Chambana Sun

Rep. Dan Caulkins (R-Decatur) doesn’t try to hide his disappointment about the new House rules adopted under recently installed Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch (D-Hillside).

“It’s more than interesting that this is what they decided they wanted to do after having the time they had to put something in place,” Caulkins told the Chambana Sun. “There’s essentially no change to what we had under Mike Madigan (D-Chicago). Everything still comes down to one-man rule.”

Democrats are backing Welch’s new guidelines, which include a 10-year limit serving as the speaker or minority leader and a policy that requires the Rules Committee to refer all House bills “to a substantive committee” before the deadline for committees to act expires. Caulkins believes it’s just more of the same.

“The truth is Republicans moved to term limit our leadership four years ago,” he said. “If Democrats were serious about making this a staple of our government, they would make it a law. As it stands, anytime they want to change the rules on this, they can in every two years.”

Before Welch’s changes were made official, Caulkins said a group of Republicans sent him a letter highlighting a list of issues they thought needed attention.

“They kind of came along on the issue of more bills being able to get a hearing after we stressed there should be a mechanism for something like that,” he said. “The concern now is that there are still no guarantees, and there are still ways to manipulate the situation so that the party in the minority can still be muted.”

Caulkins said he hopes that Welch comes to prove he can be taken at his word.

“He talks a lot about this being a work-in-progress and how he wants everyone to be able to work together,” he said. “That all sounds good, but only time will tell if it’s truly what he means.”