House need not reinvent the wheel to reform

According to a recent news account, House Republican leaders are quietly moving forward on a 10-month process to overhaul party and House rules. The effort is in keeping with Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) announced intention to fix a broken House.  In his acceptance speech as Speaker on October 29, Ryan charged that the House is “not solving problems” but only “adding to them.” Therefore, changes need to be made in how the House does business. That will entail opening the process, according to Ryan, letting “every member contribute,” and letting committees “retake the lead in drafting all major legislation.” In summary, said Ryan, “We need to return to the regular order.”

Skeptics will tell you that any effort to return to the regular order can only bring more trouble and gridlock given how much more partisan and polarized the House has become in recent decades.  Opening the process, they warn, will only invite more partisan gamesmanship and delays.  And, up to a point, they have a point: Congress cannot return to the past, especially to a “golden age” that never existed.  New realities call for new ways of governing in the twenty-first century. 

{mosads}Unfortunately, Ryan’s approach of making policy changes from the bottom-up is meeting its greatest resistance not from partisan Democrats but from the Republicans’ informal House Freedom Caucus of about 40 members.  The dispute over last fall’s budget agreement numbers is the first fissure in the Ryan renaissance.  How the Speaker meets this test will have a lot to do with whether there is any hope for turning the House around from years of deadlock and decay.

During debate in the British House of Commons on a parliamentary reform bill in 1831, Thomas Babington Macaulay invoked Edmund Burke’s maxim, “Reform in order to preserve,” as a rallying cry. Years earlier, essayist William Hazlitt challenged Burke’s advice, asking, “Preserve what?”  In his acceptance speech, Ryan offered his answer to that question, saying the regular order is not just a matter of process, but “a matter of principle.”  The essence of what needs preserving, in Ryan’s words, is this foundational principle:  “Only a fully functioning House can truly represent the people.”

The Speaker is rightfully claiming credit for beginning to put the House back on the regular order track, giving greater deference to committees and members. During his first four months as Speaker (Nov.-Feb.), of the 19 major bills brought through the Rules Committee, only one (5 percent) was not reported from committee.  That’s compared to 25 unreported bills (31 percent) of the 80 bills previously cleared for floor action by the Rules Committee in this Congress.  Moreover, of the same 19 major bills under Ryan, only two (11 percent) were closed to floor amendments compared to 40 (50 percent) of the previous 80 bills.  Clearly, Ryan is making a conscious effort at the outset of his speakership to make good on his pledge to restore a more inclusive and deliberative way of doing things.  

Ryan has wisely steered his House Republican colleagues away from the Republican presidential frontrunner’s tack of fomenting fear and loathing in the electorate.  By calling for a constructive conservative agenda that addresses real problems, the Speaker is putting a more positive face on his party while attempting to restore Congress as a counterweight to the imperial presidency — closer and more responsive to the people.  

Ryan’s call for a return to the regular order is integral to these new directions and will not require a sweeping overhaul of the institution’s rules or structures. There is no need to reinvent the wheel.  Frequently such efforts only produce flat tires. It is far easier for party leaders to take the original wheel and steer members and committees to higher levels of legislative engagement.  At that point they can determine for themselves how best to fulfill their lawmaking responsibilities for the good of the nation. 

The broad-based and methodical 10-month process the leadership has laid-out for considering new policy and procedural changes is designed to ensure that members are both consulted at every stage and are once again contributing both to an improved party brand and, more importantly, to addressing long-neglected national problems.  However, if the Speaker does not have the full backing of all elements of the Republican Conference in moving forward, internal procedural changes will not make a whit of difference in moving the country forward.  At some point, the minority of the majority that stands athwart the ability of Congress to keep its commitments on budget priorities will wear the scarlet letters, RD, for “regular disorder.”

Wolfensberger is a fellow at both the Bipartisan Policy Center and Woodrow Wilson Center and former staff director of the House Rules Committee.  The views expressed are solely his own.