And they’re back!
The 108th General Assembly convenes at noon today. The key numbers to remember are 70 and 24. Those numbers represent the Republicans in the House and the Senate, which is a supermajority.
What does that mean? Well, it pretty much means that many things are going to sail through. There are enough people in the House to call the question and cut off debate at anytime. I’ll be interested to see how much debate time they allow Democrats to have on certain issues before calling the question.
The question is: will all of these Republicans be on the same page? Having 70 caucus members has been likened to herding cats. Even with 64 members, there were disagreements on certain topics (See: Guns in Lots).
Another interesting thing to note as we go into another session are the proposed rule changes in the House by Speaker Beth Harwell. The one that is getting the most play and the most concern is the one that limits each member to 10 bills. There are certain members (G.A. Hardaway comes to mind) that file 5 to 6 times more than that in a normal session. Multiple news organizations have already reported that lobbyists have been scrambling to find sponsors early, and we could see a lot of freshman members carrying bills.
It’s going to be an interesting session and an interesting day!
