Hoover Institution (Washington, DC) — Scholars from the Hoover Institution joined forces with former members of Congress, staffers, and other academics to write and present a comprehensive report aimed at improving the law-making process within the US House of Representatives.
The report, Revitalizing the House: Bipartisan Recommendations on Rules and Process, recommends distinctive procedure and rule changes as well as more general adjustments to working conditions, which its authors believe will empower committees and members in ways that will foster more bipartisanship and create more sound legislation.
This effort was cosponsored by the Center for Revitalizing American Institutions at the Hoover Institution and the Sunwater Institute.
The lead authors of the report include Center for Revitalizing American Institutions director Brandice Canes-Wrone; Sunwater Institute founder Matthew Chervenak; Daniel Lipinski, a Hoover distinguished visiting fellow and former representative (D-IL) from 2005 to 2022; and Philip Wallach, senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute.
Revitalizing the House was released on September 17, 2024, with a lunchtime presentation on Capitol Hill and an evening event at the Sunwater Institute offices in Washington, DC.
The authors cite troubling data to support the feeling of dysfunction of the House that is reflected in public opinion polls and the sentiment of House leaders.
While the average number of laws passed per session has fallen by more than half—from more than 1,000 to about 400 between 1950 and today—the number of pages entered into the Federal Register, which reflects executive branch policymaking, has risen fivefold to nearly 100,000 pages each year during the same period.
Fewer pieces of legislation are becoming law, and the bills that do are much more complex.
Also, the share of House legislation reported by committee that receives a vote on the floor or is enacted has steadily declined, reaching a new low in 2020.
This finding coincides with years of recent polling data showing Americans’ trust and approval of Congress are at or near historic lows.
“This is not a Republican or Democratic problem, but a problem with how the institution currently operates,” the report authors write. “To revitalize the House and reinvigorate our democracy, our bipartisan task force recommends these reforms to House rules and procedures, both to re-empower individual members and committees in lawmaking and to facilitate participation in a democratic, deliberative process.”
The authors of Revitalizing the House offer changes to five distinct facets of House business.
Change the Rules to Give Substantial Bipartisan Majorities Greater Access to the Floor
The first suggestion involves an improvement to the existing measure known as the discharge petition, which is used to advance a bill when it has a majority of House members’ support but the Rules Committee refuses to act on it.
The authors recommend giving discharge petition filers the option to collect signatures privately and setting the threshold to a majority of sitting members, rather than a simple majority of 218.
They also recommend creating an entirely new legislative procedure, which the authors call the guaranteed regular order (GRO), empowering committees to advance important bipartisan legislation—particularly on reauthorizations of existing laws—to the floor if they conduct a thorough deliberative process including hearings and markups.
The report authors argue that the guaranteed regular order is necessary to counteract the trend of a growing number of bills that make it out of their committees but never receive a vote on the floor of the House.
“Because of the many requirements committees must meet to make a bill eligible, adding GRO to the House rules would be an incremental change rather than a revolution,” they write.
They also want to make it easier for amendments to bills that enjoy substantial bipartisan support to make it to the floor for debate.
Each of these changes, the authors note, would ensure legislation with broad bipartisan support could more easily make its way to the House floor for a vote.
Make Committees Stronger, More Substantive, and More Effective
The group’s recommendations for strengthening the work of House committees begin with the simple observation that, currently, their meetings are poorly scheduled. Members are sometimes double booked, and there is little or no effort made to reschedule meetings.
The authors want mandatory “deconfliction” methods enacted to reduce the number of double-booked meetings, moving meeting times whenever appropriate to ensure better attendance.
There is also a need for more professional, stable, and less partisan staff cadres supporting each committee.
In the current system, a significant amount of turnover occurs whenever control of the House changes hands.
The turnover could be reduced if more staff positions were made nonpartisan, whereby experts are hired to serve whichever party controls respective committees and are expected to stay on the job for a defined term.
The authors also recommend committee members have more influence over staff hiring decisions even when they are in the minority party. Hiring decisions today are often partisan in nature, with the majority on the committee making the hiring calls.
Promote Bipartisan Collaborations
The modern House no longer lends itself to working across the aisle, but the report’s authors say that as an institution, the House could try to change the climate and culture by offering more opportunities for members of each party to simply cross paths.
They suggest hosting more “bipartisan retreats, lunches, educational sessions, and field hearings” where members could get to know one another and possibly dial down the partisan temperature.
The House could also demarcate a new physical space near the House floor “for partisan comingling” and ban the press from the area of the Speaker’s Lobby so that bipartisan activity can take place without being scrutinized.
Give Members More Time for Legislative Work
Other suggestions call for changes to the House’s schedule.
In the current arrangement, members rarely hold five-day work weeks, with only one expected in 2024. The authors propose adding additional five-day weeks in Washington, DC, to help members devote more time to significant policy challenges.
Raise Member Pay
Representatives’ salaries have stayed the same since 2009, at $174,000, meaning House members now make 31 percent less in real terms than they did fifteen years ago. Average US household incomes have risen 20 percent in the same period.
“I teach part time at Vanderbilt Law School,” said former representative Jim Cooper, who contributed to the report. “The dumbest student in my class will earn more than a member of Congress.”
“As a coequal branch of government, there is no reason the House should accept this disparity,” authors write.
The group suggests pay increases to come closer to average executive branch salaries, or even just increase up to the pace of inflation during the 2009‒present period.
This report follows in the footsteps of earlier reports and initiatives. One frequently mentioned in the report is the Problem Solvers Caucus, a group of sixty-two House members—thirty-one Republicans and thirty-one Democrats—who meet weekly to find solutions to the most challenging problems facing the nation.
Contributors to Revitalizing the House include former representatives Jim Cooper (D-TN), Rodney Davis (R-IL), and Reid James Ribble (R-WI).
Hoover senior fellows Justin Grimmer, Andrew B. Hall, and Jonathan Rodden also contributed to the report, along with nine other former congressional staffers and political scientists.
Read the full report here.
