New Motion to Vacate Rule Unlikely to Disrupt House

Last week lawmakers tapped Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to be the next Speaker of the House. McCarthy prevailed on the 15th ballot after making several last-minute concessions to win over a group of conservative Republicans who previously opposed his nomination. McCarthy’s opponents agreed to support his bid for the speakership if he backed their efforts to decentralize the Republican Conference and increase the ability of rank-and-file lawmakers to participate in the legislative process on the House floor. Despite opposing them initially, McCarthy ultimately agreed to his opponents’ demands because he needed their votes to become Speaker.

This week lawmakers adopted a rules package (H. Res. 5) authorizing the procedures that will regulate their deliberations inside the House over the next two years. Unlike the Senate, whose rules continue from one Congress to the next, the House adopts new rules at the beginning of each Congress. But the House does not rewrite its rules entirely every two years. Lawmakers instead reauthorize the previous Congress’ rules with some changes. And some of the changes in this year's rules package reflect the concessions that McCarthy made to become Speaker.

The House narrowly approved H. Res. 5 on a 220 to 213 vote. One Republican joined all Democrats in opposition to the measure.

Motion to Vacate

One concession that has received much attention is the so-called motion to vacate. H. Res. 5 reinstates the ability of a single lawmaker to force a vote on removing the Speaker by filing a motion – or privileged resolution - to vacate the chair. Democrats raised the number of lawmakers required to force a vote to vacate the chair in 2019. The rules package for the 116th Congress (H. Res. 6) stipulated that a motion to vacate the Office of Speaker required the support of “a party caucus or conference.” That is, a majority of Democrats or Republicans were needed to force a vote to remove the Speaker. 

McCarthy proposed lowering the required number of lawmakers from a majority of either party to five lawmakers in the majority party. But his concession was not enough to win over conservatives opposed to his speakership. McCarthy eventually relented and agreed to reinstate the pre-2019 motion-to-vacate rule when he realized he could not become Speaker without making the concession.

Implications

According to reports, the pre-2019 motion-to-vacate rule will significantly impact how the House operates moving forward. For example, the Washington Post described McCarthy’s initial offer as empowering five Republicans “to thwart McCarthy’s (or anyone else’s) speakership, not just this week, but at any point in the future.” And one lawmaker worried that reinstating the pre-2019 motion to vacate rule will force Congress into a “gridlock nightmare for the next two years.” And the New York Times described the new rule as “an easy ouster for the speaker.”

Yet the history of the motion to vacate suggests that the pre-2019 version will likely have little impact on how the House operates moving forward.

The motion to vacate dates to the 1790s. It first appeared in Thomas Jefferson’s, A Manual of Parliamentary Practice. Jefferson based his manual on “general parliamentary law,” the Constitution, the rules of the state legislatures, “and where these are silent…the rules of Parliament.” In it, he noted that “a Speaker may be removed at the will of the House, and a Speaker pro tempore appointed.” The House formally adopted Jefferson’s manual – including its motion to vacate– in 1837.

A single lawmaker could force a vote on removing the Speaker until 2019, when Democrats changed the rule to make it harder for lawmakers to use. Yet the House voted only once to remove the Speaker during this period. In 1910, lawmakers voted not to remove Speaker Joe Cannon, R-Ill. Lawmakers threatened to force a vote on removing the Speaker using the motion to vacate in 1997 and 2015. But the House did not vote on removing the Speaker in either instance.

The Takeaway

The history of the motion to vacate rule suggests that the pre-2019 version will not significantly impact the House moving forward. This is because merely filing a motion to vacate does not remove the Speaker. A majority of lawmakers in the House (typically 218) must approve the motion. And any lawmaker may prevent an up-or-down vote on the motion by moving to table it on a simple majority vote.