Chapter 2
Speakers Reed, Cannon, and Gingrich:
Catalysts of Institutional and
Procedural Change
Walter J. Oleszek
Senior Specialist in the Legislative Process
Congressional Research Service
and
Richard C. Sachs
Specialist in American National Government
Congressional Research Service
``The elect of the elect of the people'' is how a little-known Speaker
described his position more than two centuries ago.\1\ Most of the early
Speakers with very few exceptions, such as Speaker Henry Clay (1815-
1820, 1823-1825), functioned largely as presiding officers rather than
leaders of their parties. This condition began to change during the
post-Civil War era with the growth of partisan sentiment and party-line
voting in the House and in the country. Speakers became both their
party's leader in the House and influential actors on the national
scene. Perhaps the most powerful and institutionally important of these
late 19th century Speakers was a man nicknamed ``Czar'' Reed, which is
why our analysis begins with him.
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\1\ Asher Hinds, ``The Speaker and the House,'' McClure's, vol. 35, June
1910, p. 196. Hinds, a former Member and long-time Parliamentarian of
the House, was quoting Speaker Nathaniel Macon (R-NC, 1801-1807).
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From Thomas Brackett Reed (R-ME, 1889-1891; 1895-1899) to J. Dennis
Hastert (R-IL, 1999- ), 20 lawmakers have served as Speakers of the
House of Representatives. Only a few are remembered for the procedural
or institutional changes they initiated or supported during their
occupancy of this constitutionally-established position. Arguably, three
Speakers during this century-plus period ushered in ideas and meaningful
developments that reshaped the operations of the House: Reed, Joseph
Cannon (R-IL, 1903-1911), and Newt Gingrich (R-GA, 1995-1999). A central
feature of the three speakerships was the exercise of ``top down''
command in an institution largely known for its decentralized power
structure. Each Speaker, too, was a formidable protagonist to the
President at the time (William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and Bill
Clinton, respectively).
Reed, Cannon, and Gingrich were strong personalities, but much of
their claim to institutional fame arises because they changed the
culture and work ways of the House. Reed ended the virtually unstoppable
dilatory practices of the minority and riveted the majoritarian
principle into the rulebook of the House; Cannon so dominated
institutional proceedings that he provoked the famous 1910 ``revolt,''
which diminished the Speaker's authority and facilitated the rise of the
committee chairs to power; and Gingrich introduced procedural changes
that permitted him to lead the House as few other Speakers before him.
To be sure, other Speakers presided during periods of important
procedural change. Speaker Sam T. Rayburn (D-TX; 1940-1947, 1949-1953,
and 1955-1961) led the House when it enacted the Legislative
Reorganization Act [LRA] of 1946. He was also instrumental in expanding
the size of the Rules Committee, a 1961 initiative to ensure that
President John F. Kennedy's New Frontier agenda would not be buried in a
panel hostile to JFK's legislative program. The expansion marked the
beginning of the end of an era--roughly from the 1910 revolt to the
early seventies--in which powerful committee barons exercised
significant sway over Chamber proceedings. John W. McCormack (D-MA,
1962-1971), was Speaker during debate and passage of the Legislative
Reorganization Act of 1970; Carl Albert (D-OK, 1971-1977), and Thomas P.
O'Neill (D-MA, 1977-1987), both led the House during periods of major
institutional change--from a resurgent Democratic Caucus to changes in
the bill referral and committee assignment process to statutory reforms
such as the War Powers Resolution of 1973, the Congressional Budget and
Impoundment Control Act of 1974, and the Balanced Budget and Emergency
Deficit Control Act of 1985.
The principal advocates of many of these innovations, however, were
change-oriented individuals (Richard Bolling, D-MO, for instance) or
informal entities such as the Democratic Study Group, rather than the
Speaker. When the Senate passed its version of the 1946 LRA and sent it
to the House, Rayburn ``gave it a skeptical glance and let it sit on his
desk for six weeks;'' \2\ Speaker McCormack ``resisted the reform of the
House''; \3\ or, as Representative Bolling said about McCormack's
efforts in trying to block what eventually became the Legislative
Reorganization Act of 1970: ``Behind the scenes, Speaker McCormack has
exerted every effort to prevent enactment of any version of the bill
designed to provide a limited measure of modernization of the antiquated
machinery and antiquated ways of doing business in both House and
Senate.'' \4\ By contrast, Reed, Cannon, and Gingrich were the principal
advocates or instigators of momentous institutional change.
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\2\ D.B. Hardeman and Donald C. Bacon, Rayburn: A Biography (Austin, TX:
Texas Monthly Press, 1987), p. 319.
\3\ Ronald M. Peters, Jr., The American Speakership: The Office in
Historical Perspective (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1990), p. 151.
\4\ Richard Bolling, Power in the House (New York: E.P. Dutton and Co.,
1968), p. 248.
Thomas Brackett Reed and the ``Reed Rules''
The Pre-Reed Context.--Thomas Brackett Reed, Republican of Lewiston,
Maine, became Speaker on December 2, 1889, at the start of the 51st
Congress. Previous occupants of that high office had little success in
preventing a determined minority from delaying and obstructing the
business of the House. With few procedural tools to move the legislative
agenda, Speakers before Reed entertained motions that were plainly
dilatory in intent, or as Reed himself characterized them, ``motions
made only to delay, and to weary . . .'' \5\ The dilatory motions came
in numerous forms: repeated motions to adjourn, to lay a measure on the
table, to excuse individual Members from voting, to reconsider votes
whereby individual Members were excused from voting, and to fix the day
to which the House should adjourn, among others.\6\ These filibustering
tactics often prevented the majority party from enacting its legislative
priorities and opened it to public criticism.
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\5\ U.S. House of Representatives, Hinds' Precedents of the House of
Representatives [by Asher C. Hinds], 5 vols. (Washington: GPO, 1907),
vol. 5, p. 353.
\6\ Ibid., p. 354.
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Woodrow Wilson wrote critically of the House's inability to conduct
business because of the paralyzing effect of dilatory practices. In his
classic study, Congressional Government (1885), Wilson described the
conduct of a pre-Reed House filibuster on a pension bill brought to the
floor by the Democratic majority during the 48th Congress (1883-1884):
[T]he Republican minority disapproved of the bill with great fervor,
and, when it was moved by the Pension Committee, late one afternoon, in
a thin House, that the rules be suspended, and an early day set for
consideration of the bill, the Republicans addressed themselves to
determined and persistent ``filibustering'' to prevent action. First
they refused to vote, leaving the Democrats without an acting quorum;
then, all night long, they kept the House at roll-calling on dilatory
and obstructive motions . . .'' \7\
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\7\ Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin
and Co., 1885), p. 80.
By ``leaving the Democrats without an acting quorum,'' Wilson is
referring to the infamous and long-standing House practice dubbed the
``disappearing quorum.'' Under Article I, Section 5, of the
Constitution, ``a Majority of each [House] shall constitute a Quorum to
do Business.'' This provision was, however, interpreted by Reed's
predecessors to mean one-half of the total membership plus one, who
formally acknowledge their presence in the Chamber as determined by a
roll call vote. Though physically present on the floor, the disappearing
quorum allowed Members to avoid being counted as ``present'' for the
purpose of a constitutional quorum if they failed to respond when the
Clerk called their names. ``The position had never been seriously
questioned that, if a majority of the representatives failed to answer
to their names on the calling of the roll,'' stated a biographer of
Reed, ``there was no quorum for the transaction of business even if
every member might actually be present in the hall of the House.'' \8\
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\8\ Samuel W. McCall, Thomas B. Reed (Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Co.,
1914), p. 166.
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The practice of the disappearing quorum originated in 1832 when
Massachusetts Representative John Quincy Adams, former President of the
United States (1825-1829), first used the tactic to frustrate House
action on a proslavery measure.
Prior to Adams, it had been customary for every member who was present
to vote. In 1832, when a proslavery measure was being considered, Adams
broke precedent by sitting silently in his seat as the roll was called
during voting; enough members joined him so that fewer than a quorum
voted on the measure. Without a quorum . . . the House could only
adjourn or order a call of the House to muster a quorum. \9\
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\9\ Roger H. Davidson and Walter J. Oleszek, Congress Against Itself
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1977), p. 23.
In short, the House Chamber could be filled with the total membership,
but if less than half responded to a call of the House, there was no
quorum and no substantive business could be conducted. No wonder
Representative Joseph Cannon referred to the disappearing quorum as
``the obstruction of silence.'' \10\
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\10\ L. White Busbey, Uncle Joe Cannon (New York: Henry Holt and Co.,
1927), p. 74.
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These two procedural devices--dilatory motions and the disappearing
quorum--enabled partisan minorities to slow or stop the flow of House
business. The stalling tactics were effective, for example, in forcing
the House, in 1850, to conduct 31 roll call votes in a single day on a
California statehood bill; to require, in 1854, 101 roll call votes
during one legislative day on the Kansas-Nebraska bill; and, on a
legislative day in 1885, to conduct 21 roll call votes.\11\ Critics of
these procedural logjams, Woodrow Wilson among them, charged that ``more
was at stake than the ability of the majority to act in pursuit of its
legislative agenda; the public reputation and even the legitimacy of the
House as a democratic institution was under challenge.'' \12\
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\11\ U.S. House of Representatives, History of the United States House
of Representatives, 1789-1994, 103d Cong., 2d sess., H. Doc. No. 103-324
(Washington: GPO, 1994), p. 181. Hereafter referred to as 1994 History
of the House. See also U.S. House of Representatives, Journal of the
House of Representatives, 48th Cong., 2d sess., March 2, 1885
(Washington: GPO, 1885), pp. 731-765.
\12\ Quoted in 1994 History of the House, p. 181.
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The Reed Rules.--It may appear surprising to some that filibustering
tactics often prevented the majority party from advancing its agenda
during the post-Civil War period. This era witnessed the rise of the
current two-party system and greater partisan cohesion in Congress. It
was an era ``marked by strong partisan attachments [in the electorate],
resilient patronage-based party organizations, and especially in the
later years [of the 19th century], high levels of party voting in
Congress.'' \13\ Yet, despite the rise of party government in the House,
no Speaker until Reed used the power of his office to end the
filibustering tactics of the minority party. Speaker James Blaine (R-ME,
1869-1875), said when a lawmaker suggested he count as present Members
in the Chamber who refused to vote: ``The moment you clothe your Speaker
with power to go behind your roll call and assume there is a quorum in
the Hall, why gentlemen, you stand on the very brink of a volcano.''
\14\
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\13\ Randall Strahan, ``Thomas Brackett Reed and the Rise of Party
Government,'' in Roger H. Davidson, Susan Webb Hammond, and Raymond W.
Smock, eds., Masters of the House: Congressional Leadership Over Two
Centuries (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), p. 36.
\14\ Representative James Blaine, remarks in the House, Congressional
Record, Feb. 24, 1875, appendix, vol. 3, p. 1734.
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Reed was willing to ``stand on the very brink'' for two key reasons.
First, he was a strong proponent of the idea that the majority party
must be able to govern the House. ``Indeed, you have no choice,'' he
wrote when he was Speaker-elect prior to the convening of the House in
the 51st Congress (1889-1890). ``If the majority do not govern, the
minority will; and if tyranny of the majority is hard, the tyranny of
the minority is simply unendurable. The rules, then, ought to be
arranged to facilitate action of the majority.'' \15\ Second, the 1888
elections produced unified GOP control of Congress and the White House
for the first time in 14 years. (The House's partisan composition was
166 Republicans and 159 Democrats.) These two conditions, ``together
with the frustrations and criticism that had surrounded the House in the
previous Congress, created a `critical moment' in which an unusual
opportunity was present for large-scale institutional innovation.'' \16\
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\15\ Representative Thomas B. Reed, ``Rules of the House of
Representatives,'' Century, vol. 37, March 1889, pp. 794-795.
\16\ Strahan, ``Thomas Brackett Reed and the Rise of Party Government,''
p. 51.
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When the 1st session of the 51st Congress convened on December 2,
1889, Speaker Reed was determined to end the long-standing ability of
the minority party to frustrate majority lawmaking through dilatory
motions and disappearing quorums. Unsure whether he had the votes to
make these fundamental changes, Reed even planned to resign as Speaker
and from the House if the Chamber did not sustain his rulings. ``[I] had
made up my mind that if political life consisted of sitting helplessly
in the chair and seeing the majority powerless to pass legislation, I
had had enough of it and was ready to step down and out.'' \17\
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\17\ Quoted in Strahan, ``Thomas Brackett Reed and the Rise of Party
Government,'' p. 53.
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Part of Reed's strategy was to block adoption of the rules of the
preceding Congress and have them referred to the Rules Committee, the
panel he, as Speaker, chaired. On the opening day, the House adopted a
resolution directing that the rules of the 50th Congress be referred to
the Committee on Rules for review and revision.\18\ Until new rules were
promulgated for the House, Speaker Reed presided using general
parliamentary law and could, therefore, decide when to rule dilatory
motions and disappearing quorums out of order. For example, functioning
``as the presiding officer under general parliamentary law, Speaker Reed
consistently refused to accept dilatory motions''--a harbinger of the
procedural changes to come.\19\
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\18\ Congressional Record, vol. 60, Dec. 2, 1889, p. 84.
\19\ Peters, The American Speakership: The Office in Historical
Perspective, p. 63.
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The House operated under general parliamentary rules--which included
adoption of resolutions establishing committees and the Chamber's order
of business--for nearly 3 months. It was during this period that Reed
made one of the most consequential rulings of any Speaker: terminating
the disappearing quorum. Speaker Reed understood that he was handling
political dynamite and carefully calculated how best to end the
practice. He chose a contested election to force the issue because these
cases were highly partisan and would galvanize Republicans to support
the Speaker. Under the Constitution, the House is the judge of the
elections, returns, and qualifications of its own Members, but the usual
practice was that contested seats were nearly always awarded to the
majority party's candidate as a way to increase their margin of control.
In the period from 1800 to 1907, ``only 3 percent of the 382 `contests'
were resolved in favor of the candidate of the minority party.'' \20\
Mindful of this history, the minority Democrats realized that the Reed-
led Republicans would surely seat the GOP Member in any election
contest. Their plan: employ the disappearing quorum.
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\20\ Douglas H. Price, ``The Congressional Career--Then and Now,'' in
Nelson Polsby, ed., Congressional Behavior (New York: Random House,
1971), p. 19.
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The procedural battle was joined on January 28, 1890, when a contested
election case was brought to the floor. The specific issue involved who
should be seated from the Fourth District of West Virginia: Charles B.
Smith, the Republican, or James M. Jackson, the Democrat.
Unsurprisingly, the GOP-controlled Committee on Elections submitted a
resolution to the House that recommended the seating of Smith. Speaker
Reed then put this question to the House: ``Will the House now consider
the resolution?'' \21\ Democrats demanded the yeas and nays on the
question, which produced a vote of 162 yeas, 3 nays, and 163 not voting.
With 165 a quorum at the time, Reed appeared to prevail until two
Democrats withdrew their votes upping the non-voting total to 165. With
Democrats crying ``no quorum,'' Speaker Reed directed the Clerk to
record as present Members who refused to vote, declared that a quorum
was indeed present, and ruled that the resolution was in order for
consideration.
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\21\ Representative Thomas B. Reed, remarks in the House, Congressional
Record, vol. 61, Jan. 29, 1890, p. 948.
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Bedlam erupted in the Chamber. Outraged Democrats used such words as
tyranny, scandal, and revolution to describe the Speaker's action. One
Member, James McCreary (D-KY), prompted this exchange with the Speaker:
Mr. McCreary. I deny your right, Mr. Speaker, to count me as present,
and I desire to read the parliamentary law on the subject.
The Speaker. The Chair is making a statement of fact that the
gentleman from Kentucky is present. Does he deny it? \22\
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\22\ Ibid., p. 949.
The parliamentary turmoil lasted 3 days before the House again turned
to the case of Smith v. Jackson. Democrats ended their delaying tactics
and motions when it was plain that Reed had the votes to sustain any of
his rulings. On January 31, 1890, the House resumed consideration of
Smith v. Jackson, and on February 3, Smith was seated by a vote of 166
yeas, 0 nays, and 162 not voting. Smith was immediately sworn into
office.
With the seating of Smith, Speaker Reed apparently believed that he
had the votes to definitely ensure adoption of new House rules. On
February 6, 1890, the Rules Committee reported to the floor new House
rules, the so-called Reed rules. Eight days later, by a vote of 161 to
144, with 23 Members not voting, the House adopted new rules which
augmented the Speaker's authority and limited the minority party's power
of obstruction. Among the changes were four key provisions.
First, the disappearing quorum was eliminated. House Rule 15 stated
that nonvoting Members in the Hall of the House shall be counted by the
Clerk for purposes of establishing a quorum. Second, Rule 16 declared:
``No dilatory motions shall be entertained by the Speaker.'' No longer
could lawmakers offer dilatory motions and have them accepted by the
Chair. Now the Speaker had formal authority to rule them out of order.
Third, Rule 23 established a quorum of 100 in the Committee of the
Whole. Before, a quorum in the Committee was the same as that for the
full House: half the membership plus one. Lawmakers frequently delayed
action in the Committee of the Whole by making a point of order that a
quorum was not present. Finally, Rule 22 authorized the Speaker to refer
all bills and resolutions to the appropriate committee without debate or
authorization from the House.
Defeated on the floor, the Democrats turned to the Supreme Court to
negate the Speaker's quorum ruling. On April 30, 1890, they contended
that a quorum was not present when the House voted to approve a bill
relating to the importation of woolens. The bill was supported by a vote
of 138 to 0, with 189 lawmakers not voting. In the case of United States
v. Ballin (1892, 144 U.S. 1), the Court held that the House can decide
for itself how best to ascertain the presence of a quorum. The
advantages or disadvantages of such methods were not matters for
judicial consideration.
Democrats recaptured control of the House in the 1890 and 1892
elections and their Speaker (Charles Crisp of Georgia) reverted to the
practice of the silent quorum, refusing to count lawmakers in the
Chamber who were present but who remained silent when their names were
called for votes. Reed, now the minority leader, made such strategic use
of the disappearing quorum to foil Democratic plans that in 1894 the
Democratically controlled Chamber reinstated the rule counting for
quorum purposes Members present in the Chamber but who did not vote.
Reed returned as Speaker of the 54th (1895-1897) and 55th (1897-1899)
Congresses; however, in 1899 he resigned from the House to
protest what he characterized as President William McKinley's
imperialist policies in the Philippines and Hawaii.
Speaker Cannon and the 1910 Revolt
Joseph Cannon was first elected to the House in 1872 and served for
nearly 50 years--suffering two electoral defeats in 1890 and 1912--
before retiring in 1923. A popular Republican called ``Uncle Joe'' by
friends and foes alike, Cannon unsuccessfully challenged Reed for
Speaker in the GOP Caucus of 1888, but his lengthy experience, party
loyalty, and parliamentary skills prompted Reed to appoint him chair of
the Appropriations Committee as well as to the Rules Committee. Elevated
to the speakership on November 9, 1903, Cannon served in that capacity
until March 3, 1911. As Speaker, Cannon was the inheritor and
beneficiary of Reed's procedural changes.
Cannon did not have the intellectual or oratorical abilities of Reed,
but, like the hedgehog, Cannon knew one great thing: within the formal
structure of House procedure, the Reed rules now provided the
opportunity for a Speaker to dominate life in the House; not just
legislative policymaking on the floor, but the committee system,
administrative functions, the granting of favors large and small. When
Cannon became Speaker in 1903, he seized this opportunity and dominated
the House. His speakership has been described as a case of ``excessive
leadership.'' \23\
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\23\ Charles O. Jones, ``Joseph G. Cannon and Howard W. Smith: An Essay
on the Limits of Leadership in the House of Representatives,'' Journal
of Politics, vol. 30, Aug. 1968, p. 619.
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Briefly enumerated, Cannon's exercise of power included the following:
he assigned Members to committees; appointed and removed committee
chairmen; regulated the flow of bills to the floor as chairman of the
Rules Committee; referred measures to committee; and controlled floor
debate. Taken individually, Cannon's powers were little different from
those of his immediate predecessors, but taken together and exercised to
their limits, they bordered on the dictatorial.
A GOP lawmaker said of his recognition power, for example, that it
made a Member ``a mendicant at the feet of the Speaker begging for the
right to be heard.'' \24\ Claiming the Rules Committee was simply a pawn
of the Speaker's, Representative David De Armond (D-MO), suggested that
Cannon ``personally, officially, and directly . . . make his own report
of his own action and submit to [a] vote of the House the question of
making his action the action of the House.'' \25\ In making committee
assignments, Cannon was not reluctant to ignore seniority. In 1905 he
appointed as chair of the Appropriations Committee a Member who had
never before served on the panel. On another occasion, he denied the
request of GOP Representative George W. Norris of Nebraska, who as a
progressive leader opposed Cannon's heavy-handed parliamentary rule, to
be named to a delegation to attend the funeral of a Member who had been
a personal friend of Norris'.
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\24\ Representative William P. Hepburn, remarks in the House,
Congressional Record, vol. 63, Feb. 18, 1909, p. 2653.
\25\ Representative David De Armond, remarks in the House, Congressional
Record, vol. 63, March 1, 1909, p. 3569.
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Frustration and anger with Cannon's autocratic ways began to soar
inside and outside the House during his final years as Speaker. No
Speaker, said a lawmaker, is ``entitled to be the political and
legislative dictator of this House in whole or in part.'' \26\ Other
factors aroused opposition to Cannon's leadership. His economic and
social views were seen as reactionary by many. His relationship with
President Theodore Roosevelt was often strained because of policy
differences. As Cannon admitted, the two ``more often disagreed'' than
agreed over legislation.\27\ As one insurgent Republican--John Nelson of
Wisconsin--said to his House colleagues, ``Mr. Chairman, I wish to say
to my Republican fellow Members who believe in the Roosevelt policies,
let us look at the rules of the House. President Roosevelt has been
trying to cultivate oranges for many years in the frigid climate of the
Rules Committee, but what has he gotten but the proverbial lemons.''
\28\
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\26\ Representative Everis A. Hayes, remarks in the House, Congressional
Record, vol. 65, March 19, 1910, p. 3434.
\27\ Busbey, Uncle Joe Cannon, p. 217.
\28\ Representative John Nelson, remarks in the House, Congressional
Record, vol. 62, Feb. 5, 1908, p. 1652.
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Dissatisfaction with Cannon's leadership eventually triggered one of
the most noteworthy events in the history of the House: the revolt of
1910.
The 1910 Revolt.--The story of the 1910 revolt has been told many
times.\29\ Suffice it to say that the rebellion by insurgent Republicans
and minority Democrats began more than a year before Cannon was stripped
of important procedural powers. Recognizing that he needed to defuse the
mounting discontent, Speaker Cannon in 1909 backed several procedural
changes. He agreed to a new unanimous consent calendar, which allowed
lawmakers 2 days during a month to call up minor bills without first
receiving prior approval of the Speaker. A Calendar Wednesday rule was
adopted, which could only be set aside by a two-thirds vote, that
provided 1 day each week for standing committees to call up reported
bills, bypassing the Cannon-run Rules Committee. The Speaker, too,
agreed to a rules change granting opponents of a bill an opportunity to
amend a measure just prior to final passage by offering a motion to
recommit--or send the bill back to the committee that had reported it to
the floor. (Previously, the Speaker recognized whomever he wanted to
offer this motion.) Further, the Rules Committee was prohibited from
reporting a rule that denied opponents the chance to offer a motion to
recommit.\30\
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\29\ See, for example, Jones, ``Joseph G. Cannon and Howard W. Smith: An
Essay on the Limits of Leadership in the House of Representatives,'' pp.
617-646. Also, Kenneth Hechler, Insurgency; Personalities and Politics
of the Taft Era (New York: Russell and Russell, 1964), pp. 27-82; Chang-
Wei Chiu, The Speaker of the House of Representatives Since 1896 (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1928); and Paul DeWitt Hasbrouck, Party
Government in the House of Representatives (New York: MacMillan Co.,
1927), pp. 1-13.
\30\ Donald R. Wolfensberger, ``The Motion to Recommit in the House: The
Creation, Evisceration, and Restoration of a Minority Right.'' A paper
prepared for presentation at a conference on the History of Congress,
University of California, San Diego, December 5-6, 2003. Mr.
Wolfensberger is director of The Congress Project, Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC.
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These rules changes did little to halt insurgent and public attacks on
the Speaker. Several national magazines ran ``articles in regular
installments that not only detailed the Speaker's wrongdoings but also
praised the insurgents.'' \31\ Eventually, opponents of Cannon
successfully marshaled their forces--employing a procedural resolution
offered by Representative Norris--to weaken the power of the Speaker.
The insurgent forces removed the Speaker from the Rules Committee and
stripped him of the right to appoint lawmakers to that panel. On March
19, 1910, the House agreed to the Norris resolution, which provided that
``there shall be a Committee on Rules, elected by the House, consisting
of 10 Members, 6 of whom shall be Members of the majority party and 4 of
whom shall be Members of the minority party. The Speaker shall not be a
member of the committee and the committee shall elect its own chairman
from its own members.'' \32\ Nearly 3 months later, on June 17, 1910,
the House further weakened the power of the Speaker by adopting a
discharge calendar. This new rule established a procedure to discharge
(or extract) bills from committee, providing them with an opportunity to
be voted on by the House.
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\31\ Rager, ``Uncle Joe Cannon: Brakeman of the House,'' in Davidson,
Hammond, and Smock, Masters of the House, p. 77.
\32\ H. Res. 502, 61st Cong., 2d sess., Congressional Record, vol. 65,
March 19, 1910, p. 3429.
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With ``Cannonism'' an issue in the November 1910 elections, Democrats
recaptured control of the 62d Congress (1911-1913). On April 5, 1911,
they adopted a new rule which removed from the Speaker his authority to
appoint Members to the standing committees. This authority was formally
assigned to the House. In reality, each party nominated its partisans to
the standing committees through its Committee on Committees, which was
followed by pro forma House approval of these decisions.
Cannon's ability to act as an autocratic Speaker was due in part to
Reed's skillful remodeling of the rules to remove procedural obstacles
to lawmaking erected by the minority party. Cannon's contribution was
his forceful use of the rules to discipline not just minority party
members, but members of his own party as well. The Speaker's heavy-
handedness was also attributable to those Republicans who opposed Cannon
but feared--and so remained silent--that his downfall could produce a
Democratic Speaker who would use the rules no differently. Various
factors, as noted earlier, have been suggested to explain Cannon's fall
from power: he exercised procedural power so autocratically that it
provoked the rebellion against his leadership; he ignored for too long
the rising tide of progressivism, a GOP-led reform movement, preferring
instead to adhere to the status quo of Republican regularity; and he was
a 19th century man arriving at a position of national political power in
a 20th century moment--a modern moment--of rapid social, economic, and
political change for which he was unprepared.
The Rise of Committee Government
Whatever combination of forces led to the 1910 revolt, its aftermath
for the institution was dramatic. If the House of Speaker Cannon was
``partisan, hierarchical, majoritarian and largely populated by members
serving less than three terms,'' it gradually became ``less partisan,
more egalitarian, and populated by careerists.'' \33\
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\33\ David Brady, ``After the Big Bang House Battles Focused on
Committee Issues,'' Public Affairs Report, University of California,
Berkeley, March 1991, p. 8.
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The 1910 revolt produced a major shift in the internal distribution of
power in the House. Committees and their leaders came to dominate
policymaking for the next 60 years.\34\ Various reasons account for this
development, such as the rise of congressional careerism and the
institutionalization of the seniority system.\35\
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\34\ There was a brief interlude of governance by ``King Caucus.'' When
the Democrats took control following the one-man rule of Cannon, they
employed their caucus, for example, to debate and mark up legislation
prior to its introduction in the Chamber and to bind, by a two-thirds
vote of the caucus, all Democrats to support the party's position on the
floor. However, enthusiasm for governing this way faded, and Democrats
gradually made less use of King Caucus; it did not survive the return to
power of the Republicans following the November 1918 elections. See
Wilder H. Haines, ``The Congressional Caucus of Today,'' American
Political Science Review, vol. 9, Nov. 1915, p. 699.
\35\ Nelson W. Polsby, et al., ``The Growth of the Seniority System in
the U.S. House of Representatives,'' American Political Science Review,
vol. 63, Sept. 1969, pp. 790-791.
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Seniority--longevity of continuous service on a committee--became not
just an established method for naming committee chairs, but an
ingrained, inviolate organizational norm for both parties. As a result,
committee chairmen owed little or nothing to party leaders, much less
Presidents. This automatic selection process produced experienced,
independent chairs, but it also made them resistant to party control.
Many lawmakers chafed under a system that concentrated authority in so
few hands. Members objected, too, that the seniority system promoted
lawmakers from ``safe'' one-party areas--especially conservative
southern Democrats and midwestern Republicans--who could ignore party
policies or national sentiments.
Committee government was characterized by bargaining and negotiating
between party and committee leaders. Speakers had to persuade committee
chairs to support priority legislation. ``A man's got to lead by
persuasion and the best reason,'' declared Speaker Rayburn, ``that's the
only way he can lead people.'' \36\ For example, by the early thirties,
and continuing for virtually all of Rayburn's service as Speaker, the
Rules Committee was dominated by a conservative coalition of southern
Democrats and Republicans. Thus, much of Speaker Rayburn's time was
spent persuading and bargaining with Rules members to report legislation
favored by various Presidents and many legislators.
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\36\ ``What Influences Congress: An Interview with Sam Rayburn, Speaker
of the House of Representatives.'' U.S. News and World Report, vol. 26,
Oct. 13, 1950, p. 30.
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The late sixties and seventies saw a rapid influx of new lawmakers,
many from the cities and suburbs, who opposed the conservative status
quo. Allying themselves with more senior Representatives, especially
Democrats (recall that Democrats controlled the House continuously for
40 years from 1955 to 1995), they pushed through changes that diffused
power and shattered seniority as an absolute criterion for naming
committee chairs. A resurgent Democratic Caucus initiated many of the
procedural changes that transformed the distribution of internal power.
Some of the changes were enacted into law (the Legislative
Reorganization Act of 1970, for example); some made rules of the
Democratic Caucus--the ``subcommittee bill of rights'' is an example
which required, among other procedural changes, that committee chairs
refer legislation to the appropriate subcommittee within 2 weeks after
initial introduction.
Among the important consequences of these various enactments were: the
spread of policymaking influence to the subcommittees and among junior
lawmakers; the enhancement of Congress' role in determining Federal
budget priorities through a new congressional budget process; the
infusion of flexibility and accountability into the previously rigid
seniority system; the tightening of the Speaker's control over the Rules
Committee (he was granted the authority to select its chair and the
other majority members of the panel); and greater transparency of the
House's deliberative processes heretofore closed to public observation,
including gavel-to-gavel televised coverage of floor proceedings over C-
SPAN [Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network].
Institutionally, dual and contradictory changes were underway in the
House during the seventies. Power was shifted from committee chairs
downward to the subcommittee chairs (subcommittee government as it was
called by some scholars), as well as upward to the centralized party
leadership. House Democratic reformers wanted to make the committee
system more accountable to the Speaker and the Democratic Caucus as a
whole. They brought about some centralization of authority--examples
include removing the committee assignment process from the Democrats on
the Ways and Means Committee and lodging it in the party Steering and
Policy Committee and augmenting the party whip system--but in other ways
the changes produced a highly decentralized and individualized
institution that made it harder for party leaders to mobilize winning
coalitions. Before, party leaders could often rely on a few powerful
committee chairs or State delegation leaders to deliver blocs of votes;
under subcommittee government, scores of entrepreneurial lawmakers had
the capacity to forge coalitions that could pass, modify, or defeat
legislation.
The decentralizing forces of the seventies gradually subsided and
strong leadership began to reemerge in the eighties. ``[T]he latent
power of centralized party leadership was aroused by unanticipated
changes in the political landscape and the policy agenda.'' \37\ These
changes included the election of Ronald Reagan as President in 1980 and
1984. Leading the House became more difficult with sharp differences
erupting between the branches--and between the House and Senate, the
latter in GOP hands from 1981 to 1987--over the role of the Federal
Government and national policy priorities.
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\37\ Roger H. Davidson, The Postreform Congress (New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1992), p. 114.
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Challenged by President Reagan to limit the domestic role of
government, cut taxes, and increase defense spending, Democratic Members
recognized the importance of strengthening their party leaders both to
overcome institutional fragmentation and to negotiate bicameral and
interbranch differences with the White House and the GOP-controlled
Senate. Rank-and-file Democrats looked to Speaker Thomas P. ``Tip''
O'Neill (D-MA), to develop and publicize party programs, and to
negotiate equitable budget deals with the Reagan administration,
sometimes in high-stakes budget summits. In response, O'Neill used
leadership task forces to promote party priorities, created ad hoc
panels to process major legislation, and innovated the use of special
rules from the Rules Committee to advance the party's program.
As partisan disagreements became sharper, Republicans repeatedly made
O'Neill a media target during congressional November elections. In turn,
as the first Speaker to preside over a televised House, and as his
party's highest elected official, O'Neill became a vocal critic of
Reagan's domestic and foreign policies. As a result, the speakership
itself was transformed during O'Neill's time. ``Today, O'Neill is as
much a celebrity and news source as he is an inside strategist.'' \38\
In short, when O'Neill retired from the House at the end of 1986, the
speakership was an office of high national visibility.
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\38\ Alan Ehrenhalt, ``Speaker's Job Transformed Under O'Neill,''
Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, vol. 43, June 22, 1985, p. 1247.
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The speakership, too, had accumulated additional centralized authority
for the management of the House's business. At the urging of the party
rank-and-file, the Speaker-controlled Rules Committee began to issue
more restrictive rules to protect Democrats from having to vote on
electorally divisive, GOP-inspired ``November'' amendments. By at least
the mideighties, ``Democratic party leaders in the House became more
active, more forceful in moving party legislation forward.'' \39\
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\39\ Leroy N. Rieselbach, Congressional Reform: The Changing Modern
Congress (Washington: CQ Press, 1994), p. 129.
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In 1987, James C. Wright (D-TX), became Speaker. An aggressive leader,
Wright took bold risks and exercised his leadership prerogatives in an
assertive manner. For example, he prodded committee chairmen to move
priority legislation, recommended policies (raising taxes to cut
deficits, for example) over the opposition of the Reagan White House and
many Democratic colleagues, and employed procedural tactics--limiting
GOP amendment opportunities, for example--that made Republicans'
minority status more painful and embittered their relations with
Democratic leaders. ``If Wright consolidates his power, he will be a
very, very formidable man,'' said Representative Newt Gingrich (R-GA).
``We have to take him on early to prevent that.'' \40\
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\40\ John Berry, The Ambition and the Power: The Fall of Jim Wright (New
York: Viking, 1989), p. 6.
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Gingrich represented a new breed of Republican who entered the House
starting with the election of 1978. They were unhappy with the
institutional status quo and the cooperative relations their GOP leaders
had established and maintained with Democrats. These Gingrich-led
Republicans sought to portray the Democratic leadership as corrupt and
to undermine public confidence in congressional operations. The
strategic goal was to win Republican control of the House. Gingrich
employed two long-term plans in his eventual rise to power. First, he
urged all Republicans to work together to advance a unified conservative
agenda and to use that agenda to nationalize House elections. Second,
GOP Members would aggressively confront the Democratic leadership about
what Republicans viewed as the unfairness of the legislative process and
attempt to make the internal operations of the Chamber a public issue.
For example, Gingrich and his Republican allies argued vociferously that
special rules from the Rules Committee were skewed to bolster the
majority party and that the Democratic leadership was stifling
legitimate debate on national issues. Gingrich also employed ethics as a
partisan weapon against Speaker Wright, which led to his departure from
the House in June 1989. (Wright was charged with violating several House
rules, such as accepting gifts from a close business associate.)
Wright was succeeded as Speaker by Majority Leader Thomas Foley (D-
WA). Elected to the House in November 1964, Foley rose through the ranks
to become Speaker during an era of sharp partisan animosity and
political infighting. Republicans found Foley easier to work with than
the more pugnacious Wright, but they also lamented his willingness to
use procedural rules to frustrate GOP objectives. Significantly, public
approval of Congress reached an all-time low of 17 percent as citizens
learned in September 1991 about Members bouncing personal checks at a
so-called House bank.\41\ Voters also learned that some lawmakers had
converted campaign and official office funds into cash for personal use.
Speaker Foley worked to win back the public's trust by supporting such
initiatives as more professional administrative management of the House
and tighter restrictions on lobbyists. Democratic reform efforts proved
to be insufficient. In November 1994, after a 30-year congressional
career, Foley lost his bid to return to the House in that year's
electoral earthquake. That election returned Republican majorities to
both the House--for the first time since 1954--and the Senate.
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\41\ C. Lawrence Evans and Walter J. Oleszek, Congress Under Fire:
Reform Politics and the Republican Majority (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
Co., 1997), pp. 35-38.
The Return of the Strong Speakership
Newt Gingrich, who was his party's unanimous choice for Speaker, took
the office to new heights of influence, initially challenging even the
President as a force in national politics and policymaking. Three
factors help to explain this development: recognition on the part of
most Republicans that Gingrich was responsible for leading his party out
of the electoral wilderness of the ``permanent minority''; the broad
commitment of GOP lawmakers to the Republican agenda; and the new
majority's need to succeed at governance after 40 years in the minority.
Not since the Cannon era had there been such vigorous party leadership
in the House. Speaker Gingrich explained the need for greater central
authority. The GOP must change, he said, ``from a party focused on
opposition to a majority party with a responsibility for governing. That
requires greater assets in the leader's office.'' \42\
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\42\ David Cloud, ``Gingrich Clears the Path for Republican Advance,''
Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, vol. 52, Nov. 19, 1994, p. 3319.
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A key centralizing aspect of Gingrich's speakership was his influence
over committees. Not only did Gingrich personally select certain
Republicans to chair several standing committees, ignoring seniority in
the process, he also required the GOP members of the Appropriations
Committee to sign a written pledge that they would heed the Republican
leadership's recommendations for spending reductions. Furthermore, he
often bypassed committees entirely by establishing leadership task
forces to process legislation, dictated orders to committee chairs, and
used the Rules Committee to redraft committee-reported legislation.
Party power during this period dominated committee power.
The centerpiece of Gingrich's early days as Speaker was a 10-point
Republican Party program titled the ``Contract with America,'' which the
House acted upon within the promised first 100 days of the 104th
Congress. The contract set the agenda for Congress and the Nation during
this period. An important component of the contract was a wholesale
reworking of the Rules of the House, the most significant since Speaker
Reed. ``The elections of November 8, 1994, transformed the politics of
congressional structures and procedures,'' declaimed a congressional
scholar.\43\ With GOP cohesion and solidarity especially high, Speaker
Gingrich consolidated and exercised power to transform House operations
in significant ways.
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\43\ Roger Davidson, ``Congressional Committees in the New Reform Era,''
in James A. Thurber and Roger H. Davidson, eds., Remaking Congress:
Change and Stability in the 1990s (Washington: Congressional Quarterly
Inc., 1995), p. 41.
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Among the administrative, legislative, and procedural actions taken by
Republicans during the 104th Congress were these: (1) passing the
Congressional Accountability Act, which applied workplace safety and
antidiscrimination laws to Congress; (2) hiring Price Waterhouse and
Company, a nationally known accounting firm, to conduct an independent
audit of House finances; (3) cutting House committee and subcommittee
staffs by one-third; (4) imposing 6-year term limits on committee and
subcommittee chairs; (5) banning proxy--or absentee--voting in
committees; (6) permitting radio and television coverage of open
committee sessions as a matter of right and not by authorization of the
committee; (7) guaranteeing to the minority party the right to offer a
motion to recommit with instructions; (8) restricting Members to two
standing committee assignments and four subcommittee assignments; (9)
requiring more systematic committee oversight plans; (10) prohibiting
commemorative measures; (11) doing away with the joint referral of
legislation--referring measures to two or more committees
simultaneously--but authorizing the Speaker to designate a primary
committee of jurisdiction upon the initial referral of a measure; (12)
prescribing term limits--8 years of consecutive service--for the Speaker
(abolished at the start of the 108th Congress); (13) eliminating three
standing committees (District of Columbia, Post Office and Civil
Service, and Merchant Marine and Fisheries) and consolidating their
functions in other, sometimes renamed, standing committees; (14)
transforming the Committee on House Administration into a leadership-
appointed panel; and (15) reorganizing the administrative units of the
House.
These and many other formal and informal Gingrich-led changes made the
104th House (1995-1997) considerably different from its immediate
predecessor, modifying the legislative culture and context of the House.
Civility between Democrats and Republicans eroded as both sides
exploited procedural and political devices in efforts either to retain,
or win back, majority control of the House. Some of the attempted
reforms also proved hard to implement. The new majority promised a more
open and fair amendment process compared to the restrictive amendment
opportunities Republicans often experienced during Democratic control of
the House. This goal, however, sometimes clashed with a fundamental
objective of any majority party in the House: the need to enact priority
legislation even if it means restricting lawmakers' amendment
opportunities. Throughout the 104th Congress, Democrats and Republicans
prepared ``dueling statistics'' on the number of open versus restrictive
rules issued by the Rules Committee. Democratic frustration with GOP-
reported rules that limit their amendment opportunities has escalated in
subsequent years.\44\
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\44\ Erin P. Billings, ``Democrats Protest Closed Rules in the House,''
Roll Call, March 17, 2003, p. 16.
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In 1995, Time named Gingrich their ``Man of the Year.'' (Ironically,
the person to appear on the first issue of the magazine's cover was Joe
Cannon.) However, Speaker Gingrich soon encountered political and
personal problems. In an unsuccessful confrontation with President Bill
Clinton, the Gingrich-led Republicans were twice publicly blamed for
shutting down parts of the government in late 1995 and early 1996
because of failure to enact appropriations bills in a timely manner.
Rank-and-file Republicans became upset with the Speaker's impulsive
leadership style. A small group of Republicans, with the encouragement
of some in the leadership, planned in summer 1997 to depose Gingrich as
Speaker, but the plot was uncovered and averted.\45\ Nonetheless, the
coup attempt exposed the deep frustration with the Speaker within GOP
ranks. Gingrich, too, was reprimanded by the House for ethical
misconduct and blamed for the loss of GOP House seats in the 1996 and
1998 elections. Weakened by these developments, Gingrich resigned from
the House at the end of the 105th Congress.
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\45\ Jackie Koszczuk, ``Party Stalwarts Will Determine Gingrich's Long-
Term Survival,'' Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, vol. 55, July
26, 1997, pp. 1751-1755.
Concluding Observations
The historian David McCullough once wrote, ``Congress . . . rolls on
like a river . . . always there and always changing.'' \46\ His
observation fits the speakerships of Reed, Cannon and Gingrich. Although
each served in different political, economic, and social circumstances--
with a President of their own party or not, for example, Reed, Cannon
and Gingrich centralized procedural control of the House in their hands
to accomplish policy and political goals. Each was willing to hamstring
the minority party and to challenge the White House. Whether the
influence of these Speakers stems primarily from the context in which
they served (the strength of partisan identification in the electorate,
the autonomy of committees, the cohesiveness of the majority party,
etc.) or their personal skills, abilities, and talents, there is little
doubt that, at the apex of their power they shaped and reshaped the
procedures, policies, and politics of the House.
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\46\ David McCullough, ``Time and History on Capitol Hill,'' in Roger H.
Davidson and Richard C. Sachs, eds., Understanding Congress: Research
Perspectives, U.S. House of Representatives, 101st Cong., 2d sess.,
1991, H. Doc. 101-241, p. 32.
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The return of dictatorial Speakers on the order of Joe Cannon is
unlikely in the contemporary era. The reasons seem mostly self-evident:
greater transparency in almost all of Congress' activities; larger, more
diverse, and more sophisticated media coverage of Congress; a
congressional membership that is not only better educated but one that
has thrived in an era where policy and political entrepreneurship is a
norm and overly strict adherence to the directives of a single party
leader an uncommon occurrence; and the expectations of attentive and
well-educated constituents who want Members to participate in public
debates and media events and to initiate policy proposals.
The speakership in its most recent incarnation draws its strength in
part because of a procedural change adopted during the Gingrich
speakership: the three-term limit on committee chairs. These committee
leaders are unlikely to remain in their post long enough to accrue
political influence sufficient to challenge the Speaker on a regular or
sustained basis. Moreover, the decision to appoint a new committee chair
is exercised by the Speaker-led Republican Steering Committee.
Congressional history demonstrates, however, that centralized authority
is not a permanent condition. Instead, the forces of centralization and
decentralization are constantly in play, and they regularly adjust and
reconfigure in response to new conditions and events.
Another large source of influence for today's Speaker is the
heightened level of partisanship in the House. This situation often
enables majority party leaders to demand, and often get, party loyalty
on various votes. Broadly, the Speaker has the dual task of mobilizing
majority support for party goals and, concurrently, formulating and
publicizing issues that attract the support of partisans and swing
voters nationally so his party retains majority control of the House.
The Reed, Cannon, and Gingrich speakerships highlight how each defined
their role according to time, place, and circumstance. The office itself
has changed shape time and again, and its ability to procedurally and
politically control the business of the House has waxed and waned. The
heightened partisanship in today's House means that the Speaker often
gets party loyalty on key votes. Probably the Speaker's most compelling
argument to his partisans is that if they are to maintain majority
control, they must stick together and do whatever it takes politically
and procedurally to retain their status. Speakers may lose key votes on
the floor, but it is seldom for lack of trying.
In its present configuration, the speakership is as significant an
office as any time in the past, a product now of its occupant and
lieutenants collectively and the conditions in which they operate. These
circumstances today favor strong party leadership, but Speakers always
operate under a range of constraints, such as the independence of
lawmakers and size and unity (or fragmentation) of the majority party.
At bottom, the Speaker's authority rests on the willingness of lawmakers
to follow his lead. Without followership, Speakers can still be ``the
sport of political storms.'' \47\
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\47\ Herbert Bruce Fuller, The Speakers of the House (Boston: Little,
Brown and Company, 1909), p. 292.