Influence Shrinks as House Limits Members’ Power to Change Bills

Rank-and-file House lawmakers are losing their traditional power to shape the nation’s laws, contributing to recent moves by members to bypass leadership and force floor votes on their legislative priorities.

Frustrated lawmakers are increasingly turning to a maneuver—rarely used “discharge petitions” that require a majority vote—to sidestep House leaders. The latest success came this week when a discharge petition allowed a bill to authorize a three-year extension of Obamacare tax credits to be voted on, despite opposition from GOP leaders. The bill passed the House on Thursday.

The blowback comes as the number and scope of amendments that lawmakers can vote on to change legislation have been steadily constrained by the committee that decides how the 435-member body considers its most consequential bills, a Bloomberg Government data analysis found.

In 2025, the House Rules Committee—controlled by the speaker—prohibited consideration of any amendments on about 84% of the measures it sent to the floor, the data shows.

The committee issued 95 “closed” rules that barred floor amendments last year, during the first half of the 119th Congress. That followed 115 closed rules in the 118th Congress, from 2023-2025, a record the panel is on track to break, said House Rules Committee ranking member Jim McGovern (D-Mass.).

“I think one of the reasons you elect representatives in a constitutional republic is to actually represent your constituents, and closed rules get in the way of doing that,” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.).

“It’s really a disservice to the institution,” said Rep. Julie Johnson (D-Texas), a freshman who has had all but one amendment she has submitted to the Rules Committee blocked. “We should be able to have at least one space in the legislative process, in our federal government, where we can meaningfully debate and put the good out of both sides in and reject the bad out of both sides.”

The trend has built under both Democratic and Republican speakers, and even as members have been filing more amendments in a bid to be heard. Leaders have sought to centralize their power to more easily move legislation in a highly polarized chamber, where only a few seats separate the parties, and a wide-open amendment vote would potentially force time-consuming negotiations.

For a decade, the House Rules Committee under Speakers Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), and now Mike Johnson (R-La.) has essentially stopped allowing the largely unrestricted amending of a bill on the floor, known as an “open” rule, that had been a fairly regular occurrence in the nation’s past.

Late last year, lawmakers garnered at least 218 signatures across party lines to pass discharge petitions and force floor votes on whether to release files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and whether to restore collective bargaining rights to most federal workers.

And Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), said the closed rule on the Republicans’ health-care bill (H.R. 6703) may have motivated a handful of Republicans to back the successful discharge petition to consider Affordable Care Act subsidy extensions.

“It’s leadership’s fault 100% because my understanding is people were promised amendments would get through, and then they closed any potential amendments from anybody,” Mace said in a roundtable interview with Bloomberg Government.

‘Traffic Cop of Congress’

A small panel that dates to the founding of Congress, the arcane House Rules Committee has rarely been the center of attention. Yet, it sets the stage for some of the country’s biggest and most significant policy fights.

Called the “traffic cop of Congress” or the “speaker’s committee,” House Rules is made up of 13 lawmakers, nine of them handpicked by the speaker. The committee is used by leadership to shape the House floor’s legislative agenda.

Many bills go straight to a House floor vote, bypassing the Rules Committee to be considered “under suspension of the rules.” To pass, those measures need support of two-thirds of House lawmakers who vote on them.

But substantial or controversial bills generally lack that degree of bipartisan support, so the Rules Committee sets the parameters for debate. Among those is what, if any, amendments lawmakers will hear about and vote on when considering a bill.

Closed rules have been used by both parties to protect legislation from amendments by more extreme members, or to fast-track a vote in deadline situations. In some circumstances, a bill can’t be amended, no amendments are submitted, or some amendments can’t be considered because they are not relevant.

Leadership said these conditions explain more closed rules in this Congress. But Casey Burgat, legislative affairs program director and associate professor at George Washington University, said closed rules can create a chilling effect on amendment submissions, which slowed last year after a surge over the last few Congresses.

“Lawmakers are not allowed to be lawmakers,” said Burgat. “It’s a leader-driven model which removes the incentive structure for committees to invest in the policymaking back-and-forth that will get bipartisanship compromises.”

The last fully open rule was during Speaker John Boehner‘s (R-Ohio) tenure in 2014. Ryan allowed a few modified-open rules in 2016, and McCarthy allowed one modified-open rule in 2023, in the opening days of his term.

Between open and closed is a “structured” rule, when the Rules Committee chooses which viable lawmaker-submitted amendments can be voted on.

In the Republican-led Congresses under Boehner from 2011–2015, and Ryan from 2015–2019, about 58% of all amendments submitted were blocked from being voted on. Under Pelosi from 2019–2023, about 54% were blocked. And last Congress under McCarthy and Johnson, from 2023–2025, about 68% were blocked.

As of the end of the first session of this Congress under Johnson, about 80% of all submitted amendments have been blocked.

McGovern, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, claims that Johnson is using the Rules Committee to limit congressional power and carry out President Donald Trump’s agenda.

But Johnson has encouraged “fair consideration of member priorities,” said Athina Lawson, spokesperson for the speaker.

“He remains committed to regular order—from committee deliberations to floor debate—and supports making as many amendments in order as possible for the Republican conference that can succeed on the House floor,” Lawson said. “Under his leadership, the Rules Committee membership reflects the full diversity of ideas and perspectives within the conference.”

House Rules Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) said: “We have a narrow margin, and that means that we have to be extremely careful as a majority as to what bills are going to be voted on and what amendments are going to be voted on.”

Closed rules are sometimes necessary, said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who sits on the Rules Committee.

“When it’s a clearly partisan issue in a three-seat majority, it’s going to be closed, and Dems would do the same thing,” Roy said. “And I’m OK with that as a general matter.”

Under Pelosi, in the most recent four years when Democrats were in charge, the committee approved no open rules, and about half of the rules were closed. Democrats held a wider majority during the 116th and 117th Congresses, from 2019–2023. Pelosi had said she wouldn’t bring a bill to the House floor that would fail, a setback she avoided in part with closed rules.

Some in Congress say the power to affect legislation, typically through offering or voting on amendments, is largely gone.

“If you’re a rank-and-file member, you could at least get a vote on the floor of the House that had your name on it—that showed whether the House supports your idea or not,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a former member of the Rules Committee who has been in Congress since 2012, said. “That’s been pretty much shut down since Speaker Johnson’s been speaker—there’s only been a few token amendment votes.”

‘Government to Work Better’

After a bill is introduced in the House, it is sent to a committee based on its policy category, such as natural resources or finance, where a couple dozen or so lawmakers from both parties have the power to shape it through open hearings and amendments.

Beyond that, the rest of the House members have essentially one avenue to influence legislation: getting their amendments in front of colleagues on the House floor. That requires having the Rules Committee allow a vote on that amendment.

Amendment submissions to the Rules Committee increased by more than 345% over the past 15 years, according to a data analysis of the Rules website. There were about 2,000 amendments submitted to the committee for about 150 rules in the 112th Congress, compared to more than 8,600 amendments for about 200 rules last Congress, not counting withdrawn amendments.

Part of the increase came after the panel fully digitized in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, eliminating cumbersome paper copies in filing amendments.

Big pieces of legislation, such as appropriations bills and the National Defense Authorization Act, attract a large percentage of these amendments. In 2023, members submitted about 1,500 amendments alone to the NDAA for fiscal 2024—the most amendments submitted to a single measure in 15 years.

During McCarthy’s 2023 multiballot bid for the speakership, he appointed three Republican hardliners to the Rules Committee, including two who still sit on the panel— Roy and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.)—in a deal to gain their support for his candidacy. The third, Massie, was replaced early last year.

In recent years, hardliners and those in the House Freedom Caucus have filed scores of amendments, and been among the lawmakers having the most success.

Freedom Caucus member Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), sponsored about 335 amendments last Congress, and had about 140 that were allowed to be considered on the floor. It was the most made-in-order amendments by any member in a single Congress in 15 years.

But even those hardliners have regularly pushed back against the amendment restrictions.

“In general, I favor the ability to amend, whether we’re in the minority or majority,” Roy said. “I do think it’s been trending in the more closed direction, and we need to get it back.”

Julie Johnson, the Texas Democrat, said the current system doesn’t serve voters of either party.

“I don’t think this is how they want our government to function,” she said. “Everyone, whether you’re from a red or a blue district, wants the government to work better.”

Methodology

Special rules and the bills provided for consideration under them for each Congress from the 112th through the 118th were extracted from the House Rules Committee’s Congress-end Survey of Activities. For the first session of the current 119th Congress, rules and bills considered were extracted from House reports accompanying the rules, and were last extracted on Dec. 17, 2025. Amendments, if they existed, were extracted from each bill’s designated site on the House Rules majority or minority website. There were five measures in the 112th Congress that were given structured rules but did not have any amendments on the website, and several measures included in each Congress’s initial rules packages did not have individual web pages that contain supporting details. The analysis does not include measures adopted under the rule, nor does it include floor consideration of House reports, conference reports, or other rules outside normal special rules. All rules for floor consideration of Senate amendments were considered closed unless amendments were made in order. Amendments without a status listed or without a summary were not included, and all versions of one amendment were counted as the same amendment.

Get the data here.