Abstract
The Rules Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives is responsible for drafting special rules for most bills considered on the floor of the House. These “special rules” set the guidelines for floor consideration including rules of debate and the structure of the amending process. In this chapter we assess how the majority party uses special rules and the Rules Committee to further their policy and electoral goals. We explain the work of the Rules Committee and assess how the use of rules has changed over time. Using a dataset of “important” legislation from 1905–2018, we examine the number of enactments considered under restrictive rules and the rise of these types of rules in recent Congresses. Additionally, we use amendment data from the 109th–115th Congresses to analyze the amending process under structured rules.
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