Absence did not make the heart grow fonder, at least not for members of the U.S. House of Representatives.
During its first full week back to work in Washington after a seven-week recess, the House spent precious floor time arguing over members’ behavior, as individual lawmakers tried to formally rebuke specific colleagues three separate times. Another lawmaker promised to bring a resolution to expel a representative, unless that member resigns from office.
It all left many House members frustrated with the censure process, which was used sparingly until the last five years.
Since 1832, only 28 members of the House have been censured, with five of them happening since 2021. In recent years, lawmakers have increasingly brought forward censure resolutions for largely partisan reasons.
A bipartisan duo — Democratic Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia and Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska — have a solution. They’re sponsoring a resolution to raise the threshold to censure a member or remove them from a committee from a simple majority vote to a 60 percent threshold.
“I think this week was like the Animal House version of the House,” said Bacon Friday morning. “I really don’t like these partisan censures and partisan kicking-people-off-committee. There’s got to be some support on the other side.”
The idea of changing House rules for the censure process has support from some Colorado lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse said he thinks revising the censure policies would likely be broadly supported.
“I have talked before about the broken and dysfunctional nature of the U.S. Congress,” said Neguse. “It has become an institution where folks are far more interested in shaming their colleagues and getting as many Instagram likes as they can and far less focused on legislating and actually solving the problems that face our country.”
Democratic Rep. Brittany Pettersen agrees there needs to be a higher standard for bringing censure resolutions.
“What a waste of time,” she said. “This is like high school drama played out in the public space. We have urgent issues to address that we need to be focused on.”
GOP Rep. Jeff Hurd said he’d need to see the specifics of any changes, but “that’s absolutely something along the lines of what I would support.”
“It’s not good. It’s a tit-for-tat. It doesn’t reflect well on the institution, and we’ve got more important things to do,” Hurd said.
Fellow GOP freshman Rep. Gabe Evans added that these censure efforts are not what the American people want. “They want us to be working on making things more affordable.”
But not all lawmakers see a need for change.
GOP Rep. Tim Burchett, who tends to vote with the far-right House Freedom Caucus, likes the rules that are currently in place, and adds that the chamber needs to address the simple fact that “We’ve got some people, I think, [who] have done some pretty bad things.”
On Tuesday, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, a House Freedom Caucus member, put forward a resolution to censure of Democratic Del. Stacey Plaskett of the U.S. Virgin Islands. Newly released records show she texted with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during a 2019 congressional hearing. That censure resolution failed.
South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace brought a censure resolution against fellow Republican Rep. Cory Mills of Florida over accusations of stolen valor, assault and federal contracting violations. That, too, failed and an investigation into Mills was instead referred to the Ethics Committee.
An intraparty fight between Democrats did pass, with the House rebuking Illinois Rep. Jesus Garcia for his efforts to handpick the successor to his seat.
When the House returns after Thanksgiving, it may face yet another member-on-member attempt at rebuke. Rep. Greg Stube of Florida said he will move to expel Democratic Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida if she does not resign first.
Cherfilus-McCormick was indicted by the Justice Department this week on charges of stealing FEMA funds and funneling the money to her campaign.
