Dear Members of the House:
As the House looks ahead to the 120th Congress, we write as organizations from across the political spectrum that share a deep respect for the House of Representatives and for the Members who serve in it. We recognize that serving in the House has rarely been more demanding. Narrow majorities, a relentless schedule, and high public expectations place extraordinary demands on you, your leadership teams, and every Member.
In order to meet these demands, we believe that the rules and resources of the House need to change, and that now is the time for that change. Increasingly, Members of both parties have expressed a desire to improve the operations of the House, and there is growing recognition that significant reforms are needed.
Here, we offer four recommendations that we believe would help the House build on the recent bipartisan modernization efforts, and that could be adopted at the start of the new Congress:
1. More capacity. Members and their staff do extraordinary work with very limited resources, and the House is increasingly outmatched in expertise by the executive branch and outside interests. Moreover, as the workload in Congress has increased over the decades, the number of personal and committee staff has stagnated or decreased, and staff are being paid at levels insufficient to retain critical expertise. This deficit requires a substantial commitment of new resources. We encourage the House to reinvest in the people and other support that make good legislating possible: competitive pay and benefits for staff, sufficient staff numbers to distribute the workload and deepen expertise, and institutional support for caucuses and other Member organizations, so that Members can work together to develop and advance well-considered policy.
2. More opportunities to legislate. Members of both parties regularly develop bills and amendments that attract broad support, yet the overwhelming majority of measures never receive committee or floor consideration. We encourage the House to create more orderly and predictable ways for measures with substantial support to be considered and voted on, including in the budget and appropriations process. Changes of this kind can preserve leadership’s ability to manage the floor while giving Members constructive avenues to build coalitions around shared priorities, which we believe would make the House easier, not harder, to lead.
3. Stronger ethics. Public trust depends on confidence that Members are serving their constituents rather than narrow interests. We encourage the House to strengthen its ethics standards, including by addressing concerns about Members’ personal financial interests, such as the trading of individual stocks and participation in prediction markets, and by ensuring that the House’s independent ethics processes have the resources, authorities, and continuity they need to work effectively.
4. An ongoing commitment. The House has a long and valuable tradition of periodically reviewing its own operations. The Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress showed how productive that work can be when Members of both parties are given an appropriate forum. We recommend building on that model and urge you to establish a bipartisan select committee on House reform. It should have broad jurisdiction and ample legislative authority, and be composed of Members who reflect the full range of views and backgrounds in the House. We urge you to provide it with significant staff resources and afford it regular opportunities to bring its recommendations to the floor for a vote.
Collectively, we believe that these reforms would help build a Congress that is smarter, more ethical, and more able to serve the American people. We ask that reforms consistent with the principles above be included on opening day, as part of the rules package for the 120th Congress, with appropriate funding or legislative authorities to be addressed in the earliest legislative branch appropriation.
Our organizations span the ideological spectrum, and we do not always agree on what legislation Congress should pass. We share, however, the belief that the House works best when all Members have the opportunity to debate, amend, and vote on the issues that matter to their constituents—and when they have the resources they need to undertake that work.
We welcome the opportunity to discuss this with you further. Thank you for your consideration and for your service to this country.
Sincerely,
American Governance Institute
Campaign Legal Center
Constituent Service Institute
Fix Our House
Issue One
Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy
POPVOX Foundation
Protect Democracy United
Public Good Group
R Street Institute
Sunwater Institute
We the Doers
Jason M. Roberts, Professor of Political Science, University of North Carolina*
Kevin R. Kosar, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute*
Lauren C. Bell, James L. Miller Professor of Political Science, Randolph-Macon College*
*Affiliation listed for identification purposes only.