Recodification of House Rules -- Background

On January 8, 1997, the Rules Committee approved, by voice vote, a motion that there be established as part of the Rules Committee a bipartisan, ad hoc task force on the recodification of House Rules. The purpose of the task force is to recommend, at the earliest practicable date, a more logical, orderly and comprehensive set of House rules without substantive policy changes.

The House of Representatives has not undertaken a comprehensive revision of its rules since the 1880s. However, there have been sporadic bipartisan efforts in recent years to recodify House rules to make them more rational, comprehensible and usable by Members and committees.

In 1984, House Speaker Tip O'Neill wrote to Minority Leader Bob Michel endorsing a proposal to recodify House rules made by the House Wednesday Group. The Speaker subsequently established a bipartisan group of four Members to review a draft recodification proposal presented by the House Parliamentarian. The bipartisan group worked on further revisions in the Parliamentarian's draft during the remainder of the 98th Congress and endorsed a final draft at the beginning of the 99th Congress. However, the group's effort to present a final package to the Rules Committee and the full House stalled when a group of committee chairmen reacted negatively to some of the proposed changes.

While the recodification project was mentioned in succeeding Congresses, it was never fully pursued to the point of presentation to either the House or to the Rules Committee. Most notably, in the 103rd Congress, the House Members of the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress recommended the following in their final report:

"The Parliamentarian of the House should prepare a recodification of the Rules of the House...with the goal of completing the project by the beginning of the 105th Congress." (House Report 103-413, Vol. I, p. 18.)

In 1996, the recodification project also received the following endorsement by a GOP Task Force on Committee Review:

"The Task Force urges the Committee on Rules to undertake a thorough recodification of House Rules building on the past efforts of a bipartisan working group to update and rationalize existing rules without making any substantive changes."

At the beginning of the 105th Congress, the Speaker of the House agreed that the Rules Committee should proceed with the recodification effort on a bipartisan basis. Consequently, the Rules Committee approved the establishment of the bipartisan ad hoc task force consisting of Representatives David Dreier, Deborah Pryce, Martin Frost and Louise Slaughter. Representative Dreier was designated chairman of the task force.