The Congress: By the Rules

The people elect the House. But the House elects the all-important Rules Committee. And last week, as old opponents began to dust off their parliamentary weapons, it seemed certain that the 88th Congress would begin the same way the 87th did—with a battle royal over the makeup of the Rules Committee.

On coming to power in 1961, the Kennedy Administration made changing the Rules Committee its first order of legislative business. The twelve-man committee had been split evenly between liberals and conservatives, and under the chairmanship of Virginia's conservative Democratic Representative Howard...