Introduction
The Constitution gives each house of Congress the power to determine the rules of its proceedings. The House of Representatives exercises that authority at the beginning of each two-year Congress, when its members approve a resolution establishing the rules under which the chamber will operate.
In practice, the House does not write its rules from scratch every two years. It generally adopts the preceding Congress’s rules while incorporating changes. Those changes may amend the House rules directly or take the form of separate orders — freestanding provisions that govern House procedure for the duration of a single Congress and then expire. Adopting a recommendation as a separate order allows the House to test a change without fully committing to it. Many lapse after one Congress. Others are renewed repeatedly, survive changes in party control, and remain in force for a decade or more. When they persist across multiple Congresses — and especially when they survive changes in party control — the House may ultimately incorporate them into its standing rules.
The recommendations in this report can be implemented in two ways. Some require changes to the House rules themselves, while others could be adopted through separate orders. The report also recommends incorporating several long-standing separate orders into the rules for continuation in the next Congress: the machine-readable documents order, in force in every Congress since the 114th; and the four workplace-rights orders, in force in every Congress since the 116th. Doing so would recognize their durability and signal that the House regards them as permanent features of its institutional framework, not temporary procedural arrangements. The House has recently shown how this is done: the procedures governing district work periods ran as a separate order in the 118th Congress and were codified as cl. 13 of Rule I in the 119th Congress.
The beginning of the 120th Congress is an opportunity for members to reconsider how the House rules can better support the institution and the people it serves. This report offers recommendations for making the House more transparent, effective, accountable, and secure. It builds on our recommendations for the 119th Congress and continues a series of proposals developed over the past decade. The recommendations reflect extensive conversations with congressional practitioners and institutional experts about reforms that could strengthen the House’s capacity to perform its constitutional responsibilities.
This report is a joint publication of the American Governance Institute, the Foundation for American Innovation, and Ready State Labs.
