Modernization panel finds a new home under House Administration Committee

WASHINGTON — The “fix Congress” panel that officially disbanded last session will return in the 118th Congress in a different form.

The House Administration Committee on Thursday established a new subcommittee — a reincarnation of the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, or ModCom, that first convened in 2019.

One of ModCom’s final recommendations before it dissolved at the end of 2022 was to create such a subcommittee to keep its efforts alive. But with shifting power in the House, the fate of ModCom was unclear, even with broad, bipartisan support for the move.

In the end, Republicans went for the idea. “To their credit, that’s what the majority is doing,” said Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Wash., the former ModCom chair.

The House Administration Committee voted to create the subcommittee as part of the rules package it adopted at Thursday’s organizational meeting.

The subcommittee will be charged with continuing “the important work that the select committee carried out in the last two congresses, with a focus on implementing many of those bipartisan ideas,” said House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis.

Kilmer, who is new this year to the House Administration Committee, will be ranking member on the subcommittee, working across from subcommittee Chair Stephanie Bice, R-Okla. It will include a total of four members — equally divided between the majority and minority, in keeping with ModCom tradition.

The other members are Mike Carey, R-Ohio, and Joseph D. Morelle, D-N.Y., who also serves as ranking member of the full committee.

Bice, who is now in her second term, said she first became interested in improving House operations after her freshman orientation. She was disappointed in how it was run and submitted a list of proposed changes to now-Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

“I think that spurred a conversation around whether or not I had an interest in serving on this committee,” she said.

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