Under the leadership of Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanKenosha will be a good bellwether in 2020 At indoor rally, Pence says election runs through Wisconsin Juan Williams: Breaking down the debates MORE (R-Wis.), the House of Representatives has been engaging in a review of the rules of the House through Organizational Task Force meetings and the House Rules Committee. This is a needed and courageous exercise. Citizens of all political backgrounds can agree that Congress needs to reform the way it works. A key way for that to happen is to make sure committees hold recorded votes on big-ticket items before they come to the House floor for a vote.

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Too often, legislation that will spend a great deal of money is passed in committees by voice vote. Often, committee members are encouraged to let a bill pass by voice vote and not by a recorded vote. In fact, this year, nine of the 12 spending bills approved by the House Appropriations Committee were passed by voice vote at full committee.

These nine voice votes appropriated billions of dollars. They were passed by the committee and ready for floor action, pending action by the House Rules Committee, without a single member of the House Appropriations Committee having had their vote recorded. This practice allows members and committees to evade responsibility for their actions.

This can be accomplished by a change in the rules of the House that will also apply to other committees when they authorize spending: any measure appropriating or authorizing the appropriations of $100 million or more must have a recorded vote at committee.

Why $100 million? Last year, the House passed H.R. 427, the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2015 (REINS Act), by a wide margin of 243 to 165. This legislation "would require Congress and the president to approve major regulations (those with an economic effect of $100 million or more) before they could take effect. Congress would be granted 70 days to vote affirmatively to adopt such regulations."

The logic of the REINS Act is that action by the executive branch that costs $100 million or higher needs to be considered by Congress and requires its assent. Under this bill, the regulation or rule could only come into effect without congressional approval if the president determined that "national security or the public health or safety" were at stake. Similarly, this proposed House rule would assert that $100 million in appropriations or authorization is also a significant amount of money and requires a maximum of transparency and responsibility by members of the House.

It is difficult to justify such an extraordinary sum of $100 million being approved by a House committee without members voting in the affirmative or negative on the proposal. But many in Washington often think differently than those in the rest of the country. After all, the House Appropriations Committee this year called $73 million in spending a "slight increase." That is far from slight, but rather very significant. And that "slight increase" was part of a $3.48 billion spending bill for congressional operations. The committee passed it by voice vote.

It is time Congress got serious about how it allows the people's money to be spent. Our constitutional republic and its finances will be strengthened if the House forces committees to have their members vote yes or no on bills that spend a great deal of money. Recorded committee votes on bills allocating $100 million or more will let constituents of these members know what they supported at the committee level and increase accountability.

These votes will help members of the House who are not on a committee that reported out a bill to ascertain the true level of support for legislation that comes to the floor for a vote. The more representatives and constituents know about the support level of committees for legislation, the better. This rule change may result in bad bills not getting voted on out of committee, or even brought up in committee. Those would be procedural and policy victories.

Siefring is director of government relations for FreedomWorks. His views are his own. Follow him on Twitter @NeilSiefring.

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