Everyone knows Congress is broken. There are lots of causes, from gerrymandering to the cost of campaigns to the explosive impact of social media. But believe it or not, there’s a relatively simple fix that the next speaker of the House, regardless of party affiliation, could make that would go a long way toward making Congress work again.

Free the House Rules Committee.

Few Americans who haven’t worked on Capitol Hill even know what the Rules Committee is, but it is key to the effective functioning of the House of Representatives. Since its establishment in 1880, it has been the primary means by which the leadership of the House schedules legislation and sets procedures for how bills are debated on the floor. Over the past several decades, however, the majority leadership in each party has used the Rules Committee to shut out the minority and often its own members from any meaningful participation in the legislative process.

The current Rules Committee has taken this to such an extreme that it has already set a record for issuing the highest ever number of “closed” rules—restrictions on the legislative process that allow no amendments and little debate—in a session of Congress. And the current session still has four months to go.

For those who long for the days when Congress “worked,” when debate mattered and compromise existed in the congressional lexicon, the impending change of speakership—regardless of whether it goes to a Democrat or Republican—offers a chance to change course.

In theory, the Rules Committee does something simple: It sets the rules for debate. With 435 members, someone needs to come up with a process that sets the amount of time for discussion and how many amendments can be offered and voted on. Under what’s known as an “open” rule, any amendment permitted by the standing rules of the House can be offered. A “structured” rule allows only amendments specifically designated by the Rules Committee. A “closed” rule allows no amendments.

In the current session, which began in January 2017, all rules have been either structured or closed, including legislation that has been traditionally considered under an open rule, such as appropriations bills. Stunningly, more than half of all rules have been closed rules that allow no amendments.

Today, leaders—of whichever party is in power—dictate to the Rules Committee how to structure debate on bills. More often than not, those rules are structured or closed. That effectively shuts out most lawmakers from the deliberations—the minority party, of course, but also individual lawmakers from the leadership’s own party and even congressional committees. That’s a major reason that you increasingly hear pleas from both Republicans and Democrats for leadership to restore “regular order.”

Using the Rules Committee to curtail debate is not unique to Republicans. Leadership of both parties have used the committee much the same way when in the majority. We know this from first-hand experience. We served as staff directors of the Rules Committee during the time when the committee began using structured rules on complex pieces of legislation and saw the use of structured and closed rules expand to cover bills that normally would have been considered under open rules.

The power and importance of the Rules Committee came from the fact that it was a jury of peers—only members of Congress can appear before it—listening and learning about the substantive and political nuances of most legislation before it went to the floor. It is, by definition, an arm of the leadership as its members are selected by the speaker and the minority leader, respectively. And the majority has disproportionate power to begin with, since it enjoys a 2-to-1-plus-one majority. But during most of its 100 years of existence, the speaker delegated to the committee the authority to make its own decisions based on what the committee (with its overwhelming majority membership) believed was the best way for the House as a whole, not just the majority party, to work its will. In making those decisions, the Rules Committee listened to the committees that reported the bill, other committees who had a stake in the legislation, and members of the House who did not sit on the reporting committees and otherwise would have no chance to offer amendments. This was critical to the politics of the House: Members need to be able to offer amendments—to protect projects, industries or individuals in their districts or to promote or defend issues they consider important. Without that ability, members can’t fully represent their constituents.

Traditionally, members of the Rules Committee and their staff worked as hard as judges presiding over a case, learning about the issues and trying to strike a balance among competing interests. Typically, it wasn’t until this process was completed that leadership learned their decision. Was everyone always happy? Rarely. But if the committee did its job correctly, there would be a large representation of minority party members participating in floor debate with the ability to offer amendments, often with the support and encouragement of majority members. There were fewer party-line votes. And importantly, House bills were more substantive, with fewer “messaging” bills designed just to build a voting record, not to actually pass laws. That’s what regular order is all about.

All of this began to change in the late 1980s under the speakership of Democrat Jim Wright, who turned what had been a bottom-up approach to legislating into one that started at the top. Wright dictated his demands for his desired legislative action initially to committees and then to the Rules Committee.

This was a significant departure from his predecessor, Tip O’Neill, and previous speakers, who exercised a light touch on the legislative process. Under O’Neill, structured rules were reserved for complex legislation, such as the Immigration Reform Act of 1986, and closed rules were mostly reserved for bills typically reported from the Ways and Means Committee, which were virtually always bipartisan. In O’Neill’s last two-year session of Congress, more than half of rules granted were open—a percentage that would seem inconceivable today.

After the Republican takeover of the House in 1994, Speaker Newt Gingrich followed in the steps of Wright and used his Rules Committee to effectively dictate the manner in which bills would be considered when they reached the floor. In his first year as speaker, 45 percent of rules issued by the Rules Committee were structured or closed. Today, that number has climbed to over 95 percent.

What’s the result? The minority is virtually shut out of the legislative process in the House as are many rank-and-file members of the majority. What was once a procedural tool used for only the most complex and controversial legislation is now used on even the most mundane measures, curtailing debate and making compromise impossible.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Those on both sides of the aisle who complain that Congress is broken should work to return the House to an institution where the legislative process is open and more bottom-up than top-down.

Dear next Speaker: Restore authority to the Rules Committee, and you will take a giant step toward restoring sanity and legitimacy to Congress.

Thomas Spulak, a partner in the government advocacy and public policy group with the law firm King & Spalding, was staff director and general counsel of the House Rules Committee from 1983 to 1991. George Crawford, a senior government relations adviser with King & Spalding, served as majority and minority staff director of the House Rules Committee from 1991 to 2001.



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