No, the Hastert Rule (which Johnson would absolutely invoke again) would mean we’d need a supermajority in order to force it to actually get voted on. A simple majority can’t force a floor vote.
The Speaker usually has de facto control over floor votes on pending legislation (via the United States House Committee on Rules). The Hastert rule says that the speaker will not allow a floor vote on any bill that does not have majority support within their party—even if the majority of the members of the House would vote to pass it.
The rule keeps the minority party from passing bills with the assistance of a minority of majority party members. In the House, 218 votes are needed to pass a bill; if 200 Democrats are the minority and 235 Republicans are the majority, the Hastert rule would not allow 200 Democrats and 100 Republicans together to pass a bill, because 100 Republican votes is short of a majority of the majority party, so the speaker would not allow a vote to take place.
It can be bypassed with a discharge petition but those are incredibly rare, and as we saw with the Epstein files, at the point that a party thinks they’re likely to lose to one they’ll figure out another route to forestall (like SCOTUS or having the FBI redact everything that hurts them).
we don’t even need the majority. we need 4 repubs to flip in the house and like 2 in the Senate to get a majority vote on something
No, the Hastert Rule (which Johnson would absolutely invoke again) would mean we’d need a supermajority in order to force it to actually get voted on. A simple majority can’t force a floor vote.
It can be bypassed with a discharge petition but those are incredibly rare, and as we saw with the Epstein files, at the point that a party thinks they’re likely to lose to one they’ll figure out another route to forestall (like SCOTUS or having the FBI redact everything that hurts them).
Of course. Why wouldn’t we want a rule that keeps us from passing a bill that the majority of members would vote for? /s
It’s a republic, not a democracy.
(Or whatever people say these days to justify how the legislative and electoral systems are complete trash)