McCarthy to Support Revival of Holman Rule That Strengthens Congress Against Bureaucrats

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) speaks at a news conference on the infrastructure bill with fellow members of the House Freedom Caucus, outside the Capitol building in Washington on Aug. 23, 2021. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has told Republican colleagues that if he’s elected speaker of the House, he'll support the restoration of a controversial legislative tool used by Congress to reduce or eliminate salaries for specific executive branch programs and employees.

Multiple congressional sources confirmed to The Epoch Times on Dec. 15 that McCarthy told members of the House Republican Conference on Dec. 14 that he will back reviving the rule, which could potentially strengthen congressional oversight.

McCarthy’s agreement on the Holman Rule appears to be a move in his continuing effort to gain sufficient support to be elected House speaker on Jan. 3, 2023, when the 118th Congress takes office.

There'll be 222 Republicans in the House and 212 Democrats, so, assuming all members are present for the speaker vote, McCarthy must gain the votes of at least 218 House members. A dissident group led by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) claims to have enough votes to prevent a McCarthy speakership.

Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus (HFC) have pushed for the rule’s return as a condition of the 42-member group’s support for McCarthy’s bid to become speaker. However, McCarthy has balked at agreeing to another proposed rule change that would make it easier for an individual representative to force a new speaker election.

McCarthy has hinted recently that he might be agreeable to a modified rule requiring some number of House members to support the action rather than a lone lawmaker. Adoption of such a rule, even in a modified form, could significantly reduce the power of the speaker to enforce caucus discipline.

The Holman Rule was first adopted shortly before the Civil War and since then has had an on-again, off-again tenure. The previous House Republican majority, led by then-Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), brought the rule back in 2017 after it was rescinded by Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O'Neill (D-Mass.) in 1983.

Congress has the “power of the purse” authority under Article 1 of the Constitution and can thus increase, decrease, or eliminate any federal spending if the Senate and House agree, but the president must also agree, so the rule’s application is rarely easy.

The Holman Rule provides an exception to the long-standing House rule against including anything in appropriations legislation other than spending provisions.

The HFC contends that bringing the rule back is needed to put muscle in congressional oversight of the policies and programs of President Joe Biden.

“Congress has the tools in its arsenal to hold the Biden Administration accountable—if we activate them. Democrats eliminated the ‘Holman Rule’ when they took the House because it allows Members to make targeted spending cuts in appropriations funding bills by slashing the funding of specific federal programs or cutting the salaries of individual federal employees (e.g., Dr. Anthony Fauci). Republicans must reimplement the Holman Rule,” the HFC stated in its rules change proposal.

Likely incoming House Committee on Oversight and Reform Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) is enthusiastic about the prospect of potentially having the Holman Rule available to House Republicans.

“We have bureaucrats and agencies all over Washington, D.C. that are answering to no one. They’re trying to enact their own ideologies on the will of the private sector, on the will of the taxpayers, and they, thus far, haven’t been held accountable,” Comer told Just the News.

“That'll give us the tools in the toolbox to, when we do an appropriations bill, to actually pinpoint that particular employee of the federal government and erase their salary, cut their salary down or maybe lower it down to $1. I don’t know what the exact rule will be, but make it very hard on them to where they’re basically no longer employed there. So that’s something that you have to have if you’re serious about providing oversight and actually holding people accountable.”

After House Republicans had the House majority and reinstated the Holman Rule in 2017, a half-dozen attempts were made to utilize it in the form of amendments to appropriations legislation, but all of the attempts failed.