The Committee on Rules, or (more commonly) Rules Committee, is a committee of the United States House of Representatives. Rather than being responsible for a specific area of policy, as the other committees are, it is in charge of determining under what rule other bills will come to the floor. As such, it is one of the most powerful committees, and often described as "an arm of the leadership".

Role of the Rules Committee

When a bill is reported out of one of the other committees, it does not go straight to the House floor, because the House, unlike the United States Senate, does not have unlimited debate and discussion on a bill. Instead, what may be said and done to a bill is strictly limited. This limitation is performed by the Rules Committee.

When a bill is reported out of another committee, it first goes to the Rules Committee before it can be debated on the House floor (in what is known as The Committee of the Whole of the House on the State of the Union, or the Committee of the Whole). The Rules Committee decides what will be allowed during the debate on the bill. For instance, there might be a limit on the number or types of amendments (proposed changes to the bill). Amendments might only be allowed to specific sections of the bill, or no amendments might be allowed at all.

Besides control over amendments, the rule issued by the Rules Committee also determines the amount of speaking time assigned on each bill. If the leadership wants a bill pushed forward quietly, for instance, there might be no debate time scheduled; if they want attention, they might allow time for lengthy speeches in support of the bill. Between control over amendments and debate, the Rules Committee exerts vast power in the House. As such, it is tightly controlled by the majority party.

History

The Rules Committee was formed on April 2, 1789, during the first Congress. However, it had nowhere near the powerful role it has today. Instead, it merely proposed general rules for the House to follow when debating bills (rather than passing a special rule for each bill), and was dissolved after proposing these general rules. These general rules still have a great impact on the tone of the House floor today.

The Rules Committee, for a long time, lay dormant. For the first fifty years of its existence, it accomplished little beyond simply reaffirming these rules, and its role was very noncontroversial. On June 16, 1841, it made a major policy change, reducing from 2/3 to 1/2 the fraction of votes needed in the House to close debate and vote on a bill.

In 1880, the modern Rules Committee began to emerge from the reorganization of the House Committees. The first chairman of the Rules Committee, Speaker of the House Samuel J. Randall (D-PA) firmly established that the Rules Committee could change the rules of the House at any time (i.e. for specific bills), and that all rules changes could only emanate from the Rules Committee. When the Republican party took over the House in the election of 1880, they quickly realized the power that the Rules Committee possessed. One member, Thomas Reed (R-ME), used a seat on the Rules Committee to vault himself to the Speakership, and gained so much power that he was referred to as "Czar Reed".

In the 1890s and 1900s, Reed and his successor, Joseph Gurney Cannon (R-IL) used the Rules Committee to centralize the power of the Speakership. Although their power to place members in committees and perform other functions was limited by a forced rule change in 1910, the Rules Committee retained its power. However, it ceased to function as the personal project of the Speaker, as it had originally; instead, as the seniority system took root, it was captured by a coaltion of conservative Democrats and Republicans. This state of affairs would continue until the 1960s.

In 1961, Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-TX), acting on the wishes of the new President John F. Kennedy, introduced a bill to enlarge the committee from 12 members to 15, to decrease the power of the conservative bloc. The bill passed, 217 votes to 212. However, it was only partially successful; the Rules Committee continued to block legislation including civil rights and education bills.

In the 1970s, however, the Rules Committee was firmly under the command of the Speaker once again. As before, its primary role is to come up with special rules, to help or hinder the chances of legislation reported to it.

See Also