House Speakers Casting Roll Call Votes

Don Wolfensberger at The Hill:

From eighth grade civics through college government courses to nearly three decades each of working in the House and then the think tank world, I mistakenly believed that Speakers of the U.S. House of Representatives could vote only to break a tie.

My longstanding misunderstanding was shattered last month when, on April 12, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) voted to make, not break, a tie, thereby defeating a major amendment offered to the FISA authorization, 212-212. (Tie votes defeat a measure or amendment.)

That development prompted me to look at other roll call votes in recent times. I was startled to discover that Speaker Johnson is a frequent voter. For instance, of the 88 roll call votes cast from March 12 through May 1, 2024, Speaker Johnson voted 59 times (67 percent), and refrained from voting on 29 occasions (33 percent). Most of the outcomes were nowhere near being a tie. I am told by a knowledgeable source that Speaker Johnson’s predecessor, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), also voted often as Speaker in this Congress.

House GOP Woes

Axios: Never before has the party in control of the House of Representatives knowingly and willingly castrated its own power so thoroughly as today's Republicans, Axios' Juliegrace Brufke and Justin Green report.

Why it matters: Republicans blew years of potential authority by weak leaders surrendering to keep power. So with a razor-thin GOP majority, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had to depend on Democrats to muscle through the $60 billion Ukraine bill over the weekend.

Two mistakes haunt House Republicans, both dating back to former Speaker Kevin McCarthy's fight to win the gavel in January 2023:

• Letting any member call a vote on removing the speaker. This gives insurgents like Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) extraordinary power to threaten to oust the party leader any time.
• Surrendering authority of the Rules Committee, which sets the terms for how legislation will be handled during votes. After allowing non-loyalists onto the committee, leaders can't depend on getting their way.

Zoom in: The new Rules Committee — with McCarthy-appointed hardliners, including Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas) — has become a roadblock. Seven bills were defeated in the past year during the rules process.This is an unprecedented collapse in control: Former Speakers Nancy Pelosi, Paul Ryan and John Boehner never lost a rules vote.

Brendan Buck, a top staffer to Ryan and Boehner, wrote in a New York Times op-ed: "A party unable to bring its agenda to the floor for a vote is no longer a functional majority."Former Speaker Ryan told Axios that Johnson "found his footing, and his voice. ... [H]e did it as a statesman, risking his own personal political fortune for the greater good that he believes in."

The Fall of Speaker McCarthy

  Zachary B. Wolf at CNN:

Kevin McCarthy is House speaker no more. After angering GOP hardliners with a spending bill to keep the government funded last week, McCarthy was voted out of power on Tuesday.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, filed what in the House is known as a “motion to vacate” and Democrats declined to rescue McCarthy’s speakership. The Californian lost the support of eight Republicans, becoming the speaker with the third-shortest tenure. He said Tuesday evening he wouldn’t run again.

The first “motion to vacate” vote in more than 100 years and the first to succeed, it leaves the House in chaos

Joseph Postell of Hillddate:

WOLF: Why is this the first time this happened since 1910?

POSTELL: Strictly speaking, this is the first time the so-called motion to vacate or motion to declare the speakership vacant has been brought up … to get a vote on the floor since 1910. … So in that way, this is only the second time this vote has actually proceeded.

WOLF: But Cannon (unlike McCarthy) was never in danger of losing his job, right?

POSTELL: In fact, Cannon actually called for the vote. He was the one who asked for it. That’s the big difference here is that Cannon brought the vote on himself to make the point that the people who opposed him were playing opportunistically. In that way, he actually did it as a sort of principled show of leadership, whereas, obviously, this has been more forced on to (McCarthy). So that is a significant difference.

The broad outlines of what happens in 1910:

There’s a Republican Party, internally divided between progressives and conservatives. So similar, except the lines of division today are obviously very different.

Joseph Cannon was a conservative speaker who basically thwarted the progressive wing of his party, and that wing really couldn’t move to the Democratic Party because in 1910, the Democratic Party was no more progressive than the Republican Party and, in fact, was probably less progressive. So really, all they could do was fight their party from within.

In 1910, the speaker was basically a czar. So really, the difference here, I would say, is that Cannon was a czar and McCarthy is not.

Electing the Speaker of the house

 

I've been talking to a lot of reporters about the procedures for electing the Speaker. I thought people might like to see the notes I use as my cheat sheet while on the phone. Full notes, including scraps and tables and photos of precedents at the link.https://t.co/P1xIyKNcSX pic.twitter.com/4Our7nLv7H

— Matt Glassman (@MattGlassman312) December 16, 2022

Kyle Stewart and Scott Wong at MSNBC:

When the House gathered on Dec. 4, 1923, Frederick Gillett sought re-election as speaker. The Republican from Massachusetts had served in the role since 1919 and his party had maintained control of the chamber.

But after the first ballot, Gillett did not have the votes needed. Three more votes were held and each time enough Progressive Republicans supported other candidates, blocking Gillett from regaining the gavel.

“Mr. Clerk, it seems entirely evident that no good purpose can be served by having another ballot tonight,” Republican leader Nicholas Longworth said on the floor before the chamber adjourned that night.

At issue were rule changes that Progressive Republicans wanted. For two days, the group refused to budge and on a few ballots, the Democrats’ nominee even led in the tally.

Longworth eventually struck a deal with the progressives and on the ninth ballot, Gillett was re-elected speaker.

There have only been 14 instances in congressional history where it took more than two ballots for a nominee to get a majority. The first 13 happened before the Civil War.

Vacating the Chair

Louis Jacobson at PolitiFact:

If the new Congress ends up at 218 Republicans and 217 Democrats, that would be the narrowest possible divide, as long as there are no third-party members in the 435-seat House (and none were elected in 2022). Then, it would take only the subtraction of two sitting Republicans, such as by death or resignation, to leave Democrats with a numerical majority of 217-216. If the GOP starts with a slightly wider majority of 219-216, Republicans would need to suffer four vacancies to fall behind Democrats. And so on.

House rules are approved every two years. Under current rules, if a Republican majority loses members, Democrats could make a parliamentary maneuver called a "motion to vacate the chair." If this motion passes, the speakership becomes vacant and the House holds a new election for speaker.

A motion to vacate the chair came in 2015 during an internal Republican dispute. Then-Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., introduced such a motion to pressure then-Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. This motion was never formally considered, but the move alienated Boehner enough that he relinquished the speakership, paving the way for another Republican, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, to take the reins. (Meadows later became President Donald Trump’s chief of staff.)

Under current House rules, a motion to vacate the chair can be assured of a vote only if the party’s leader approves; it cannot come from a rank-and-file member of the party.

Sitting speakers today are unlikely to allow such a motion to proceed, because it would imperil their speakerships. However, a minority leader can also sign off on such a motion. That would enable a minority party with a temporary numerical edge to force a new speaker vote.

If a Republican speaker is ousted this way and a new Democratic speaker is installed, it could be months or more before Republicans have a chance at the speakership again. That’s because House vacancies must be filled by a special election, rather than by a gubernatorial appointment, as usually occurs in the Senate.

With special elections, holding primaries and general elections would be "difficult to pull off in less than three or four months," Evans said.

Choosing a Speaker

Control of the House is still in play this morning, although Republicans have an advantage.  CRS explains the process for electing a speaker:

Members are not required to vote for one of the candidates nominated by each major party (or

even for some other candidate formally nominated on the floor); they may vote for any

individual. Although the U.S. Constitution does not require the Speaker to be a Member of the House, all Speakers have been Members. However, some individuals not serving in the House have received votes.

The long-standing practice of the House is that electing a Speaker requires a numerical majority of the votes cast by Members “for a person by name.”  This does not mean that an individual must necessarily receive a majority (currently 218) of the full membership of the House.  This is because some Members may choose not to vote and others may answer “present

If no candidate receives the requisite majority of votes cast, the roll call is repeated. No restrictions are imposed on who may receive votes in the subsequent ballots. (For instance, no candidate is eliminated based on receiving the fewest votes in the floor election, and a Member’s vote is not limited to individuals who received votes in previous ballots.

 

Electing a House Speaker

Matt Glassman at Legislative Procedure:

Traditionally, a norm has existed in both parties that all members support their party nominee when the vote goes to the House floor. That is, even if the vote in the caucus is 130-110, the 110 who did not vote for the nominee are expected to back them on the House floor. From 1947 until 1997, there was not a single defection from this norm. In recent years, however, a small number of members of both parties have defected from their party nominee. In 2011, 18 votes went to candidates other than the party nominees. In 2013, 14 votes did. In 2015, 28 did. In 2017, 5 did. In none of these cases did the votes comprise the balance of power such that they could deny the election to the majority party’s candidate. In several of the elections, however, a faction of conservative Republicans explicitly sought to use the floor vote to deny their party’s nominee the Speakership.

This time, a faction of Democrats is threatening not to support Nancy Pelosi.

Many observers believe that a commitment by Pelosi or other current leaders to step down in the near future might satisfy the insurgents; the current top Democratic leadership has been in place for 16 years, and there is definitely some general caucus dissatisfaction related to the inability of members to move up the leadership ladder. Alternatively, Pelosi might threaten to punish members who vote against her on the floor; rule 34 of the Democratic caucus binds members to vote for the nominee. When two members of the GOP leadership voted against Speaker Boehner in 2015, he immediately removed them from the Rules Committee.

If bargaining fails, Pelosi could call the insurgents’ bluff, and simply win the nomination in the caucus and go to the floor with it, daring them to deny her the Speakership. Similarly, she could lean on some of them to vote “present” on the floor, rather than for a different candidate. Under current House rules, nominees need a majority of those voting “for a person by name” to win the Speakership. If anyone votes “present,” the total number of votes is reduced by 1, meaning that for every 2 people who vote “present,” the threshold needed to win reduces by 1 vote. If Pelosi could convince 10 Democrat insurgents to vote “present,” she would only need 213 votes, which would neutralize the balance of power held by the holdout insurgents.

Tactically, Pelosi could also employ the help of Republicans, though relying on them to sustain her Speakership would be a dangerous (and highly unlikely) move. Republicans could outright vote for her for Speaker to make her majority, or they could vote “present” to reduce the majority threshold. They could also vote in favor of a resolution declaring that the Speakership be decided on a plurality basis; this broke the Speakership deadlocks in both 1849 and 1856. But again, all of these possibilities are highly unlikely.

Mike Lee for Speaker?

Ross Douthat floats the idea of Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) for speaker:

Lee has an insurgent’s résumé: He was elected with the Tea Party wave in 2010, defeating an incumbent Republican, Bob Bennett, along the way. He was Ted Cruz’s partner in crime during the government shutdown debates. His scorecard with Heritage Action, often the scourge of G.O.P. leaders, currently stands at 100 percent. And unlike almost every member of the House and Senate leadership, he’s a genuine foe of comprehensive immigration reform.

At the same time, like Ryan (and unlike Cruz), Lee been a real policy entrepreneur. He authored a pro-family tax plan that breaks with some (if perhaps not enough) of the G.O.P. donor class’s orthodoxies. He has offered serious proposals on transportation, higher education and religious liberty. And just this week he was part of a bipartisan breakthrough on criminal justice reform, one of the rare issues where the late Obama years still offer hope for compromise.

In Lee’s ambitions, you can see what the House insurgents want to be — a force that moves conservative policy making away from donor service and toward genuine reform — rather than the purely nihilistic force they often threaten to become. You can see the outlines of the kind of agenda that might satisfy (some) intransigents and also provide some (very) modest ground for bipartisanship.

And then in his record and persona, you can see a — let’s be frank — tribal identification with insurgency that might make easier for him to persuade the G.O.P.’s right flank to accept the real limits on the House’s power.

Unfortunately the House insurgents do not appear to have a Mike Lee in their ranks.

But there is also no rule preventing the House from electing a senator as its speaker.

Ross Douthat is an elegant, perceptive writer, and I usually agree with him.  But this idea is badly flawed.

First, as a previous post mentioned, it is not entirely clear that the Constitution permits the House to elect a speaker from outside its ranks. Granted, however, it is unlikely that the judiciary would intervene to stop such a move.)

Second, and much more important, it violates a fundamental principle of the Constitution: bicameralism.  In Federalist 51, Madison laid out the rationale for having two different legislative bodies:

In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit.

Different terms of office, different constituencies, different prerogatives and functions -- all of these distinctions separate the two chambers, just as the Framers intended.  Members of one should not get into the internal affairs of the other -- unless of course they leave the first and win election to the second.

Can a Non-Member Become Speaker?

Some commentators have noted that the Constitution does not define the qualifications for speaker of the House and are speculating that the lawmakers could pick someone from outside Congress. Diana Schaub says no:

However, this construction of the passage ignores a number of other textual elements in the Constitution, as well as other relevant texts. There is an inescapable logic to the setting forth of the Constitution’s sections which should guide interpretation. In Article 1, Section 1, we learn that Congress is vested with specified legislative powers and that Congress “shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” In Article 1, Section 2, Clause 1, we learn that “The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States.”

These definitions govern the meaning of subsequent clauses. I admit that it would have put the kibosh on the present foolishness if the fifth clause had included the words in italics: “The House of Representatives shall choose from among their number their Speaker.” I think it simply never occurred to them that someone would take it into his head to contend that the Speaker of the House could be an individual who was not a fellow legislator. The possessive pronoun is important. The House chooses “their” Speaker—a Speaker, we might say, who is of the House, by the House, and for the House. According to Article 1, Section 2, Clause 1, the House is composed of members and only members. The existing members of the House cannot summon into being a new member. The drafters thought the chain of connection from Sections 1 and 2 to Section 5 was clear enough; and for over 200 years, it was.

The first Congress clearly thought the Speaker must be drawn from the current membership. When they assembled on April 1, 1789, the first order of business was the drafting of rules. By April 7, they had adopted the “STANDING RULESand ORDERS of this HOUSE,” the first of which laid out “the DUTY of the SPEAKER.” Among the duties:

In all cases of ballot by the house, the speaker shall vote; in other cases he shall not vote, unless the house be equally divided, or unless his vote, if given to the minority, will make the division equal, and in case of such equal division, the question shall be lost.
There were eight signers of the Constitution in this opening session of the House, among them James Madison. By the rules they adopted, they indicated their view that the Speaker of the House must be a member of the House, inasmuch as no non-member could have a vote.

In the unlikely event that the House did turn to a non-member, would the courts intervene?  That scenario seems even more unlikely. Under the political question doctrine, federal courts will not
take on certain controversies because their resolution belongs to the political branches. 

In any case, the question is academic.  The lawmakers need somebody who actually knows how the House works, so as a practical matter, the only non-members in that category would be former members, and specifically former leaders or committee chairs.  For obvious reasons, Denny Hastert is out of the running.  Jonah Goldberg has talked about Newt, but that was a whimsical idea:  nobody who actually remembers his speakership would seriously entertain the idea.

Electing a Speaker

From the Congressional Research Service:

Each new House elects a Speaker by roll call vote when it first convenes. Customarily, the conference of each major party nominates a candidate whose name is placed in nomination. Members normally vote for the candidate of their own party conference, but may vote for any individual, whether nominated or not. To be elected, a candidate must receive an absolute majority of all the votes cast for individuals. This number may be less than a majority (now 218) of the full membership of the House, because of vacancies, absentees, or Members voting “present.”

This report provides data on elections of the Speaker in each Congress since 1913, when the House first reached its present size of 435 Members. During that period (63rd through 113th Congresses), a Speaker was elected four times with the votes of less than a majority of the full membership.

If a Speaker dies or resigns during a Congress, the House immediately elects a new one. Four such elections have been necessary since 1913. In the earlier two cases, the House elected the new Speaker by resolution; in the more recent two, the body used the same procedure as at the outset of a Congress.

If no candidate receives the requisite majority, the roll call is repeated until a Speaker is elected. Since 1913, this procedure has been necessary only in 1923, when nine ballots were required before a Speaker was elected.

From 1913 through 1943, it usually happened that some Members voted for candidates other than those of the two major parties. The candidates in question were usually those representing the “progressive” group (reformers originally associated with the Republican party), and in some Congresses, their names were formally placed in nomination on behalf of that group. From 1943 through 1995, only the nominated Republican and Democratic candidates received votes, representing the culmination of the establishment of an exclusively two-party system at the national level.

In six of the nine elections since 1997 (105th, 107th-109th, 112th, and 113th Congresses), however, some Members voted for Members of their own party other than the party nominees. Also, some Members in 1997 and in 2013 voted for candidates who were not then Members of the House. Although the Constitution does not so require, the Speaker has always been a Member. Further, in 2001, a Member affiliated with one major party voted for the nominee of the other. Until then, House practice had long taken for granted that voting for Speaker was demonstrative of party affiliation in the House

At The Washington Post, Jeffrey A. Jenkins and Charles Stewart III tell what happened in 1923:

The 1922 midterm elections had reduced the number of Republicans in the House to 225 out of 435. If we count the number of Progressive Republicans at 24 — the number who voted in the caucus against re-nominating Frederick Gillett (Mass.) — then the Progressives could determine whether Gillett would have a House majority. And, while it was unlikely the Progressives would join with the Democrats to organize the chamber, anyone who could add knew that these 24 Republicans plus the chamber’s 207 Democrats also constituted a majority.

On the eve of convening the 68th Congress, Republicans held a nominating caucus at which the Progressive-Conservative split was revealed, when most of the 24 Progressives voted for Henry Cooper (Wis.). The Progressive bloc refused to abide by the cardinal rule of the binding nominating caucus, which required them to support Gillett as the price of participating in it. Instead, they held out for the passage of rules changes that would share parliamentary power in the House more equally. The Republican leadership initially refused, but soon realized that the Progressives meant business. The Progressives forced eight speakership ballots over two days, before Nicholas Longworth (Ohio), the Republican Majority Leader, capitulated and cut a deal — guaranteeing procedural freedom that would allow for liberalizing rules changes, in exchange for the Progressives standing down. Progressive leaders agreed, and Gillett was elected on the first ballot of the third day, and 9th ballot overall.

The Republican Old Guard had to swallow a lot to make this deal, but they had no choice — the alternatives were an unorganized House or a House organized along Democratic/Progressive lines.

John Boehner on Leadership and the House

Our chapter on Congress examines the role of leadership and the character of the institution's membership. In an interview with Peggy Noonan, House Speaker John Boehner reflects on these subjects:

"People think I've got this job as a leader. They don't realize that I have about 200 responsibilities and roles. I've gotta be the big brother, the father, I gotta be the disciplinarian, the dean of students, the principal, the spouse—you can't believe all the roles that I have to play! But one of them is, you know, some problems you can nip early. I had three guys in here a few years ago, I said 'Boys, you're cruising down the wrong path.' Two of them listened, one of them didn't. He's no longer here."

"We got 435 members. It's just a slice of America, it really is. We got some of the smartest people in the country who serve here, and some of the dumbest. We got some of the best people you'd ever meet, and some of the raunchiest. We've got 'em all."

How does word reach him that a scandal may be brewing? "Oh, it gets to me a lot of ways. The press, I hear about it from friends, I hear about it from colleagues. I'm out and about, I do what I do, I hear everything. There are no secrets in this town."

In his time, has congressional misbehavior, publicly known or not, tended to go under the broadly defined category of "romance" or of "finance"? 

 A long sigh.

"Rarely is money an issue." 

The Speaker and the Debt

Edmund Burke wrote: "In all bodies, those who will lead, must also, in a considerable degree, follow." House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has had to grapple with "tea party" demands on the budget, and may end up with more success than many had expected, as The Daily Beast reports:

The conventional Beltway wisdom is that Boehner is floundering, unable to control his caucus, caught in a vise between Tea Party demands and the need to avoid a devastating default for which Republicans would shoulder much of the blame.

But that verdict misses the magnitude of what the low-key party veteran may accomplish. By forging a debt-ceiling compromise with Democrats that will meet almost no Democratic demands, Boehner will lock down his role as the undisputed leader of the Republican Party—and finally prove to skeptics that the Ohio pragmatist can indeed lead a party of purists and get a few things done in the process.

...

“The best way to describe it is to say he’s threading a needle. He’s trying to placate conservatives and help his party in the next election, while also solidifying his own position,” says Matthew Green, a professor of political science at Catholic University and author of The Speaker: A Study of Leadership. “On the other hand he doesn’t want to be known as the speaker who let the U.S. default on its obligations. I guess all I can say is I’m glad I’m not in his position.”

President Obama inadvertently strengthened conservative resolve with his Monday televised address, when he mentioned President Reagan’s support of a 1982 tax increase. Perhaps his speechwriters didn’t know how Republicans view that chapter of congressional history. President Reagan and congressional Republicans came to regret the 1982 measure, believing that the Democrats had sold them higher taxes in exchange for spending cuts that never materialized. The measure antagonized the public, split Republicans, and contributed to GOP losses in the 1982 midterm election. Even Republicans who weren’t serving in 1982 have heard the story, which is Exhibit A in the case against a “grand bargain.” Exhibit B is the first President Bush;s "grand bargain" in 1990, when he accepted higher taxes and got the Budget Enforcement Act. Many scholars argue that it was a long-term success, but it proved a big problem for the GOP in 1992, when Bill Clinton ran attack ads blasting the president for breaking his “no new taxes” pledge.