It’s official: Congressmen Joe Walsh, an Illinois Republican, and Mike Ross, an Arkansas Democrat, have saved Christmas.
According to House rules, mail containing specific holiday greetings like “Merry Christmas” and Happy Hanukkah” cannot be “franked” — Hill lingo for receiving taxpayer reimbursement for postage — according to a memo from the “Franking Commission Staff” obtained by The Washington Examiner.
In response to the memo and the uproar that followed, Walsh and Ross circulated a letter earlier this week encouraging both Republican and Democratic members to demand the rule, which dates back to 1974, be rescinded.
Sixty-one of their colleagues eventually signed on to the letter, and The Hill reports that House leaders have now received new guidelines on “franking” holiday correspondence.
“The Franking Commission has spent the last year coming up with a whole host of revisions, and those are before the leadership now awaiting approval,” Illinois Republican Rep. Aaron Schock, the chairman of the House Franking Commission, told The Hill.
Walsh told The Daily Caller on Friday that he was pleased his complaints got through.
“This country was founded on religious freedom and free speech, and I am confident that the Franking Commission will hear the message that I and 61 of my colleagues have expressed,” he said. “Let’s stop worrying about political correctness, and start worrying about what we were sent here to do.” (RELATED: Full coverage of Christmas)
Schock was coy about what the rule change actually entails, and said that the new rules likely won’t take effect until January.