Conducting business behind closed doors

By Peggy Perkins

House Republicans, after months of pledging to devolve power to legislative committees conducting business out in the open, have reverted to the tradition of working behind closed doors.

For almost two months, Republicans of all stripes filed into House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s office to cobble together a sweeping 320-page bill that reduces SNAP benefits to veterans, the elderly and children, requires work requirements for caregivers already providing 24-7 care to disabled/ elderly relatives in order to receive medicaid because most Republican don’t consider caregiving to be work.  If President Biden will agree to their terms, Republicans will allow the Treasury to continue funding the federal government.

Not a single committee held a hearing on a bill that would slash trillions of dollars from federal agency budgets and revoke clean climate tax credits which would harm Georgia’s clean energy industries.  Not one Democrat had input into the measure.

And a surprising thing happened along the way.  The Republicans, even the most conservative antagonists (MTG, Mike Collins, Andrew Clyde) who decried this type of legislating, learned to like backroom dealmaking despite their demands in early January for McCarthy to promise a more open legislative process in exchange for their votes for speaker.

Peggy Perkins is a resident of Winder