“The House Rules Committee” Prof. Anthony Madonna POLS 4600 Maymester 5/20/2020 University of Georgia House Leaders and Committees: Outline 5/20/2020 Introduction Assorted House Floor a. Updates Issues b. Summary Section a. Rule Alternatives: c. Hastert Rule Suspension d. 2017 American Health Care Act b. Floor Consideration Data c. Committee of the Whole “Regular Order,” d. Points of Order Amendments and Leaders a. Rules Types over Time Part 2: Committee- b. Rules Committee and Marijuana Gatekeeper Games c. Overview of the Rules Committee Rule Types a. Open b. Modified-Open c. Closed d. Modified Closed e. Structured Rules Oddities a. Waiver Only b. Self-Executing c. Martial Law d. King of the Hill 2 e. More Votes POLS 4600: Updates (5/20) ASSIGNMENTS: Civil Rights Act of 1957 and Telecommunications Act of 1996 are the last two I’m working through. SUMMARY SECTION: Summary Section is DUE on Sunday, May 24th. If you turn it in early, great! I can get your grade back quicker and you can get started on the background section. Section is discussed in greater detail in the next slide. VIDEOS: Coming along slowly. Don’t hesitate to use selectively. EXAM: This Friday. Would you prefer to take the evening? Above: Another poor choice. Things it will cover: Cooper and Brady, House Rules Committee, Using Resources, Ideological Scaling, How a Bill Becomes a Law, Constitutional Foundations of Congress, Parties and Leaders. Pay particular attention to the Resources. EMAILS: Behind. But I’ll have them to you Summary Section SUMMARY SECTION: STRUCTURE Give a brief one-three paragraph overview of the measure. Was it controversial? What did it contain? Was debate heated? Passage contentious? What was the final passage vote? List any particularly controversial votes or motions here. How many total floor amendments were there? I would generally recommend writing the summary section after you’ve written the longer consideration sections. More specifically, the summary section should do three things: Paragraph 1: Tell the reader what the law does/sought to do. Paragraph 2: Tell the reader why the law is or is not considered important today. Paragraph 3: Characterize its passage. Was is controversial? Partisan? What were the key votes/moments that occurred during Above: Rep. Carl Vinson (D-GA), consideration? who served from 1914 to 1965 and was known as “The Father of the Two-Ocean Navy.” It should not exceed 500 words 4 Hastert Rule Sarah Binder, Monkey Cage: Most Congress watchers yesterday quickly noted the remarkable House vote to pass the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA): For the third time this year, the House passed an important bill over the objections of a majority of the majority party. Another “Hastert Rule violation,” many reporters correctly observed. (Is it a good sign that House procedural speak is now lingua franca of the Capitol press corps? Next thing you know, Hollywood will be making Oscar- winning films about the 19th century House….Oh wait….) Observers noted that the leadership brought the VAWA bill to the floor (knowing the GOP majority would be rolled on final passage) as a calculated move to repair damage done to the party’s brand name in the last election. As the Los Angeles Times reported, many GOP strategists “feared that keeping the bill in limbo could expose the party to complaints they were hostile to women.” I think the coverage of the VAWA bill has been right on the mark. Still, we should be cautious in writing the Hastert Rule’s obituary. Some considerations: First, as many reporters noted, the substance of the yesterday’s bill mattered. Concern about the party’s electoral reputation likely helped to encourage the GOP to bring the bill to the floor (on a nearly unanimous procedural vote). We see some evidence of that concern in the makeup of the sixty Republicans who broke ranks to vote against the conservatives’ alternative bill: Roughly sixty percent of them hailed from blue states won by Obama in 2012. (Note: GOP women were more likely to stick with their conservative brethren on that substitute vote, with roughly 80 percent of the GOP women favoring the more limited bill.) Moreover, on final passage, nearly three-quarters of the Republicans who voted with the Democrats hailed from blue states. I think it’s reasonable to expect that on other electorally-salient bills this Congress we might see the leadership allow party splitting measures on the floor, letting the chamber median work its will in favor of passage. As many others have noted, immigration reform could provide another such opportunity. In short, the terrain for future Hastert rule violations might be quite limited. Hastert Rule Second, keep in mind that all three of the Hastert Rule violations occurred on legislative measures already cleared by the Senate. Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden negotiated the fiscal cliff bill that was passed 89-8 with broad bipartisan support. Hurricane Sandy relief was first cleared by the Senate on a (narrower) bipartisan vote. And the Senate had also already endorsed the more expansive version of the VAWA bill, with a majority of Senate GOP joining every Democrat in voting for the bill. The support of Republican senators (albeit to varying degrees) for Democratic measures makes it far harder for the Speaker to stick with his conservative Above: Former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) became the high- ranking elected official in American history to receive a prison conference majority. sentence in 2016. He was released 13 months later. Instead, he offers them a vote to establish their conservative bona fides and then allows the Democrats to win the day. Split party control seems to limit the viability of the Hastert Rule, at least on those few measures on which Senate Democrats can attract GOP support to prevent a filibuster. Ironically, the new Boehner Rule of “Make the Senate Go First” (insert saltier language for full effect) undermines the Hastert Rule. Given the difficulty Boehner faces in assembling a chamber majority without Democratic votes on bigger issues of the day, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to see this periodic scuttling of the majority of Boehner’s majority. Finally, yesterday’s vote helps us to better identify the far right flank of the House GOP. Here, I consider the far right of the conference those Republicans who voted against waiving the debt limit for three months, against Hurricane Sandy relief, and against the VAWA bill. That group sums to 26 GOP. Given 232 House Republicans, Boehner can’t bring party- favored bills to the floor without moving exceedingly far to the right. That’s helps to explain why Boehner insists on letting the Senate go first on issues that evoke tough dissent within his party. He has no choice, even if that sets him up for potential majority rolls on important roll call votes. Ultimately, the fate of the Hastert Rule depends on how the Speaker balances his support within the conference with the responsibility of tending to the party’s brand name (let alone to the will of the chamber). 2017 American Health Care Act In November 2016, after holding their majorities in both the House and the Senate and winning the White House, Republican Party leaders declared their top priority would be to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. The House had cast over 50 roll call votes on the floor to repeal President Obama’s signature healthcare act by March of 2014 and made it a focal point in campaigns. One House Republican cited this as an “ironclad commitment” to repeal the law. 2017 American Health Care Act The American Health Care Act was unveiled on March 6, 2017. The House then voted on four procedural motions with passed on near party-line votes. Despite pledges of unity, House leaders than pulled the bill after determining they lacked a majority in favor of the measure. Nearly two months later, the House cast two more party-line votes on procedural motions. The bill than passed by a much more narrow 217-213 margin, with 20 defections. 2017 American Health Care Act The six procedural votes in the House demonstrated a very unified Republican Party that cast 1396 “yes” votes with just 12 “noes”, for a party coalition of 99.25%. This was consistent with the previous 50 repeal votes. But the final passage vote—and later defeat in the Senate—on a bill that was not a full repeal demonstrated a much more divided chamber. This internal divide among Republicans was consistent with media coverage. “Regular Order,” Amendments and Leaders In October of 2015, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) was elected Speaker of the House. Among other promises, Ryan pledged to allow more floor amendments through open processes and to return the House to “regular order” (DeBonis 2015). Ryan’s predecessor, former-Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), had been aggressively criticized by members of both parties for his usage of special rules to bar amendments. Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI): “When we offer amendments, they have to be approved by leadership before we get a vote on them and that’s not how our system is supposed to work," he said. "Our system was designed to reflect the will of the people... And the speaker’s job is to ensure the system is open and [lawmakers] are given a fair opportunity to present their amendments.” “[The system] really broken.” “Regular Order,” Amendments and Leaders By May of 2018, Speaker Ryan and the 115th Congress had broken the record for the most closed rules in congressional history. Ryan’s abdication of his promise for more open rules was not surprising given the difficulties inherent in contemporary lawmaking.