Deliverance from the Republican House Speaker Debacle

Clip Speaker powers, election by plurality, lowering threshold for discharge petition

Republican Party deliverance from the protracted House Speaker debacle of Kevin McCarthy is in plain view.

The impassioned internecine warfare has been provoked because the powers of the Speaker have artificially grown from a tiny acorn into a mighty oak under Republican Newt Gingrich (GA) and Democrat Nancy Pelosi (CA). To the extent that political stakes climb, to that extent political compromise becomes stickier and intransigence greater.

The Constitution does not endow the House Speaker with any powers whatsoever. It does not even provide the procedural protocols for election. It simply states in Article 1, section 2, clause 5, “The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers.”

The Speakership is not limited to the elected Representatives. The threshold for election may be either a majority or plurality. Voting may be secret or open as House rules adopted by a simple majority may provide. In other words, the House Speakership can mean whatever the Representatives want it to mean, neither more nor less.

Frederick A.C. Muhlenberg was the first House Speaker who left no fingerprints. Speaker Muhlenberg was dwarfed by Representative James Madison, who architected the Bill of Rights.

House Speakers were generally figureheads until Republican Speaker Joe Cannon of Illinois usurped the customary powers of the rank-and-file. Speaker Cannon dictated the entirety of the legislative process and chaired the House Rules Committee. He alone determined who served on which committees and which bills made it to the floor for a vote. In 1910, House Republicans led by Representative George Norris (Neb.) clipped the Speaker’s powers. Representative Oscar Underwood (ALA) elaborated, “We are fighting a system, and that system is the system that enables the Speaker, by the power vested in him, to thwart and overthrow the will of the majority membership of this House.”

The revolt against Speaker Cannon devolved power to the House standing committees and chairs, where it largely remained until Newt Gingrich’s speakership in 1994. Mr. Gingrich starved the committees and member offices of funds, defunded expert advisory bodies, asserted control over coveted committee assignments, and dictated floor proceedings. His successors did not surrender the powers Gingrich usurped. Indeed, Speaker Pelosi augmented them by raising the threshold for filing a motion to vacate the speakership, i.e., a vote of confidence, from one to a majority vote by one party. In 2015, Representative Mark Meadows (R-NC) alone filed a motion to vacate the speakership of John Boehner, which proved instrumental in provoking the latter’s resignation.

It is time for the House to reprise the clipping of Speaker Cannon’s wings. Republican Standing Committee assignments should be made by a 20-member Steering Committee chosen at random among Republican Representatives. Committees would elect their own chairs and Subcommittee chairs. The Rules Committee would determine which bills would receive a floor vote, time for debate, and opportunities for amendments.

Irrespective of the Rules Committee, Representatives should have an opportunity to move to strike designated portions of a spending bill which they think are ill-advised. At present, they are required to vote up or down on massive trillion dollar spending bills which fosters budget bloat.

One-third of the House should be authorized by secret vote to force a bill out of Committee for a floor vote through a discharge petition. One-third was the threshold after the revolt against Speaker Cannon. It was raised to a House majority or 218 in 1935.

No floor vote or debate on a bill should be permitted until it has been shared with the full House for at least five legislative days, subject to waiver by a two-thirds majority. At present, 3,000-4,000 page bills are rushed to vote on short notice by the House leadership, making a mockery of the deliberative process.

The threshold for election as House Speaker should be lowered from a majority to a plurality, as was done in 1856. A plurality is the ordinary standard for electing Representatives themselves. Secret voting by Representatives should be permitted to prevent intimidation evoked by fear of political retaliation.

Great innovations, like the Affordable Care Act, should not be forced on a slender majority. The more widely power is disbursed within the legislative branch, the more the necessity of compromise and enacting an Aristotelian mean.

As former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanual advised, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” House Republicans should piggy back on Kevin McCarthy’s speakership travails to strip the office of the stupendous powers it has accumulated since Mr. Gingrich’s 1994 revolution.