, which would bar noncitizens from voting in federal elections. The bill is a pet project of both the House GOP and former President Donald Trump, while Democrats have blasted the measure as unnecessary Republican messaging on a matter that is already illegal.
‘Appliance Week’ bills have their turn for review
House Republicans were forced to drop their coveted “Appliance Week” in April after Iran launched a counterattack on Israel as the Jewish state continues its war against Hamas. Six bills revolving around washing machines, refrigerators, and air conditioners were on deck for review, but the House retooled its schedule for resolutions offering additional support to Israel and condemning Iran and Hamas.
This week, the Rules Committee will take up the Refrigerator Freedom Act and the Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards Act, two of the six bills that were pushed back on the schedule earlier this year.
The Refrigerator Freedom Act would prohibit Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm from enforcing energy standards for refrigerators or freezers that are “not cost-effective or technologically feasible.” Similarly, the Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards Act would prevent new or amended energy standards for dishwashers unless Granholm can prove the new standards would not result in additional net costs for consumers.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) holds a razor-thin, three-person GOP majority, meaning he can only afford to lose three votes to pass a measure along party lines.
“With any material vote, we’ve relied predominantly on Democrat votes,” House Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good (R-VA) told Axios in April. “And then we want to pass messaging bills that have no future in the Senate to show what we stand for.”
Seven Democrats voted with all Republicans in May to pass the Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act, which makes it more difficult for the Energy Department to enact energy efficiency rules for household appliances.
If passed out of the Rules Committee, the bills are set up for a vote as early as Tuesday.
Trump-backed election integrity bill up for discussion
The Rules Committee will also take up the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act on Monday, which would amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to require people to provide proof of citizenship before registering to vote.
Johnson, along with primary sponsor Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), introduced the bill in May after the speaker joined Trump at Mar-a-Lago to voice concerns about election integrity heading into the 2024 election.
Democrats have pointed out that federal law already requires voter registration forms to compel voters to swear under penalty of perjury that they are citizens of the United States. Additionally, people must provide proof of a driver’s license or Social Security number in order for election officials to verify their identity in U.S. databases.
However, some Republicans have lamented the law does not go far enough to require additional scrutiny on whether people are eligible to vote.
Instances of noncitizens voting in federal elections are few and far between. A fraud database by the conservative Heritage Foundation found only 100 cases of noncitizens voting between 2002 and 2022 among a sample of over 1 billion ballots. Even if those ballots were detected, it would do little to sway a presidential election.
However, Republicans have pointed to unprecedented numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the southern border as a danger to federal elections.
“Due to the wide-open border that the Biden administration has refused to close — in fact, that they engineered to open — we now have so many noncitizens in the country that if only one out of 100 of those voted, they would cast hundreds of thousands of votes,” Johnson said during a press conference announcing the measure.
If passed out of the Rules Committee, the bill is set up for a vote as early as Tuesday.
Biden administration’s Title IX rule faces House GOP scrutiny
Committee members will discuss H.J. Res. 165, which would provide for “congressional disapproval” of the rule submitted by the Education Department that prohibits discrimination of sex in education programs or activities that receive federal assistance.
The Biden administration finalized sweeping rules in April that now bar schools from discriminating against transgender students by changing the definition of sex in Title IX to include “gender identity.” The administration’s interpretation of Title IX, a 1972 law barring sex discrimination in schools that receive federal funding, has been a flash point for Republicans who are widely against having biological men or boys participating in female sports.
The administration delayed action on the controversial issue surrounding transgender participation in sports in April. However, under the new regulations, states that require transgender students to use the bathroom aligning with their biological sex at birth or not using pronouns corresponding with a student’s identity, among other things, could be in violation of Title IX.
In June, two district courts in Kentucky and Louisiana issued injunctions to halt the Biden administration’s new Title IX rules. Several states have filed legal challenges to the rule, including Montana, Idaho, and Mississippi.
If passed out of the Rules Committee, the resolution is set up for a vote as early as Tuesday.
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The Rules Committee will also take up the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act that would allocate expenses and salaries to members, institutions, and projects and would provide a salary of $174,000 to Beatrice Payne, the wife of the late Rep. Donald Payne Jr., who died in April. The appropriations bill has 37 submitted amendments, with a few of them revised.
The House is also poised to consider overriding a veto from President Joe Biden on H.J. Res. 109, which sought to disapprove the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 121. The veto was Biden’s 12th, and Congress has yet to override a veto from the president since he took office.
