particular line of policy, having been elected, it may be, as an
advocate of free trade, or as a champion of protection; and it is
naturally his first care upon entering on his duties to seek immediate
opportunity for the expression of his views and immediate means of
giving them definite shape and thrusting them upon the attention of
Congress. His disappointment is, therefore, very keen when he finds both
opportunity and means denied him. He can introduce his bill; but that is
all he can do, and he must do that at a particular time and in a
particular manner. This he is likely to learn through rude experience,
if he be not cautious to inquire beforehand the details of practice. He
is likely to make a rash start, upon the supposition that Congress
observes the ordinary rules of parliamentary practice to which he has
become accustomed in the debating clubs familiar to his youth, and in
the mass-meetings known to his later experience. His bill is doubtless
ready for presentation early in the session, and some day, taking
advantage of a pause in the proceedings, when there seems to be no
business before the House, he rises to read it and move its adoption.
But he finds getting the floor an arduous and precarious undertaking.
There are certain to be others who want it as well as he; and his
indignation is stirred by the fact that the Speaker does not so much as
turn towards him, though he must have heard his call, but recognizes
some one else readily and as a matter of course. If he be obstreperous
and persistent in his cries of "Mr. Speaker," he may get that great
functionary's attention for a moment,--only to be told, however, that he
is out of order, and that his bill can be introduced at that stage only
by unanimous consent: immediately there are mechanically-uttered but
emphatic exclamations of objection, and he is forced to sit down
confused and disgusted. He has, without knowing it, obtruded himself in
the way of the "regular order of business," and been run over in
consequence, without being quite clear as to how the accident occurred.
Moved by the pain and discomfiture of this first experience to respect,
if not to fear, the rules, the new member casts about, by study or
inquiry, to find out, if possible, the nature and occasion of his
privileges. He learns that his only safe day is Monday. On that day the
roll of the States is called, and members may introduce bills as their
States are reached in the call. So on Monday he essays another bout with
the rules, confident this time of being on their safe side,--but mayhap
indiscreetly and unluckily over-confident. For if he supposes, as he
naturally will, that after his bill has been sent up to be read by the
clerk he may say a few words in its behalf, and in that belief sets out
upon his long-considered remarks, he will be knocked down by the rules
as surely as he was on the first occasion when he gained the floor for a
brief moment. The rap of Mr. Speaker's gavel is sharp, immediate, and
peremptory. He is curtly informed that no debate is in order; the bill
can only be referred to the appropriate Committee.
This is, indeed, disheartening; it is his first lesson in committee
government, and the master's rod smarts; but the sooner he learns the
prerogatives and powers of the Standing Committees the sooner will he
penetrate the mysteries of the rules and avoid the pain of further
contact with their thorny side. The privileges of the Standing
Committees are the beginning and the end of the rules. Both the House of
Representatives and the Senate conduct their business by what may
figuratively, but not inaccurately, be called an odd device of
_disintegration_. The House virtually both deliberates and legislates
in small sections. Time would fail it to discuss all the bills brought
in, for they every session number thousands; and it is to be doubted
whether, even if time allowed, the ordinary processes of debate and
amendment would suffice to sift the chaff from the wheat in the bushels
of bills every week piled upon the clerk's, desk. Accordingly, no futile
attempt is made to do anything of the kind. The work is parceled out,
most of it to the forty-seven Standing Committees which constitute the
regular organization of the House, some of it to select committees
appointed for special and temporary purposes. Each of the almost
numberless bills that come pouring in on Mondays is "read a first and
second time,"--simply perfunctorily read, that is, by its title, by the
clerk, and passed by silent assent through its first formal courses, for
the purpose of bringing it to the proper stage for commitment,--and
referred without debate to the appropriate Standing Committee.
Practically, no bill escapes commitment--save, of course, bills
introduced by committees, and a few which may now and then be crowded
through under a suspension of the rules, granted by a two-thirds
vote--though the exact disposition to be made of a bill is not always
determined easily and as a matter of course. Besides the great
Committee of Ways and Means and the equally great Committee on
Appropriations, there are Standing Committees on Banking and Currency,
on Claims, on Commerce, on the Public Lands, on Post-Offices and
Post-Roads, on the Judiciary, on Public Expenditures, on Manufactures,
on Agriculture, on Military Affairs, on Naval Affairs, on Mines and
Mining, on Education and Labor, on Patents, and on a score of other
branches of legislative concern; but careful and differential as is the
topical division of the subjects of legislation which is represented in
the titles of these Committees, it is not always evident to which
Committee each particular bill should go. Many bills affect subjects
which may be regarded as lying as properly within the jurisdiction of
one as of another of the Committees; for no hard and fast lines separate
the various classes of business which the Committees are commissioned to
take in charge. Their jurisdictions overlap at many points, and it must
frequently happen that bills are read which cover just this common
ground. Over the commitment of such bills sharp and interesting
skirmishes often take place. There is active competition for them, the
ordinary, quiet routine of matter-of-course reference being interrupted
by rival motions seeking to give very different directions to the
disposition to be made of them. To which Committee should a bill "to
fix and establish the maximum rates of fares of the Union Pacific and
Central Pacific Railroads" be sent,--to the Committee on Commerce or to
the Committee on the Pacific Railroads? Should a bill which prohibits
the mailing of certain classes of letters and circulars go to the
Committee on Post-Offices and Post-Roads, because it relates to the
mails, or to the Committee on the Judiciary, because it proposes to make
any transgression of its prohibition a crime? What is the proper
disposition of any bill which thus seems to lie within two distinct
committee jurisdictions?
The fate of bills committed is generally not uncertain. As a rule, a
bill committed is a bill doomed. When it goes from the clerk's desk to a
committee-room it crosses a parliamentary bridge of sighs to dim
dungeons of silence whence it will never return. The means and time of
its death are unknown, but its friends never see it again. Of course no
Standing Committee is privileged to take upon itself the full powers of
the House it represents, and formally and decisively reject a bill
referred to it; its disapproval, if it disapproves, must be reported to
the House in the form of a recommendation that the bill "do not pass."
But it is easy, and therefore common, to let the session pass without
making any report at all upon bills deemed objectionable or
unimportant, and to substitute for reports upon them a few bills of the
Committee's own drafting; so that thousands of bills expire with the
expiration of each Congress, not having been rejected, but having been
simply neglected. There was not time to report upon them.
Of course it goes without saying that the practical effect of this
Committee organization of the House is to consign to each of the
Standing Committees the entire direction of legislation upon those
subjects which properly come to its consideration. As to those subjects
it is entitled to the initiative, and all legislative action with regard
to them is under its overruling guidance. It gives shape and course to
the determinations of the House. In one respect, however, its initiative
is limited. Even a Standing Committee cannot report a bill whose
subject-matter has not been referred to it by the House, "by the rules
or otherwise;" it cannot volunteer advice on questions upon which its
advice has not been asked. But this is not a serious, not even an
operative, limitation upon its functions of suggestion and leadership;
for it is a very simple matter to get referred to it any subject it
wishes to introduce to the attention of the House. Its chairman, or one
of its leading members, frames a bill covering the point upon which the
Committee wishes to suggest legislation; brings it in, in his capacity
as a private member, on Monday, when the call of States is made; has it
referred to his Committee; and thus secures an opportunity for the
making of the desired report.
It is by this imperious authority of the Standing Committees that the
new member is stayed and thwarted whenever he seeks to take an active
part in the business of the House. Turn which way he may, some privilege
of the Committees stands in his path. The rules are so framed as to put
all business under their management; and one of the discoveries which
the new member is sure to make, albeit after many trying experiences and
sobering adventures and as his first session draws towards its close,
is, that under their sway freedom of debate finds no place of allowance,
and that his long-delayed speech must remain unspoken. For even a long
congressional session is too short to afford time for a full
consideration of all the reports of the forty-seven Committees, and
debate upon them must be rigidly cut short, if not altogether excluded,
if any considerable part of the necessary business is to be gotten
through with before adjournment. There are some subjects to which the
House must always give prompt attention; therefore reports from the
Committees on Printing and on Elections are always in order; and there
are some subjects to which careful consideration must always be
accorded; therefore the Committee of Ways and Means and the Committee on
Appropriations are clothed with extraordinary privileges; and revenue
and supply bills may be reported, and will ordinarily be considered, at
any time. But these four are the only specially licensed Committees. The
rest must take their turns in fixed order as they are called on by the
Speaker, contenting themselves with such crumbs of time as fall from the
tables of the four Committees of highest prerogative.
Senator Hoar, of Massachusetts, whose long congressional experience
entitles him to speak with authority, calculates[19] that, "supposing
the two sessions which make up the life of the House to last ten
months," most of the Committees have at their disposal during each
Congress but two hours apiece in which "to report upon, debate, and
dispose of all the subjects of general legislation committed to their
charge." For of course much time is wasted. No Congress gets immediately
to work upon its first assembling. It has its officers to elect, and
after their election some time must elapse before its organization is
finally completed by the appointment of the Committees. It adjourns for
holidays, too, and generally spares itself long sittings. Besides, there
are many things to interrupt the call of the Committees upon which most
of the business waits. That call can proceed only during the morning
hours,--the hours just after the reading of the "Journal,"--on Tuesdays,
Wednesdays, and Thursdays; and even then it may suffer postponement
because of the unfinished business of the previous day which is entitled
to first consideration. The call cannot proceed on Mondays because the
morning hour of Mondays is devoted invariably to the call of the States
for the introduction of bills and resolutions; nor on Fridays, for
Friday is "private bill day," and is always engrossed by the Committee
on Claims, or by other fathers of bills which have gone upon the
"private calendar." On Saturdays the House seldom sits.
The reports made during these scant morning hours are ordered to be
printed, for future consideration in their turn, and the bills
introduced by the Committees are assigned to the proper calendars, to be
taken up in order at the proper time. When a morning hour has run out,
the House hastens to proceed with the business on the Speaker's table.
These are some of the plainer points of the rules. They are full of
complexity, and of confusion to the uninitiated, and the confusions of
practice are greater than the confusions of the rules. For the regular
order of business is constantly being interrupted by the introduction of
resolutions offered "by unanimous consent," and of bills let in under a
"suspension of the rules." Still, it is evident that there is one
principle which runs through every stage of procedure, and which is
never disallowed or abrogated,--the principle that the Committees shall
rule without let or hindrance. And this is a principle of extraordinary
formative power. It is the mould of all legislation. In the first place,
the speeding of business under the direction of the Committees
determines the character and the amount of the discussion to which
legislation shall be subjected. The House is conscious that time
presses. It knows that, hurry as it may, it will hardly get through with
one eighth of the business laid out for the session, and that to pause
for lengthy debate is to allow the arrears to accumulate. Besides, most
of the members are individually anxious to expedite action on every
pending measure, because each member of the House is a member of one or
more of the Standing Committees, and is quite naturally desirous that
the bills prepared by his Committees, and in which he is, of course,
specially interested by reason of the particular attention which he has
been compelled to give them, should reach a hearing and a vote as soon
as possible. It must, therefore, invariably happen that the Committee
holding the floor at any particular time is the Committee whose
proposals the majority wish to dispose of as summarily as circumstances
will allow, in order that the rest of the forty-two unprivileged
Committees to which the majority belong may gain the earlier and the
fairer chance of a hearing. A reporting Committee, besides, is generally
as glad to be pushed as the majority are to push it. It probably has
several bills matured, and wishes to see them disposed of before its
brief hours of opportunity[20] are passed and gone.
Consequently, it is the established custom of the House to accord the
floor for one hour to the member of the reporting Committee who has
charge of the business under consideration; and that hour is made the
chief hour of debate. The reporting committee-man seldom, if ever, uses
the whole of the hour himself for his opening remarks; he uses part of
it, and retains control of the rest of it; for by undisputed privilege
it is his to dispose of, whether he himself be upon the floor or not. No
amendment is in order during that hour, unless he consent to its
presentation; and he does not, of course, yield his time
indiscriminately to any one who wishes to speak. He gives way, indeed,
as in fairness he should, to opponents as well as to friends of the
measure under his charge; but generally no one is accorded a share of
his time who has not obtained his previous promise of the floor; and
those who do speak must not run beyond the number of minutes he has
agreed to allow them. He keeps the course both of debate and of
amendment thus carefully under his own supervision, as a good tactician,
and before he finally yields the floor, at the expiration of his hour,
he is sure to move the previous question. To neglect to do so would be
to lose all control of the business in hand; for unless the previous
question is ordered the debate may run on at will, and his Committee's
chance for getting its measures through slip quite away; and that would
be nothing less than his disgrace. He would be all the more blameworthy
because he had but to ask for the previous question to get it. As I have
said, the House is as eager to hurry business as he can be, and will
consent to almost any limitation of discussion that he may demand;
though, probably, if he were to throw the reins upon its neck, it would
run at large from very wantonness, in scorn of such a driver. The
previous question once ordered, all amendments are precluded, and one
hour remains for the summing-up of this same privileged committee-man
before the final vote is taken and the bill disposed of.
These are the customs which baffle and perplex and astound the new
member. In these precedents and usages, when at length he comes to
understand them, the novice spies out the explanation of the fact, once
so confounding and seemingly inexplicable, that when he leaped to his
feet to claim the floor other members who rose after him were coolly and
unfeelingly preferred before him by the Speaker. Of course it is plain
enough now that Mr. Speaker knew beforehand to whom the representative
of the reporting Committee had agreed to yield the floor; and it was no
use for any one else to cry out for recognition. Whoever wished to speak
should, if possible, have made some arrangement with the Committee
before the business came to a hearing, and should have taken care to
notify Mr. Speaker that he was to be granted the floor for a few
moments.
Unquestionably this, besides being a very interesting, is a very novel
and significant method of restricting debate and expediting legislative
action,--a method of very serious import, and obviously fraught with
far-reaching constitutional effects. The practices of debate which
prevail in its legislative assembly are manifestly of the utmost
importance to a self-governing people; for that legislation which is not
thoroughly discussed by the legislating body is practically done in a
corner. It is impossible for Congress itself to do wisely what it does
so hurriedly; and the constituencies cannot understand what Congress
does not itself stop to consider. The prerogatives of the Committees
represent something more than a mere convenient division of labor. There
is only one part of its business to which Congress, as a whole,
attends,--that part, namely, which is embraced under the privileged
subjects of revenue and supply. The House never accepts the proposals of
the Committee of Ways and Means, or of the Committee on Appropriations,
without due deliberation; but it allows almost all of its other Standing
Committees virtually to legislate for it. In form, the Committees only
digest the various matter introduced by individual members, and prepare
it, with care, and after thorough investigation, for the final
consideration and action of the House; but, in reality, they dictate the
course to be taken, prescribing the decisions of the House not only,
but measuring out, according to their own wills, its opportunities for
debate and deliberation as well. The House sits, not for serious
discussion, but to sanction the conclusions of its Committees as rapidly
as possible. It legislates in its committee-rooms; not by the
determinations of majorities, but by the resolutions of
specially-commissioned minorities; so that it is not far from the truth
to say that Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition, whilst
Congress in its committee-rooms is Congress at work.
Habit grows fast, even upon the unconventional American, and the nature
of the House of Representatives has, by long custom, been shaped to the
spirit of its rules. Representatives have attained, by rigorous
self-discipline, to the perfect stature of the law under which they
live, having purged their hearts, as completely as may be of all desire
to do that which it is the chief object of that law to forbid by giving
over a vain lust after public discussion. The entire absence of the
instinct of debate amongst them, and their apparent unfamiliarity with
the idea of combating a proposition by argument, was recently
illustrated by an incident which was quite painfully amusing. The
democratic majority of the House of the Forty-eighth Congress desired
the immediate passage of a pension bill of rather portentous
proportions; but the republican minority disapproved of the bill with
great fervor, and, when it was moved by the Pension Committee, late one
afternoon, in a thin House, that the rules be suspended, and an early
day set for a consideration of the bill, the Republicans addressed
themselves to determined and persistent "filibustering" to prevent
action. First they refused to vote, leaving the Democrats without an
acting quorum; then, all night long, they kept the House at roll-calling
on dilatory and obstructive motions, the dreary dragging of the time
being relieved occasionally by the amusement of hearing the excuses of
members who had tried to slip off to bed, or by the excitement of an
angry dispute between the leaders of the two parties as to the
responsibility for the dead-lock. Not till the return of morning brought
in the delinquents to recruit the democratic ranks did business advance
a single step. Now, the noteworthy fact about this remarkable scene is,
that the minority were not manoeuvring to gain opportunity or time for
debate, in order that the country might be informed of the true nature
of the obnoxious bill, but were simply fighting a preliminary motion
with silent, dogged obstruction. After the whole night had been spent in
standing out against action, the House is said to have been "in no mood
for the thirty-minutes' debate allowed by the rules," and a final vote
was taken, with only a word or two said. It was easier and more natural,
as everybody saw, to direct attention to the questionable character of
what was being attempted by the majority by creating a somewhat
scandalous "scene," of which every one would talk, than by making
speeches which nobody would read. It was a notable commentary on the
characteristic methods of our system of congressional government.
One very noteworthy result of this system is to shift the theatre of
debate upon legislation from the floor of Congress to the privacy of the
committee-rooms. Provincial gentlemen who read the Associated Press
dispatches in their morning papers as they sit over their coffee at
breakfast are doubtless often very sorely puzzled by certain of the
items which sometimes appear in the brief telegraphic notes from
Washington. What can they make of this for instance: "The House
Committee on Commerce to-day heard arguments from the congressional
delegation from" such and such States "in advocacy of appropriations for
river and harbor improvements which the members desire incorporated in
the River and Harbor Appropriations Bill"? They probably do not
understand that it would have been useless for members not of the
Committee on Commerce to wait for any opportunity to make their
suggestions on the floor of Congress, where the measure to which they
wish to make additions would be under the authoritative control of the
Committee, and where, consequently, they could gain a hearing only by
the courteous sufferance of the committee-man in charge of the report.
Whatever is to be done must be done by or through the Committee.
It would seem, therefore, that practically Congress, or at any rate the
House of Representatives, delegates not only its legislative but also
its deliberative functions to its Standing Committees. The little public
debate that arises under the stringent and urgent rules of the House is
formal rather than effective, and it is the discussions which take place
in the Committees that give form to legislation. Undoubtedly these
siftings of legislative questions by the Committees are of great value
in enabling the House to obtain "undarkened counsel" and intelligent
suggestions from authoritative sources. All sober, purposeful,
business-like talk upon questions of public policy, whether it take
place in Congress or only before the Committees of Congress, is of great
value; and the controversies which spring up in the committee-rooms,
both amongst the committee-men themselves and between those who appear
before the Committees as advocates of special measures, cannot but
contribute to add clearness and definite consistency to the reports
submitted to the House.
There are, however, several very obvious reasons why the most thorough
canvass of business by the Committees, and the most exhaustive and
discriminating discussion of all its details in their rooms, cannot take
the place or fulfill the uses of amendment and debate by Congress in
open session. In the first place, the proceedings of the Committees are
private and their discussions unpublished. The chief, and unquestionably
the most essential, object of all discussion of public business is the
enlightenment of public opinion; and of course, since it cannot hear the
debates of the Committees, the nation is not apt to be much instructed
by them. Only the Committees are enlightened. There is a conclusive
objection to the publication of the proceedings of the Committees, which
is recognized as of course by all parliamentary lawyers, namely, that
those proceedings are of no force till confirmed by the House. A
Committee is commissioned, not to instruct the public, but to instruct
and guide the House.