Pelosi’s Day 1: Win the gavel, change the rules, end the shutdown – Washington Examiner

Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats return to power in the House on Thursday with an ambitious first-day agenda that involves her election as speaker, changes to longstanding House rules, and an attempt to end the government shutdown.

But it also marks a return to divided government and more legislative gridlock that in the past has fueled frustration with Congress among voters.

That gridlock could already be seen Wednesday, when Pelosi, D-Calif., insisted that President Trump and Senate Republicans accept a spending bill that doesn’t include Trump’s $5 billion border wall funding. Pelosi said she wouldn’t provide the money, while Senate Republicans said they wouldn’t consider bills that don’t fund the wall.

On Thursday, however, Pelosi will get her way in the House, where only a simple majority of Democrats is needed to pass what they want, regardless of GOP objections.

Here’s how the day will go:

The 115th Congress will convene for the last time at 11 a.m. An hour later, at noon, the 116th Congress will convene, and soon after, members will elect a new House speaker.

Pelosi is a lock to regain the position she last held in 2011. In November, she won over a clear majority of Democrats, and since then, she’s picked off possible defectors.

She’ll need 218 to be elected speaker, which means she can lose 17 Democratic votes and still win the gavel.

After lawmakers and delegates are sworn in, they will take up a piece of the new Democratic rules governing the 116th Congress. Among other things, the new rules will require all lawmakers, not just new members, to undergo ethics training once each year, and will ban sexual relationships between members and committee staff.

The rules hold that indicted members of Congress can’t serve in leadership or committee roles. That change will put limits on members like Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., who was indicted for insider trading.

The rules will allow members to wear religious headwear in the House, despite rules that say no hats are allowed.

They will also require new spending bills to include offsetting spending cuts or tax increases, a bid to tame the budget deficit. That proposal, however, is forcing some liberal Democrats to vote “no” on the rules package over fears that it will prevent the House from passing new social spending programs.

But at the same time, they will also include older language that says the national debt ceiling is automatically raised whenever a new spending bill is passed. That change is likely to anger deficit hawks who fear the change will allow steeper increases in the nearly $22 trillion national debt.

Additional rule changes are expected to get votes Friday and next week.

Once the first wave of rule changes is out of the way, Democrats will make an effort to end the partial government shutdown that has been in place for nearly two weeks.

They will first pass a bill funding eight federal departments whose funding has lapsed, including the Departments of Treasury, State, and Commerce.

Then, they will pass a continuing spending resolution aimed at level-funding the Department of Homeland Security for about a month. That’s an effort to create more time to negotiate a final spending bill for DHS, which has been held up in a fight over whether to fund President Trump’s border wall.

But these last votes aren’t likely to end the partial shutdown. President Trump insisted Wednesday that he wouldn’t sign the bills until they include his border wall money.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., also said he would not take them up. He said the Democrats’ bills are not a ” serious contribution” to the talks on how to end the shutdown.

And that means after a busy day of new Democratic leadership in the House, Congress won’t be any closer to a solution to the shutdown. McConnell said he’s hopeful that some answer can be found in “the coming days and weeks,” a possible sign that this will be the longest partial shutdown in U.S. history.

Trump asked lawmakers to return to the White House on Friday for more negotiations.