While the next chapter will explain the functions and importance of the various House committees, I have devoted an entire chapter to the Rules Committee because its importance and unique legislative role warrants such attention.
The House Rules Committee—formally known as the “Committee on Rules”—plays a critical role in how the institution operates as a legislative body. It is often referred to as the House’s “traffic cop,” which is perhaps an apt description of its essential function.
For all intents and purposes, there are only two ways a bill can be brought up for debate and voted on in the House. First, it can be brought up for debate as required by a “rule” passed by the Rules Committee. Second, it can be brought up by the House leadership under a process known as “suspension of the rules.” Under the latter procedure, a bill must receive a two-thirds majority vote to pass. Thus, bills are generally only brought up under suspension of the rules if they are noncontroversial (such as measures to rename post offices). Most bills of substance and consequence reach the House floor by way of the powerful Rules Committee.*
The Rules Committee enables the leadership of the majority party in the House to tightly control the manner in which legislation is debated, amended, and voted in the chamber. The committee’s central function is to write “rules” that govern debate on major legislation. Before a bill cleared by the Rules Committee can be debated, the House must first pass the rule that accompanies the bill. Each rule dictates how much time is allotted for debate on the bill; which amendments, if any, may be offered; and the time permitted for debate on each amendment. In fact, a rule can even amend the bill before it reaches the House floor. (This is known as a “self-executing” rule—the changes made by the rule to the bill take effect automatically when the House passes the rule.) With respect to amendments, there are three kinds of rules: open, closed, and structured. An open rule allows for an unlimited number of amendments. A closed rule permits no amendments whatsoever. A structured rule allows for a limited number of amendments.
Clearly, a committee with such sweeping authority over “floor debate” on legislation is a powerful one. (“Floor debate,” a term used throughout this book, simply refers to any debate on a measure that takes place on the House floor.) Yet it is the Rules Committee’s membership structure that makes it such a powerful tool for the majority party’s leadership. On all other committees, the ratio of majority party members to minority party members roughly mirrors that of the makeup of the full House. This is not the case on the Rules Committee. On this committee, the majority party enjoys a 9–4 advantage over the minority party. Thus, the minority on the Rules Committee is effectively powerless to exert influence over the committee’s deliberations. Moreover, each party’s leadership appoints their caucus or conference’s most loyal partisan members to the Rules Committee, which makes defections on the committee exceedingly rare. For the reasons described in the paragraphs above, the House Rules Committee enables the majority party to enjoy a degree of control over the chamber’s legislative business that a Senate Majority Leader could only dream of. While the Senate has a “Rules and Administration Committee,” it does not serve a similar function to the House Committee on Rules. Indeed, the Rules Committee is a distinguishing feature of the House, and appreciating its influence over the business of the House is critical to understanding the legislative process.
Although the majority party’s control over the Rules Committee is nearly absolute, this was not always the case. Indeed, the degree to which the modern Rules Committee functions as an arm of the majority party’s leadership reflects major institutional and cultural changes that have reshaped the House of Representatives since the early 1960s. Until a revolt by liberal insurgents disempowered Howard Smith, a Virginia Democrat and segregationist, in his role as chairman of the Rules Committee in 1961, Smith was effectively an autonomous political actor. As will be further explained in the chapter on congressional committees, committee chairmen generally were far more powerful during the New Deal and civil rights eras than they are today. The House leadership’s control over the Rules Committee is particularly critical, however, because it enables the Speaker and his or her lieutenants to dictate the chamber’s day-to-day legislative agenda.
Given the role that the Rules Committee plays in carrying out the legislative will of the House’s governing leadership, the committee’s chairman tends to be a reliable supporter of his or her leadership. (Some observers would, in fact, regard the Rules Committee chair as a de facto member of the leadership.) From 2011 to 2015, the Rules Committee Chairman was Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), a close ally of Speaker John Boehner. From 2007 to 2011, the Rules Committee was chaired by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), a staunch ally of Minority Leader (and former Speaker) Nancy Pelosi.
In an illustration of the outsized role the Rules Committee can play in legislative debates, Slaughter briefly became a lightning rod during the eleventh hour of an ultimately successful Democratic effort to pass a comprehensive health-care reform bill. A colorful figure who has long represented a congressional district in upstate New York but who speaks with the twang of her native Kentucky, Slaughter had considerable experience tangling with her Republican counterparts during debate in her committee and on the House floor. Yet when Democrats found themselves scrambling to stave off a devastating legislative defeat of President Obama’s signature domestic policy initiative, Slaughter proposed a parliamentary maneuver that—although it was never actually used in the passage of health-care reform legislation—created a firestorm of controversy.1
In essence, the Democrats found themselves in the following predicament: the House and Senate had initially passed different versions of a health-care overhaul, as is typical at the start of a legislative process. Senate Democrats had passed their bill with a “super majority” of 60 votes, the number of votes required to end a filibuster and allow a vote on final passage. (A “filibuster,” a procedural tactic unique to the U.S. Senate, allows a single senator to debate a bill indefinitely, and can only be defeated with the support of 60 senators. Thus, the minority party in the Senate can block legislation with a minority of only 40 votes.)
Following passage of the Senate bill, Republican Scott Brown won a special election in Massachusetts to fill the Senate seat of the late Edward M. Kennedy, a liberal icon and key supporter of health-care reform. Brown’s victory cost Senate Democrats their 60-vote supermajority, leaving them without the procedural math they had been counting on to vote on a final health-care reform that included changes demanded by House members. House Democrats insisted they would only pass the Senate’s bill if Senate Democratic leaders promised to then pass a separate bill implementing changes sought by the House through a process known as budget reconciliation. Budget reconciliation measures can effectively be fast-tracked through the Senate and passed with 51 votes.
Many House liberals, however, regarded the Senate-passed bill as capitulation to moderate and conservative Democratic demands, and assailed its lack of a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers. Others objected to its tax on high-cost “Cadillac” insurance plans, as the tax had been vigorously opposed by labor unions, and was likely to be unpopular with key constituent groups. Yet many Democrats believed that the Senate-passed bill was preferable to passing no bill at all, and still held out hope that changes favored by progressives could be implemented through the reconciliation process. In order to assuage the concerns of House Democrats threatening to balk at passing the Senate health-care bill, Slaughter proposed that the House vote on a self-executing rule (see explanation above) that would “deem” the Senate bill passed when the House passed the rule. In other words, when the House passed the self-executing rule for debate on the Senate bill, the bill itself would be “deemed passed.” This essentially allowed the House to pass the Senate bill without voting on it directly. This strategy became known as “Deem and Pass,” or “the Slaughter Solution.”2 Republicans, in an effort to portray the maneuver as undemocratic, corrupt, and diabolical, preferred to dub the plan as the “Slaughter House Rules” and “Demon Pass.”3
While the wisdom of this strategy was questioned by many political observers (including some liberals), it was in reality a parliamentary tactic employed many times in the past, more frequently by Republicans than Democrats. Still, the uproar over the Slaughter Solution threatened to derail a delicate effort to pass an increasingly imperiled health-care bill, and Democratic leaders ultimately abandoned the plan. In the end, the House passed the Senate bill with a clear-cut vote, and both chambers passed changes sought by the House through budget reconciliation. The legislative process that resulted in the Affordable Care Act becoming law in 2010 will be outlined in greater detail as a case study later in this book.
During the Bush and Obama administrations, the increasingly partisan and caustic nature of the politics of the House has been very much on display in the Rules Committee, and in floor debate on the rules that it crafts for consideration of bills by the full House. When the Democrats launched a spirited and ultimately successful effort to regain control of the House during the 2006 midterm election campaign, they vowed a more open and egalitarian process for debating bills. Among their proposed reforms was a general policy of providing open and structured rules that would allow for open debate and the offering of amendments to legislation. Although they initially made good on this campaign promise, the era of openness in the House under Democratic control admittedly proved short-lived. By the end of 2008, the Rules Committee was sharply restricting Republican efforts to offer amendments during legislative debates.4 Democratic leaders argued that Republicans had used obstructionist parliamentary tactics to an unprecedented degree and threatened to leave the House unable to carry out its business.
Disputes over amendments proved particularly toxic during debates over appropriations bills, which provide funding for government services and operations, including social welfare programs and the military. Traditionally, appropriations bills were debated under open rules, with members offering unlimited amendments. Consideration of such bills was time-consuming, but the bill’s “floor manager” (the member, generally from the majority party, who is charged with coordinating debate on legislation) would eventually reach an agreement with his or her counterpart from the minority party to limit further amendments to a number and variety that were agreeable to both parties. While Democrats accused Republicans of engaging in dilatory tactics, Republicans protested that debate on amendments was being shut down prematurely and that the Democrats had entertained debate on very few amendments by historical standards.5
Regardless, a pattern clearly emerges when one examines how House majorities have governed over the last decade. When the minority party is seeking to regain control of the House, its members promise a return to a more open legislative process. Once in power—and charged with the responsibility of governing—the majority closes down the chamber’s legislative proceedings in order to further its political and policy agenda. Despite the Republicans’ promises in 2010 to restore a more open amendment process in the House, 2013 was a year marked by a record forty-four closed rules, leading Democrats to accuse the Republican majority of running the “most closed congress in history.”6