National Affairs: The House's Key Committee Bows to No Man

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RULES & ITS RULERS

IN the gaudy legends of the House Rules Committee, Kansas Republican Philip Campbell occupies a niche as the crustiest of that committee's traditionally crusty chairmen. In the early 1920s Campbell sported a Napoleonic curl in the middle of his forehead and had a personality to match, using the obstructive powers of the Rules Committee to block any legislation that he took a dislike to. When he saw fit, Campbell defied a majority of his own committee. If other committee members passed a resolution okaying a bill for floor action against his wishes, he would exercise a personal "pocket veto" by putting the bill in his pocket and refusing to call up the resolution on the House floor.

Formidable obstructive powers still repose in the House Rules Committee—and in its chairman, if he has enough committee votes behind him. Over the years the committee's frequent roadblocks have exasperated and angered Presidents and Congressmen bent on getting programs enacted, but its powers have survived undipped because Rules performs an indispensable function in the lawmaking process. Essentially, the Rules Committee serves as the House's traffic-control device, as necessary as traffic lights at big-city intersections. The House has 437 members, who among them introduce several thousand bills every year. Under an old House rule, every member has a theoretical right to speak for one hour on every bill that comes to the floor. Without firm traffic control, the legislative process would swiftly collapse into chaos. To exercise that control, the Rules Committee is equipped with powers to 1) decide whether a bill gets to the floor at all, 2) fix a maximum number of hours for debate on any particular bill, 3) set "gag rules" to restrict amendments to pending legislation.

In keeping with its great powers, Rules has privileges not accorded to any other House committee: it can, at any time, bring any bill it chooses before the House, and it can meet "without special leave" while the House is in session. Largely through its efforts the House, despite its much larger membership, is more efficient than the Senate.

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During the first several decades of the U.S. Congress, the Rules Committee had little work and no power. The House of Representatives had a manageable number of members (65 in the first Congress, in 1789) and a limited range of business, so traffic control was not a compelling need. But as the membership of the House and the role of the Federal Government expanded, the Rules Committee grew in importance and power. From 1858, the Speaker of the House was a member of the committee, and ambitious Speakers made it an instrument of their own power. Maine's Thomas Reed, Speaker in 1889-91 and again in 1895-99, used to decide the business of the five-member Rules Committee with his two fellow Republicans without even bothering to meet with the two Democratic members. "Gentlemen," he would say, when it came time to inform the Democrats of the decision, "we have decided to perpetrate the following outrage." When a House rebellion in 1909-11 upset the autocratic rule of Speaker "Uncle Joe" Cannon, one of the victorious rebels' basic reforms was to deprive the Speaker of his place on the Rules Committee.