House Republicans on Friday afternoon named their members to the new Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, which has been given a year – and a mandate for bipartisan consensus – to come up with proposals for improving the House's operating systems, technology, ethics, and legislative process and productivity.
The ranking member will be Tom Graves of Georgia, who last year was chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on financial services and general government.
The others are Rob Woodall of Georgia (who announced Thursday he won't run again in 2020), Rodney Davis of Illinois (the ranking member of the House Administration Committee), Susan Brooks of Indiana (last year's chairwoman of the Ethics Committee), Dan Newhouse of Washington (who's on both Appropriations and Rules) and William R. Timmons IV of South Carolina, who fulfills leadership's obligation to include one freshman from each party.
The Democrats named their members last month. Derek Kilmer of Washington will be chairman. The others are Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, Suzan DelBene of Washington (a former Microsoft executive), Zoe Lofgren of California (the new chairwoman of House Administration), Mark Pocan of Wisconsin and first-termer Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania.
In recent days, those Democrats have signaled they're ready to take on one of the House's more controversial modern practices – lawmakers using their Capitol Hill offices as their sleeping quarters during the week. While several dozen members, mostly Republicans, say doing so is a way to signal they haven't "gone Washington," critics say that lawmakers padding around in their pajamas late at night is all wrong in the #MeToo era and is a sign of disrespect to the institution.
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