While lawmakers in the Senate head back to Washington, D.C., the House of Representatives is not expected to return until possibly next week.
In a plan shared on Monday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) laid out four strategies he thinks would help in reopening Congress and “restore America’s voice” amid the coronavirus pandemic.
McCarthy — joined by Reps. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) and Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) — wrote, along with the plan, “The business of the People’s House is ‘essential work’ that must not be sidelined or ground to a halt.”
In the first part of the strategy, the Republican lawmakers call for modifying existing practices and strategies.
In this part, they point to the importance of being physically distant when recording votes and reducing congestion. Additionally, they note that plexiglass dividers could be used for high trafficked areas such as security checkpoints.
In the second part, the lawmakers urge for a phased reopening approach where committees would present an outline online of their meetings of the month to help create a staggered business calendar. This would also allow for a rotating system of “larger committee hearing rooms where necessary.”
“Precedence should be given to bipartisan COVID-19 response measures and other high-priority legislative items,” they wrote.
Additionally, the lawmakers call for the House to restore the opportunity for members to give one- and five- minute speeches from the House Floor in the morning.
In the third strategy, it calls for a “crawl, walk, run” progression to “enable sweeping use of technology for every element of committee business.”
They point to House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern’s (D-Mass.) proposal for this.
“Before we rush to discard over 200 years of precedent, we should require that rigorous testing standards be met, ample feedback be provided, and bipartisan rules of the road be agreed upon and made public to truly safeguard minority rights,” the Republican representatives wrote.
Lastly, the lawmakers proposed in the fourth strategy to accelerate mitigation practices.
In this, which they note “has already been set in motion,” they list providing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits to each office and committee, having hand sanitizing stations located in different areas around the Capitol campus, continued teleworking for some staffers, at-home temperature monitoring, among other parts.
“This plan should progress to incorporate asymptomatic randomized testing, and eventually, FDA authorized rapid antigen tests,” they later wrote.
The lawmakers concluded, “This pandemic has claimed too many lives and livelihoods already. We must not allow the institution we are tasked with safeguarding to be the next.”
The House is expected to return at least on May 11 following an extended recess amid the coronavirus outbreak.
