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January 5, 1999
The Honorable Dennis Hastert
Speaker-nominee
H-107, the Capitol
Washington, D.C. 20515
The Honorable Richard Gephardt
Minority Leader
H-204, the Capitol
Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Mr. Speaker-nominee and Mr. Leader:At the beginning of the 105th Congress, the Committee on Rules established a bipartisan, ad hoc task force to develop a more rational and orderly set of House rules without making substantive changes in the rules, procedures or precedents of the House as they stand today. The Task Force consisted of Representatives Dreier, Frost, Pryce, and Slaughter.
In this letter, we formerly present to you the recommendations of the Task Force.
We have worked closely with the Office of the Parliamentarian to develop this proposal. It is our hope that the recommendations will be incorporated as a part of the opening day rules package. Our proposal reorganizes the rules to provide a more logical, user-friendly structure and, in the process, pares down the number of rules from 51 to 28. Obsolete and archaic provisions have been excised. The proposal, however, retains the location of certain major rules to retain consistency with precedent and practice volumes already published (e.g. germaneness remains as clause 7 of rule XVI and legislation in an appropriation bill remains clause 2 of rule XXI).
A large part of the effort consisted of maintaining uniformity of word usage and style. The same ideas have been expressed over the years in many very different ways. For example, a privileged question is sometimes called “privileged” or “highly privileged” or “of highest privilege” or “is in order at any time” or “shall always be in order.” But by consistent and long-standing precedents, these different expressions have been treated as strictly identical. The requirement for collegial action by a committee has been written in a variety of ways, for example “not without the consent of the committee” or “only when authorized by the committee, a majority being present.” This has led to confusion. In these and similar circumstances, the Task Force sought, whenever possible, a single convention to be used consistently. For example, the convention used to express a mandatory negative is “may not.” Gender references, where avoidable, have been deleted; otherwise, they are treated as in the U.S. Code, so that the terms “he” or “his” are defined in proposed rule XXVIII, to be a reference to “she” or “her” as applicable.
While we continue to have substantive disagreements about the existing rules and appropriate changes to them, the Task Force fully agrees that the proposal presents the rules in a more coherent format and makes their meaning more transparent but is in no way intended to alter the interpretation or content of any rule.
Sincerely,
DAVID DREIER JOHN JOSEPH MOAKLEY
