Dems Accidentally Get Supermajority on House GOP’s ‘Weaponization’ Panel

House Republicans inadvertently gave the Democrats a supermajority on a newly created body. According to the resolution passed by vote on Tuesday, Democrats would get 9 seats on a 12-member body. But the plan is to actually have 21 seats on the committee and the bug was eventually fixed. Loading Something is loading.

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In an apparent blunder, House Republicans passed a resolution on Tuesday that would give Democrats a supermajority on a new select subcommittee examining the government’s “arming.”

In a resolution seeking to expand the committee to between 13 and 21 members, the drafters made an apparent typo first noticed by Politico’s Kyle Cheney.

The resolution, tabled by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and adopted by vote, said the subcommittee would have “no more than 12” members and that “no more than 9 should be appointed in consultation with the Minority Leader.” .

That would give the Democrats a 9-3 supermajority. In reality, the committee is said to have 12 Republican and 9 Democratic members, and the error will almost certainly be corrected before the committee meets.

“This is just the latest proof that this MAGA clown show was never meant to be taken seriously,” a Democratic Committee staffer told Insider, applauding the apparent typo.

The Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which will report to the House Judiciary Committee and is likely to be chaired by Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, was first established by a vote in the House of Representatives in January.

Every single Democrat voted against it.

The committee grew out of Kevin McCarthy’s offer to be spokesman and was among the concessions he made to GOP hardliners. He has been granted sweeping powers to investigate the executive branch – including the Justice Department and intelligence agencies – as well as private companies.

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) February 1, 2023

On Wednesday, Republican Rep. Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania — the vice chairman of the House of Representatives — passed an amended version of the resolution fixing the issue.

February 1, 2023 3:00 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to reflect that an amendment was passed eliminating the Democratic supermajority and setting the number of committee members at 21.