Congressional procedural alerts & ethics tracker

This is how I feel about it. I loathe machine politics and got to office defeating an incumbent who got in that way. However there are quite a few problems with choosing to grind the entire House to a halt to force all 435 members across the country to do a rushed vote on this one individual instance (of many, mind you!). 1. Why is it that this objection wasn’t brought up until now? The author had no problem when Bill Posey did it, or even earlier this year when a member’s account was tweeting post mortem for an election. The standard of this resolution is unevenly applied and choosing to enforce it via privileged resolution for some but not others does open legitimate questions of rationale or motivation. Why not care about this for them, but care about it now? This question has not been answered. 2. This is why the Ethics Committee exists. Establishing this process as precedent will mean all 435 members of the House will be forced to vote on a slew of individual member indiscretions determined by political convenience of whoever is in the majority. I do not think it is the best use of my constituents’ time to sort through the details of every individual matter of a person acting out of accordance with the esteem of the office once a week for a floor vote under rushed circumstances. The House has an investigatory structure for this for a reason. If there was a complaint filed with Ethics or an investigation buried and then ignored, I’d understand. But that’s not the case here. 3. These specific kinds of resolutions can ONLY be executed on a partisan basis because the mechanism of seeking privilege on this can only move forward with GOP leadership’s blessing. That means partisan enforcement and I do not want to open the door to that. Make it nonpartisan or don’t bother - that’s why the Ethics Committee is structured the way it is. 4. This resolution was dropped on a fly out day to begin voting on a fly in day, giving people no time to review the details of the matter while they are home in district on a weekend. On a matter of local politics that nobody had familiarity with. People are genuinely not familiar with the details of this surprise vote because this is the kind of thing brought to Ethics precisely to investigate and confirm details.

@AOC This is exactly why Congress keeps breaking down: everything becomes a procedural weapon instead of a governance tool. When process gets used as punishment, nothing gets solved and everyone loses time, leverage, and clarity.