House votes to repeal Senate's $500k perk for seized phone records
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House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune at a news conference at the Capitol on Oct. 1. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
The House voted unanimously Wednesday to repeal a provision tucked into the recently passed government funding bill that allows senators to sue the Justice Department for up to $500,000 if their phone records are seized without their knowledge
Why it matters: Senators acted with the blessing of Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), blindsiding House members who were furious about it.
- The vote to reverse the provision was 426-0.
- House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he was not aware the provision was in the package until after the Senate had passed it, and left town for the rest of the week last week.
- "I wish they hadn't, and I think it was a really bad look," Johnson told reporters.
The details: The proposal was drafted after eight senators learned their phone records were seized by the Biden-era Justice Department as part of its so-called Arctic Frost investigation.
- Because of the Senate's provision, senators, and only senators, can retroactively sue the federal government for hundreds of thousand of taxpayer dollars.
What they're saying: Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif) blasted the law as a "Be a Millionaire provision" for senators and blamed Johnson for letting it pass.
- "The Senate was so thoroughly convinced of the House's irrelevance that they thought that they could literally insert a self-enrichment scheme into the legislation and get away with it," Kiley said on the House floor Wednesday. Johnson kept the House out of session throughout the shutdown.
- Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas.) called the provision "self-serving" and "self-dealing."
Between the lines: Johnson committed to bringing the bill up last week after his members threatened to tank the government funding package over the provision.
- Had the House moved to strip the provision from the funding package, it would have prolonged the record-long government shutdown.
- Still, Johnson said he shared his members' concerns.
- "I trust John Thune," Johnson said last week. "He's a great leader, but some members got together and hoisted that upon, put it into the bill at the last minute."
The intrigue: Johnson and Thune are at odds over what comes next. Thune has defended the provision, and has been noncommittal about whether the Senate will take up the repeal.
- "The House is going to do what they're going to do with it," Thune told reporters Tuesday night when asked about the effort to repeal the measure.
- "The law that was violated was a statute that only affected the Senate," he continued. "We drafted this whole thing not to in any way implicate the House."
Yes, but: Some Republican senators have expressed concern about the provision, and Schumer said Tuesday he supports repealing it.
