House Democrat Plans Rules Makeover if His Party Retakes Control

If Democrats flip the House in midterm elections, the Rules Committee’s ranking member said the chamber’s guidelines shouldn’t allow a handful of lawmakers from the majority party to “blackmail the speaker” — which would mark a change from the rules of the last four years.

Republicans have “made it possible for a small group, or the most extreme elements, to be able to stop the House’s business,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who’s poised to helm the panel if Democrats win House control in November. McGovern, speaking at an exclusive Bloomberg Government roundtable, was referring to the “motion to vacate,” a process by which a certain number of lawmakers—currently nine—can move to oust a speaker.

House rules long required just a single member of the majority party to raise a motion to vacate, but Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) raised that threshold in 2018 during her speakership to a majority of either party. Five years later, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) lowered the threshold back to one lawmaker to appease his party’s right flank and earn enough votes to become speaker. That negotiation later allowed then-Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) to successfully oust him.

The nine lawmakers currently needed to raise a motion to vacate is one more than the eight rogue Republicans who joined with Democrats to vote McCarthy out in 2023. But the yo-yoing motion to vacate threshold remains an open question for Democrats if they retake the House in November, which would likely make Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) speaker in 2027.

“I don’t think it’s in anybody’s interest to have one or two people run the show and be able to grind everything to a halt,” McGovern said, though he didn’t name the exact threshold he expects. He said Democrats have already begun discussions on their House rules package for next year.

The House will need to adopt its rules package at the beginning of 2027, as it does in every new Congress. If Democrats are in control, McGovern will have an outsize impact on deciding what goes into it. The Massachusetts Democrat said he’d expect to hold “open ended hearings” to ask lawmakers — both Democrats and Republicans — for their input.

The Rules Committee controls how and when legislation can come to the House floor, making it a powerful panel regardless of which party is in charge. For a bill to get a floor vote under a simple majority, the panel must report a rule and it must be adopted on the floor. McGovern criticized Republicans for reporting mostly “closed rules,” which don’t allow an open amendment process, though Democrats also used closed rules during their time in power.

“We will be way more open than they are,” McGovern said if Democrats control the Rules Committee next year.

McGovern said he’d have “zero tolerance” for Democrats opposing rule votes on the floor. While rules are typically party-line votes, some conservative Republicans have twisted Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) arm on various issues by refusing to vote for them on the floor.

“That just screws things up,” McGovern said of members of the majority party opposing rules. “People ought to have the opportunity to be able to consider it.”