Holman Rule returns with 118th Congress’s approval of rules package

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California did what he needed to acquire enough votes to be elected speaker.

And Monday night, the House of Representatives did what it needed to pass a rules package on a 220-213 vote.

The 118th Congress will operate under this rule package, including the Holman Rule, which will challenge lawmakers who attempt to raise the debt limit, and will allow lawmakers to create spending bills to fire federal officials and defund federal programs.

First implemented in 1876, the Holman Rule was eliminated in 1983, but included in the rules package for the 115th Congress and adopted on January 2, 2017.

Yesterday, Virginia and Maryland lawmakers issued a warning about inclusion of the Holman Rule ahead of last night’s vote.

“The Holman Rule is a procedural tactic to allow the reduction or elimination of funding to individual programs already authorized by Congress, or of salaries of individual federal employees or offices, via appropriations riders,” a group of lawmakers from the capital region said in a statement.

The group includes U.S. Reps. Don Beyer, Gerry Connolly, Jennifer Wexton and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, Steny Hoyer, Jamie Raskin, David Trone and Glenn Ivey of Maryland, and Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton of Washington, D.C.

“During last week’s Speaker vote, the extreme right wing of the incoming House Republican majority showed that they were really in charge. Now this hard right MAGA fringe — which helped Donald Trump try to overturn the 2020 election — hopes to extend the same chaos and nihilism to the rest of the federal government, plotting to defund law enforcement using the Holman Rule to shield Donald Trump from investigation,” the capital region lawmakers said.

The lawmakers said they are “all too familiar” with Republicans in the House vilifying and punishing federal civil servants.

“We vigorously oppose these efforts to defund federal police and attack federal employees, and we urge all members of both parties who believe in the rule of law and support good governance to join us,” the group stated.

According to the press release, the Freedom Caucus included the Holman Rule in a list of demands to McCarthy for changes to the rules package. Freedom Caucas member Andy Biggs of Arizona publicly called for inclusion of the Holman Rule to “start defunding … the FBI, the DOJ.” Others in the Freedom Caucus agreed with Biggs’ call for defunding the FBI and Department of Justice. The Freedom Caucus is led by Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, a major figure in the plot to overturn the 2020 election results. Perry’s cell phone, according to the press release, was seized by the FBI last year as part of the January 6 investigation.

The press release stated that Freedom Caucus Republicans made it clear they will use showdowns over the debt limit and government funding bills to get policy concessions and use the threat of a government shutdown if necessary for their cause.