Were prolonged House Speaker votes for badly-needed reforms, or bad intentions? My view

You know it’s a truly bizarre Congressional environment when I find myself not so much agreeing with Reps. Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert, but at least understanding where they are coming from, thanks to my research for a new “Congress and The Presidency” class I’m teaching at LaGrange College this year, which reveals how this showdown was decades in the making.

What you’ll discover in this column is how and why we’ve evolved from a more decentralized model where individual representatives had a least a little more of a say to one where the leadership dominates the process. It’s all documented by UCLA Professor Barbara Sinclair, who wrote the prophetic book “Unorthodox Lawmaking” years ago.

Back in the old days, we had autocratic House Speakers like “Uncle Joe” Cannon of Illinois who may have resembled another “Uncle Joe” from history, according to critics. And growing up in Texas, I can tell you plenty of stories about Sam Rayburn that will make you laugh, and cringe.

As a result, steps had been taken to give more power to the committees. It wasn’t too hard … their role is clearly documented in the House rules, as well as Schoolhouse Rock’s “I’m Just a Bill.” Sadly, some of those chairs acted like their committees were personal fiefdoms.

Sinclair notes that Northern Liberals Democrats swept in during the recession of 1958 started to outnumber the Southern Democrats who used their seniority to get that committee chair power, and block things like civil rights legislation, and environmental reform. So the new representatives used their numbers in the majority to defang the committees and open up the floor process more to amendments. Reforms passed after Watergate also made their mark.

But all of these reforms had an unintended effect.

These new rules, coupled with increasing partisanship in the 1980s, led to mostly narrow majorities, and unrealistic expectations during the very few times when your party actually had a big margin in Congress. As a result, House leaders began assuming more power over the next several decades. We got multiple committee referrals, more subcommittees, “poison pill” amendments, as well as “special rules” with restrictive rules that cut back on the power to amend, debate, and even points of procedure, weakening the power of the average legislator, and moving leaders toward Cannon and Rayburn.

Congressional leaders crafted omnibus bills, slipped controversial legislation through with the budget process, and even held special “summits” with the President and the leaders of both parties in both the House and Senate, making votes either tough “up-or-down” affairs for most legislators, or almost freezing them out altogether. Leaders got more done, but at the expense of anyone not in the leadership. Now do you see at least why Reps. Boebert, Gaetz, and others are willing to go to the mat for House reforms, even if you don’t agree with their stands on issues?

There’s one last question we must ask ourselves: what are the real motives of reform by the so-called House rebels? If it is providing a little more power to the average legislator, and veering us away from seemingly authoritarian rules that empowered the leadership, without any checks on their power, then you and I might conclude that this exercise in repeated votes for the Speaker of the House would be worth it. But if “the rebels’” actions are about developing a name-brand, or creating a scenario where we’ll guarantee a government shutdown and a significant blow to our economy, that’s something I can’t back. I also suspect it’s something the vast majority of Americans won’t stand for either, which would lead the House GOP’s tiny majority to be erased in 2024, as well as empowering Democrats in the Senate and White House.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu.