Committees. I Have Questions.
There was no public disclosure about costs associated with the August 2023 "field hearing" in Las Vegas. Beyonce was performing in Vegas that week…
“A committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours.” — Milton Berle.
“What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.” — Richard Harkness.
Last week, I posted my first legislative summaries for PA Politics. I learned a great deal about Senators John Fetterman, Dave McCormick, Representatives John Joyce and Lloyd Smucker. I learned, for example, that Fetterman comes down on the side of justice and the 99.7% who are not billionaires over 90% of the time. Joyce, surprisingly, manages that around half the time. McCormick maybe 20%, and I am still trying to determine what triggers a rare burst of MAGA immunity for McCormick.
Smucker? He’s mostly not even in the room, seemingly content with making official comments on the record congratulating his buddies on their retirement. He is in the Boebert class of Republicans.
While compiling information about legislation that our four politicians in DC sponsored or co-sponsored, I understood that the majority of the action takes place in committee. Yesterday, I worked on Sunday’s post regarding committee activity for the committees our four politicians sit on. I alternated between hope and despair as I “saw” our legislature in action.
I also came away with questions.
Why do bills tend to be sponsored in huge clumps? Nothing, nothing, nothing, then suddenly, twenty bills all on the same day.
Field hearings: Why? Expense audit? Transcripts?
Why aren’t texts of bills submitted on the floor of the House and Senate available on congress.gov within 24 hours?
C-Span links!
When resolutions are sent to committee, shouldn’t there be an up-or-down vote the next day? Followed by up-or-down vote on the floor of House or Senate the next day? Not legislation!
If the Speaker sends a bill to multiple committees, is that a delay tactic?
What is the best way to track votes, especially when there’s only a voice vote?
“House acts upon suspension of rules…” – July 21, 2025.
ALL ON ONE DAY
My Congress.gov alerts regarding legislation seem to be feast or famine. Either there’s nothing, or a flood. It made me wonder if there’s a reason behind this, such as “get this submitted when no one’s looking,” or perhaps, “this is the last day [or week] to submit a bill before recess.”
Is it something else, or nothing at all?
Very little in Washington is happenstance. I’d like to understand this feast or famine aspect of legislation.
FIELD HEARINGS
One of the field hearing transcripts that hit email alerts this week was for a field hearing on August 23, 2023. 2023! More than half the transcript consisted of “prepared remarks,” that is, not a transcript of what the “witness” actually said, but of the speech they submitted in advance. That field hearing took place in Las Vegas.
Despite “Las Vegas Edition” in the title, the subcommittee did not hold field hearings in other locales. Nor was there public disclosure about costs associated with the August 2023 field hearing in Las Vegas. Beyonce was performing in Vegas that week…
Even more distressing, then, when a field hearing was announced by Ways and Means this week, also in Las Vegas, with second field hearing at Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. Contrary to House rules, these two field hearings seem to be overtly political in nature, pumping up Trump’s spending bill. “Delivering for American workers,” the meeting titles proclaim.
Sooo… if you are in Las Vegas, July 25 at 10 a.m. PDT, you will likely see more MAGA hats than usual as the Republicans on the Ways and Means committee hold a giant pep rally in Vegas. They are live-streaming it. Interestingly, although they give the date and time, specific location is missing. I even downloaded the event to my calendar. No “place.”
Simi Valley is very close to the ocean and resorts — a quick drive to Malibu — so I searched to determine how I could audit proposed budget related to these two Ways and Means field hearings that our Rep. Lloyd Smucker will be attending. Congress.gov notes that the right to hold field hearings “is found implicitly in chamber rules,” specifically House Rule XI, clause 2, and Senate Rule XXVI, paragraph 1. They do not link to either.
When congress.gov — remember, an official government Web site — discusses regulations and guidelines pertaining to funding for field hearings, venues, ethics, requisite checklists, travel regulations, lodging, meals, this is their footnote: U.S. Congress, House Committee on House Administration, Committees’ Congressional Handbook, https://cha.house.gov/ handbooks/ committee-handbook #disbursements_ hearingsandmeetings_ fieldhearings. [Spaces are to prevent odd line breaks. Click here to follow the link.]
Guess what? That hyperlink does not work, either with or without the hashtag. The first instance of the hyperlink, it’s listed as an http link (not secure), not https (secure). Neither version works. So I looked for House ethics. Another error.
Putting on my detective hat, I went to cha.house.gov. Yes! There’s a link for handbooks, even one for committee handbooks! Success, I think. So I clicked on the committee handbook. The link took me to an archived handbook from the Biden administration. The current House has not issued a “new” committee handbook in over six months. They didn’t even extend the committee handbook from the 118th Congress!
In case you are interested, here’s a link to that cached handbook with strict guidelines for e.g., mixed purpose travel and flights on personal jets.
Note too that old (2024) guidelines had rigorous rules for “necessity of field hearing” and vetting of “witnesses.” I would wager that none of the witnesses for the July 25 Vegas and July 26 (Saturday) Simi Valley events were subject to much scrutiny at all. They haven’t even listed the “witnesses” for the Simi Valley event yet, a violation of Field Hearing rules in previous Congresses.
My search for audits of congressional field hearing expenses returned largely discouraging results. Apparently the notion of congressional accountability ended about twenty years ago. I contacted the Government Accountability Office (GAO) but am not hopeful that I will hear back. At least not until Democrats have taken back the White House and Congress.
TEXTS OF BILLS
When compiling information about legislation sponsored by our four south central Pennsylvania politicians, or activities of committees they’re assigned to, it is beyond frustrating when congress.gov does not have the full text of the proposed bill within 24 hours. Why aren’t bills submitted both in printed and digital format? After all, it’s generated in digital format. This post, for example, is being saved as Word doc and as PDF. Either of which could easily be uploaded to the Congressional Record immediately upon introduction. Similar to Sarbanes-Oxley, the bill sponsor would certify that the digital copy submitted is a true and faithful record of the bill submitted in print format.
For all I know, it may no longer be submitted in print format. Both the Senate and the House tend to be quite opaque along those lines.
Similarly, a good use of AI (I am not anti-AI, just anti-intellectual property theft, ask
!) would be the immediate analysis of very long bills. Although then our senators and representatives would likely never ever read bills again. Still, for the purposes of bill tracking, we shouldn’t have to wait months for a bill summary.Or simply require the bill sponsor to present an abstract along with the bill.
C-SPAN
Since all activities of the House and Senate, including committee meetings, field hearings, and so on, are covered by C-Span, shouldn’t that coverage be auto-linked to Congress.gov’s Congressional Records and Bill History?
Bill Histories on the congress.gov site are already good. You can track a bill from start to finish. But to see C-Span coverage of the items on a bill’s history, you have to wade through tons and tons of footage on the C-Span site.
Good example: On July 21, House Republicans pushed through a series of U.S. Chamber of Commerce-approved bills and sent them to the Senate. (More on that downstream.) HR 3343 – Greenlighting Growth Act was among those. If you click on the hyperlink, you’ll see the bill number and title. You’ll also see who sponsored the bill, in this case Mike Haridopolos (R-FL).
Below that is a tracker, where the bill is in the system. HR 3343 is at phase three, having been introduced and passed the House. Below that, tabs: Summary. Text. Actions. Titles. Amendments. Cosponsors. Committees. Related Bills. Because this bill is not new, there’s plenty of information. It even has a summary, a clue that it’s been around for a while (since May).
Since it was rammed through, I would like to see that vote. The Speaker Pro Tempore claimed it passed by voice vote. Show me! Congress has not earned my trust. Trying to find that particular vote on C-Span or YouTube proved difficult. I eventually found the entire four-hour afternoon House session from July 21, 2025. It’s at 2:12.
But — current House rules limit C-Span to a narrow focus on the Speaker and the podium of the person addressing the House. No wide-angle shots to let us see whether two people or 2000 are in the chamber. So when a House vote is taken by voice, who’s to know how many were present and how those present voted? Makes it convenient when one wishes to push legislation through.
C-Span has the footage. They are even generating transcripts as they go. But none of that is linked to Bill History on congress.gov.
RESOLUTIONS
Resolutions essentially have no teeth. They do not bind the Senate or the House to any specific action. Cornell Law School’s explanation is easier to understand than the one on congress.gov:
A Resolution of Congress is a statement issued by the House of Representatives or the Senate individually to regulate the administrative or internal business of the respective chamber, or to express facts or opinions on non-legislative matters. A Resolution of Congress is also referred to as a Simple Resolution, in contrast to a Joint Resolution of Congress or a Concurrent Resolution of Congress.
Resolutions are identified by the abbreviations “H.Res.” for Resolutions of the House, or “S.Res” for resolutions of the Senate and an identification number. Resolutions of Congress are not signed by the president and do not have the force of law.
The United States Senate webpage provides examples for when simple resolutions may be used, such as “to express the sentiments of a single house, such as offering condolences to the family of a deceased member of Congress, or it may give ‘advice’ on foreign policy or other executive business.”
I understand why resolutions should be forwarded to committees before being put to a vote. Otherwise, resolutions could become a form of filibuster, clogging the system with absurd or trivial documents, each requiring a vote.
Once a resolution is sent to a committee, there’s no reason it should just sit there without action. A simple up-or-down vote within 24 hours should suffice. With simple up-or-down vote on the floor of the respective Chamber.
If resolutions are to be performative only, then for crying out loud, get rid of them! My congress.gov alerts show me resolution after resolution, referred to committee, with zero movement. Congress.gov does not track resolutions same as it tracks bills.
Resolutions are really only non-binding polls.
But I would like to know how my representative or senator voted on e.g., Senate Concurrent Resolution 16 – A concurrent resolution recognizing the significance of equal pay and the disparity in wages paid to men and to Black women. I know John Fetterman co-sponsored that bill, which was introduced by Linda Blunt Rochester (D-NY). I know that Dave McCormick did not co-sponsor that bill, nor did any other Republican. When it was referred to committee, how did the members of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions react?
If an up-or-down vote were required, would Susan Collins (R-ME) vote yes or no? How about Tim Scott (R-SC)? Would Chair Bill Cassidy (R-LA) want his constituents to know he did not think there’s disparity in wages between men and Black women? Black women in Louisiana could ensure he’s not reelected.
If just one Republican on that committee supported Senate Concurrent Resolution 16, it would then force a vote in the Senate. Which would be fun to watch.
But Senate Concurrent Resolution 16 will likely die in committee. So what’s the point?
MULTIPLE-MULTIPLE COMMITTEES
One positive outcome of this compilation work has been my realization that Democrats in the House and Senate are taking the codification of Obama and Biden executive orders, as well as LGBTQ+ and women’s rights seriously. There’s incredible legislative activity for abortion rights, rights of same-sex couples, trans protections, immigration law, healthcare reform.
But it’s all 100% sponsored and co-sponsored by Democrats. In some cases, by almost every Democrat in the House or Senate.
Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) introduced S 2150 – Women’s Health Protection Act of 2025 – on June 24, 2025. She had forty-six co-sponsors. Forty-four Democrats, two Independents (Sanders and King). S 2150 was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
When Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) introduced a similar bill in the House – HR 4611 – she had 176 cosponsors! All Democrats. The Speaker referred that bill to the following committees:
Energy and Commerce
Ways and Means
Natural Resources
Armed Services
Veterans’ Affairs
Judiciary
Oversight and Government Reform
Foreign Affairs
I noted that bills with strong Democratic backing that could possibly pass a vote in the House — most of those bills were referred to multiple committees. HR 4611 was by far the most extreme example.
Is this a known delay tactic in the House?
TRACKING VOTES
I wanted my biweekly Bills sponsored or co-sponsored post to include how our four south central Pennsylvanians voted. I never realized how opaque the voting process is in both chambers, but especially in the House.
Does anyone have suggestions?
It’s worsened by another fail on the part of congress.gov. The email alert for Lloyd Smucker’s votes showed that he voted Yea on House Roll Call 215. This was the notification:
“House Roll Call Vote 215 - Voted Yea.”
Go ahead. Click on the link. Double-dog dare you. In case you don’t like clicking on links, here’s the URL. https://www.congress.gov/votes/house/119-1/215.
As with congressional committee rules above, that too is an error page. Because I am stubborn, I found the solution. The correct link is https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/?RollCallNum=215.
However, there’s no record of votes for HR 3343. Also on the Bill History page for congress.gov, there’s no link to votes. Just that it passed.
Finally, re voting history: That is all you get regarding voting alerts. Once you get to that roll call vote, you can finally see what was voted on. But to learn how our representatives and senators are voting, you either have to be a data scraping fool who can automate inputting exactly what you want into a database, or you have to spend way too much time compiling it, like I am doing. I have a feeling that that UX issue is intentional.
“House acts upon suspension of rules…” – July 21, 2025.
On this date, the House rammed through a ton of legislation, all under suspension of rules. Since I am not a legislator, I was unfamiliar with that terminology, so I looked it up.
Although “acting under suspension of rules” has a storied history, the aggressive nature in which it is used is fairly recent. Current rules were developed by the Republican majority during President Obama’s last two years in office. Pages 676-694 of House rules detail which rules may and may not be suspended and how. For a nice summary, see Stanley Bach’s report on the congress.gov Web site. For the record, Stanley Bach is “former” Congressional Record staffer. Thank you, Elon. Argh.
Its intent is not bad. If something is not controversial, the House sees no reason to observe the niceties of House rules regarding passage of a bill. The Lauren Boeberts and Lloyd Smuckers of this world enjoy this feature. A legislator may sponsor or co-sponsor a bill that does nothing more than add a couple of words to existing legislation. See for example Smucker’s sponsorship of HR 4204 – Medicare Patient Choice Act: To amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to allow Medicare beneficiaries to choose their physical and occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, audiologists, and chiropractors.
One would almost be tempted to think Lloyd had a mild progressive streak. Until you understand that the sum total of that “legislation” is: In every instance where the law reads “physician or practitioner,” substitute “physician, practitioner, therapist, or qualified audiologist.” That’s it. So he gets his name on a bill. Come election time, he can say, “I sponsored a bill!”
But what the House did on July 21, 2025 does not seem to me to be business as usual. Surprisingly, Mike Johnson and his appointed Speaker Pro Tempore David J. Taylor (R-OH) knew they had more than 2/3 YEA votes, including Democrats. I say “surprisingly,” because much of the legislation pushed through in less than a couple of hours had been drafted and marked up by the US Chamber of Commerce, an ally of Project 2025 people. I am not surprised that Lloyd Smucker and John Joyce went along. I am surprised that the majority of Democrats did so. Perhaps I should not be?
Because HR 3343 that I keep harping about? One of fourteen USCoC-blessed bills that passed the House and was sent to the Senate on July 21, 2025.
HR 3343 – Greenlighting Growth Act. Any time Congress seeks to lower the bar for financial reporting for publicly traded companies, I get nervous. There’s a concerted effort to undo Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX). People forget that there was a helluva good reason for SOX. Remember Baan? This 2000 report on the fall of Baan is a refresher course.
The two major and best-known of SOX requirements: CEOs of publicly-traded companies must certify audited financials (they may not say, “I didn’t know our financials said that”); and, off-book entries receive extra scrutiny. Although hubris and fraud (declaring intercompany transactions as trade sales) were at the root of the Baan fiasco, apparently errors in off-book Excel journal entries were part of the problem as well.
HR 3343 reduces financial reporting for “emerging growth companies (EGCs)” who have gone or wish to go public. Please don’t be deceived. When House representatives talk about “small business,” they are not talking about your accounting or Web site design firm. Even if you are successful and employ ten or twenty people, and have revenues of $10 million, they are not talking about you.
An EGC is defined as a company that has annual gross revenues less than $1.07 billion during its most recent fiscal year and has not sold common stock under a registration statement. (Thank you, Cornell Law.) When President Obama was tasked with turning around the Republican recession of 2008, the so-called JOBS Act of 2012 was part of his toolchest. The Act had nothing to do with jobs, zero, zilch, nada. It was about getting funding to small (remember the definition) companies.
So Congress, on a bipartisan basis, relaxed financial reporting rules for EGCs wishing to issue an IPO. For some reason, companies with only $1 billion in revenues cannot be expected to provide three years of audited financial statements. So the JOBS Act reduced the requirement to two years of audited financial statements. And threw in a bunch of other goodies, like not having to declare the salaries of executives. The JOBS Act of 2012 also removed the need to provide auditor attestation of internal controls.
As side note: In the late 1980s, I was Secretary-Treasurer and US Controller for the US subsidiary of a very large German corporation ($750 million in revenue). Under German law, we had to have a full audit of US operations by one of the Big Four accounting firms, including auditor attestation of internal controls. That is how I learned to write procedure guides and process statements.
The US subsidiary had $10 million in assets and $1 million in annual revenue.
So the JOBS Act of 2012 provides those who wish to participate in the IPO of an EGC with less information than that tiny subsidiary gave its parentco in the 1980s. Think about that next time you want to throw money at an EGC.
Well, it gets worse. Let’s say there’s an EGC, let’s call it Trump’s Big Beautiful EGC (TBBEGC) that is responsible for mowing the greens at his golf clubs. TBBEGC has $1.069 billion in revenues. It therefore would only have to provide two years of audited financial statements after its IPO. Under current rules. And TBBEGC would not have to provide any information about executive compensation. None. Nor would their processes have to be audited. Under current rules.
With HR 3343 in the picture, apparently financial disclosure rules are weakened further, although rhetoric does not match the text of the bill. And… after TBBEGC’s IPO, even five or more years after the IPO, if TBBEGC decides to acquire a company like maybe Amazon ($638 billion) or Paramount ($29 billion) or Microsoft ($270 billion), HR 3343 says that the EGC rules apply to that acquisition. Even if by date of acquisition TBBEGC is no longer an EGC, even if pre-HR 3343 meant that Amazon, Paramount, or Microsoft were subject to tougher reporting regs.
Why would our Democrats vote for this? (Shh, I know.)
If anything, we should be strengthening financial reporting requirements, not weakening them.
Long and short: On July 21, 2025, the House passed fourteen such bills, some flat-out pork, others financially benefiting billionaires, and sent them all to the Senate. I know about them only because I am tracking what the committees that “my” representatives and senators sit on are facing, so I can send them pointed messages. And Dave McCormick sits on the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, to which HR 3343 was referred.
My final gripe, also involving “suspension of rules,” would be: C’mon guys, fix your wording. It’s absurd to read in the official congressional record: July 21, 4:31 pm: Mr. Gosar moved to suspend the rules and pass the bill, as amended. 4:31 pm: Considered under suspension of the rules. 4:31 pm: DEBATE - The House proceeded with forty minutes of debate on H.R. 131. 4:39 pm: On motion to suspend the rules and pass the bill, agreed to by voice vote. Passed. 4:40pm: Motion to reconsider laid on the table, agreed to without objection.
I know, I know. Suspension of House rules limits debate to forty minutes, so the actual verbatim transcript is:
SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE: Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Hill, and the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Gottheimer, each will control 20 minutes.
And then they talk for fifteen seconds, yield their remaining time, the next person speaks for 15 seconds, yields their remaining time. A 30-second “debate” which is no debate at all is recorded on the congressional record as forty minutes.
Congress.gov, whoever is responsible for your updates, please correct the record to show how little time is actually spent on legislation. One would think with five or ten forty-minute debates, our representatives were hard at work. Nope.
So as you read PA Politics going forward, or as you consume “news” stories, or as you read here on Substack, keep my questions in mind. Add your own. We shall not be docile!
And if you can answer any of my questions, bless you!
© 2025 Denise Elaine Heap. Please message me for permission to quote.
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