If the motion to suspend the rules is adopted, the underlying measure is adopted simultaneously. Among other features, bills brought up under suspension are limited to 40 minutes of debate, equally divided between proponents and opponents of the measure.
They also prohibit points of order and floor amendments, and require a two-thirds majority for passage. Indeed, the vast majority of laws enacted 78 percent in the th Congress are considered through Suspension of the Rules. Notably, however, major bipartisan legislation is peri- odically brought up in this manner to ensure no amendments are offered that would force members to vote down the bill.
Requests for suspension bills are generally made by committees to majority leaders with the under- standing that, if brought up, the legislation will pass with the required two-thirds vote. Committee chairs have typically given some amount of deference to minority members as to what non-con- troversial bills should be suggested for consideration.
Importantly, however, the Speaker has full- discretion over what bills are to be considered under Suspension. Despite such control, given the two-thirds requirement, the majority party still needs some minor- ity support for passage of suspension bills. If the minority party feels they have not been given an adequate number of suspension measures, they can agree to vote down suspension bills offered by the majority.
In recent congresses, the minority party has received about 30 percent of bills consid- ered under Suspension. This assures their defeat and slows down House business until the minority receives assurances from majority leadership that a more historically reasonable number of minority suspension bills receive consideration on the floor. Or they can gum up the works with extraneous amendments. Or they can force lengthy amendments to be read aloud.
Or they can demand time-consuming roll call votes on frivolous procedural objections. And with each minute wasted, the clock ticks closer and closer to the end of the th Congress in January. Indeed, there are so many ways to shut down business in the Senate—many of which can be implemented by one lone senator—that the real surprise is that the Senate has ever accomplished anything.
There are many more ways to block progress in the Senate than this brief paper can detail, but here is a short list of ten ways to bring the Senate to its knees. Rather than being a free exchange of ideas intended to convince other senators of one position or another, most Senate debate time is occupied by senators giving closely vetted speeches to an almost-entirely empty chamber.
Nevertheless, the Senate rules make it very difficult to stop the serial speeches and actually hold a vote. Unless at least 60 senators agree to hold a vote, the speeches go on forever. Not only can senators use the filibuster to force endless debate, they can also use it to prevent debate from starting in the first place. This motion can be filibustered. Thus, for almost all bills, dissenting senators have at least two opportunities to filibuster, once to prevent debate from starting and another time to prevent it from ending.
Each of these three motions can be filibustered. Thus, to pass a single bill, the Senate may need to waste 30 hours after breaking the filibuster on the motion to proceed, another 30 hours after breaking the filibuster on the motion to end debate, and another 90 hours after breaking the three filibusters before the bill goes to conference committee.
This adds up to nearly an entire week every time the Senate passes a single bill. The picture for nominations is slightly less grim. Likewise, because the Senate alone confirms nominees, there are no conference committees on nominations and thus no opportunities to filibuster negotiations with the House.
Nevertheless, dissenting senators can still force up to 30 hours of time to be wasted before the Senate can confirm a nominee. These are the standing procedures under which the House conducts its business, regulating everything from voting to the behavior of members. The second source is special rules, reported by the Committee on Rules, to regulate debate on specific legislation.
Special rules spell out the procedures for which most major bills are debated and amended, including the amount of time for general debate and amendments; what amendments will be allowed, if any; and what standing rules will be waived when considering the bill in question.
The House rarely rejects special rules. The modern Rules Committee has a majority of two to one plus one the current Rules Committee has a majority of Since the Speaker appoints each Member of the majority, a special rule clearly reflects his or her will. A Member of the majority party voting to defeat a special rule either in the Rules Committee or on the Floor is doing so in defiance of their own party leadership.
The Speaker may allow a Member of the majority to vote against a rule for political reasons, but not if it would result in defeat of the special rule. In the rare occasion that they are defeated, the Rules Committee can simply go back a craft a new rule sufficient to gain a majority of votes. In general, since the th Congress majority parties have systematically sought to limit debate and minority party participation in the amendment process through the use of special rules.
Rules can restrict amendments to varying degrees. Open rules allow for any amendment that meets the House germaneness rule generally, an amendment must relate to the subject of the bill being debated.
Closed rules prohibit amendments. In between are structured rules, limiting the number and type of amendments allowed.
A partisan majority, therefore, can manipulate the standing and special rules of the House to that is has the opportunity to pass its agenda, if it can maintain party cohesion.
The opportunity for the minority to influence legislation is highly restricted and requires creativity, party cohesion and the ability to siphon off a sufficient number of Members in the majority party. If successful, the minority party faces threats of majority countermeasures that further threaten its ability to influence legislation. The th Congress began with a switch of party control.
In the elections the Democratic Party gained 31 seats, sweeping away twelve years of Republican rule. At the beginning of the th Congress, the Democrats and their new Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a [iii] advantage.
The Republican minority was experienced with the limits of majority control in the House, however, and required the votes of only 16 Democratic members to achieve a majority on any given roll call vote. They offered motions, and the House agreed to 24 of them.
By comparison, since , the previous record was six successful motions, set in both the nd and rd Congresses. The motion to recommit is a procedure specifically included in the Rules of the House to protect the rights of the minority. A motion to recommit can take two forms. A straight motion to recommit effectively kills a bill. In reality, this process is a formality since the committee is deemed to have reported the bill with the amendment included in the motion.
If the motion passes the amendment is included in the bill. The House may entertain such a motion after the completion of all other action on the underlying legislation. The motion must be germane, and the minority can only offer one motion to recommit on any bill. The increasingly restrictive nature of special rules magnifies the importance of the motion to recommit with instructions, since that may be the only amendment opponents of a bill have the opportunity to offer.
Majorities have only themselves to blame since the restrictive nature of the modern majorities have forced the minority to use the motion to recommit regularly. The motion to recommit has its modern origins in when Speaker Joe Cannon, in an attempt to stave off a revolt against his speakership, offered a rules package that reserved to the opponents of a bill the final opportunity to amend the bill through a motion to recommit.
A ruling by Speaker Nance Garner specifically reserved for the minority the right to make the motion to recommit. This essentially reduced the motion to recommit to a redundant inverse of the vote on final passage. It is a powerful right. Krehbiel is right to identify the motion to recommit with instructions as an amendment.
Its importance is magnified by the increasing restrictive nature of special rules under which most legislation is considered, since the motion to recommit with instructions may be the only amendment opponents of a bill have the opportunity to offer. Majorities have only themselves to blame since it is the restrictive nature of the modern majorities that have forced the expansive use by the minority of the motion to recommit.
Since the House in the th agreed to 24 motions to recommit there are plenty of examples to choose from, but not all of the relevant bills became law. In November six imams were removed from a US Airways flight in Minneapolis for disruptive behavior reported by passengers and crew.
The amendment was included in final passage. It was later included in the final House-Senate conference report at the insistence of Sen. Susan Collins R-ME. This was a hollow warning. Rahm Emanuel D-IL deliberately recruited moderate and conservative Democratic candidates to defeat incumbent Republicans and win Republican-leaning open seats.
As a result of Rep. The minority in the th Congress successfully used a procedure known as a discharge petition to indirectly force majority action on immigration enforcement. A discharge petition, first adopted in , is a means to force a bill to the floor, bypassing the committee of jurisdiction, the House Rules Committee, or both.
According to the rules of the th Congress, after a bill has been held in committee for over 30 legislative days, any member may introduce a motion to discharge the committee from further consideration of the measure. A majority of the entire House, Members, must sign the petition. When the th signature is collected, the bill is placed on the discharge calendar, where, after seven legislative days, a signatory could call it up for debate on the second or fourth Monday of the month.
If successful, the bill becomes the House business until disposed of.
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