Government Explained

House Committee Hearings: The “Minority Witness Rule”

When a House committee or subcommittee holds a hearing, the minority party members of the panel have the right to call witnesses of their choosing to testify on at least one day of that hearing.

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Article I, Section 7, clause 1, of the U.S. Constitution is known generally as the Origination Clause because it requires that [a]ll bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills. As generally understood, this clause carries two kinds of prohibitions.

First, the Senate may not originate any measure that includes a provision for raising revenue, and second, the Senate may not propose any amendment that would raise revenue to a non-revenue measure. However, the Senate may generally amend a House-originated revenue measure as it sees fit.

The House’s primary method for enforcement of the Origination Clause is through a process known as “blue-slipping.”

Blue-slipping is the term applied to the act of returning to the Senate a measure that the House has determined violates its prerogatives as defined by the Origination Clause.

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Each major party in the House has a leadership hierarchy. This episode summarizes the election, duties, and responsibilities of the Speaker of the House, the majority and minority leaders, and the whips and whip system.
The Speaker of the House is elected by the House on the first day of a new Congress. Customarily, the caucus or conference of each major party first elects a candidate at early organizational meetings.

When the new Congress convenes, each party places the name of its candidate in nomination, and the majority party’s candidate is typically elected on a party line vote.

A rules change adopted at the beginning of the 108th Congress requires the Speaker to submit the names of Members designated to serve as Speaker pro tempore in the event that the speakership becomes vacant, or in the event the Speaker is disabled.

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House Rule 18, clause 2 establishes minimum quorum requirements for eight areas of committee activity.

Committees have some discretion in adjusting the minimum quorum requirements mandated in House Rule 11 under the provision in the same rule that committee rules “shall not be inconsistent with the Rules of the House.”

For example, rules of the Budget Committee state that all business shall be conducted by a majority of the committee. (House rules require a majority to report measures but a one-third quorum to conduct most other business.)

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A special rule is a House resolution that regulates consideration of a specific legislative measure named in the resolution. Members and staff commonly refer to a resolution of this kind simply as “the rule” for considering a measure.

A rule has two key functions:

(1) to enable the House to consider the measure specified, and
(2) to set terms for considering it. The House Committee on Rules has jurisdiction to report resolutions that combine these two functions, and this ability enables the leadership to use rules effectively to manage the floor agenda.

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Under House Rule 20, clause 3, the practice of “pairing” involves—under certain procedural circumstances—a Member who is absent during a vote on the House floor arranging with a Member on the opposite side of a specific question who is present during a vote to announce that the present Member is forming a “pair” with the absent Member, thus allowing the absent Member to have recorded how he would have voted had he been present.

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A motion to recommit is one of the final steps in House consideration of legislation. The rules of the House permit motions to recommit under two different circumstances.

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The principle of majority rule dominates the work of the House of Representatives. This means that most questions are decided by vote of a simple majority, assuming the presence of a quorum. For instance, if all 435 lawmakers vote, the winning margin is at least 218—one more than half the membership of the House.

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The Speaker usually does not take the initiative to prevent the House from considering proposals or taking actions that would violate the House’s rules. Instead, whenever a Member believes that the House’s legislative procedures are being violated in some way, or are about to be violated, that Member may insist that the House’s procedures be enforced by making a point of order against the alleged violation.

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