United States Senate Committee on Rules and Administration

Committee information

• Date created: April 7, 1789 as a special committee; December 3, 1867 as a select committee
• Members: Seventeen in the 119th Congress (2025)
• Subcommittees: none

Role

The United States Senate Committee on Rules and Administration is a Senate committee tasked with establishing the rules under which legislation can be brought to a vote on the Senate floor. Since changes to these rules are rare, however, the committee typically spends little time on this aspect of its responsibilities. The committee spends much of its time overseeing details of Senate operations, including setting committee budgets, overseeing the assignment of office space, and other general housekeeping issues. It also holds jurisdiction over election law as it pertains to campaign financing restrictions, corruption, presidential elections, and contested elections.

The US Constitution specifically imbues Congress with the sole authority to make federal laws. In both the Senate and House of Representatives, this responsibility is divided among various committees that operate within each legislative house. Each committee holds jurisdiction over certain issues or aspects of the federal government. During the 119th Congress, which began its session in January 2025, the House had twenty permanent committees and the Senate had sixteen. Permanent committees, or standing committees, are granted the authority to consider legislation and recommend that it be put to a vote on the House or Senate floor. Select committees are temporary committees that are typically established through a House or Senate resolution. Most select committees serve investigative purposes and each only continues to exist for as long as its mandate is renewed. With the appropriate legislation, select committees can become standing committees. Joint committees are special committees that include members from both the House and Senate. Such committees are typically formed to allow for legislative and administrative cooperation between the two houses of Congress. In practice, most joint committees either conduct studies or carry out various housekeeping duties.

Most committees in both the House and Senate are further divided into subcommittees. Each subcommittee is responsible for carrying out a more specific duty related to their full committee’s broader jurisdiction. The number of subcommittees on each committee is limited to five in the House, but some exceptions are allowed. House committees can also choose to add an oversight subcommittee responsible for reviewing and monitoring all committee operations. Some committees are also allowed to exceed the standard five subcommittees based on whether the size and complexity of their jurisdiction requires such a measure. The Senate has no restrictions on the number of subcommittees a single committee can have.

The Senate Committee on Rules and Administration is unique among most other Senate committees. Rather than simply holding jurisdiction over a particular political issue or legislative concern, the committee is mainly tasked with establishing and maintaining the rules governing how legislation is debated by the full Senate. In general, the Senate follows fewer procedural rules than does the House. Further, the rules the Senate follows are rarely changed. Although such matters accordingly account for only a small portion of what the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration actually does, they remain the committee’s most important responsibility.

The procedural rules of the House and Senate, while similar in many respects, differ in a number of ways. The three most notable differences between the two bodies lie in the methods used to bring legislation to a floor vote; the existence of a germaneness rule in the House, and the absence of such a rule in the Senate; and the use of the previous question tactic in the House, versus the use of the filibuster in the Senate. All three of these differences fundamentally alter the nature of the legislative process in each house.

In the House, legislation is typically brought to the floor by adopting a special rule, which is a resolution that sets guidelines for floor consideration of a measure. Special rules allow House leaders to prioritize key legislation. Without such rules, all legislation would have to be considered in the order they are reported from committees. Before it can consider a given bill, the House must adopt a special rule that determines how that bill will be considered. Each special rule sets guidelines on matters such as how much debate time will be allotted or what amendments may be made to a bill. Special rules do not exist in the Senate. Instead, legislation reported from a committee is added to the Senate calendar as a General Order that the Senate must agree to take up. According to Senate rules, a motion to consider a piece of legislation is debatable only after the first two hours of a legislative day. To ensure that legislation is considered in as timely a manner as possible, Senate leaders typically try to come together on a unanimous consent agreement that establishes a set time for debating and voting on a given bill.

One of the House rules concerning how bills are considered states that all amendments attached to a given bill must be germane, or related to, the matter at hand. This rule prevents legislators from attaching amendments on unrelated matters to a bill. In the Senate, this so-called germaneness rule normally applies only to appropriations and budget measures. As a result, a Senate bill can have amendments that have nothing to do with the matter addressed by the bill itself. This means that Senators can introduce a new piece of legislation as an amendment to an existing bill and thereby avoid the normal committee review and scheduling process. Such practices also make it more difficult to predict the outcome of floor debates on Senate bills.

The most substantial difference between the rules of the House and Senate is in the way debate over bills is brought to an end in each body. In the House, debate is closed by a previous question motion, a tactic that effectively ends all debate and brings the bill at hand to an immediate vote. Such a motion is typically made when the scheduled debate period ends. The House majority can use the previous question motion to cut off debate and prevent additional amendments from being added to a bill. Because the previous question motion is not included in the Senate rules, the debate period for bills in that chamber is effectively limitless. In practice, Senators who oppose a particular bill can indefinitely postpone action on that bill by speaking continuously. Known as a filibuster, this tactic is one of the main reasons that Senate leaders try to work out a unanimous consent agreement before considering major legislation. The only way to break a filibuster is to invoke cloture, or place restrictions on further debate in terms of time and germaneness. For this to happen, however, a vote must be taken, and at least three-fifths of the Senate must support invoking cloture. Otherwise, the debate may continue unrestricted.

History

Although the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration took many years to evolve into its modern form, some type of rules committee has existed since the time of the chamber’s creation. On April 7, 1789, the day after the Senate convened for the first time, a special committee was created to oversee the development of the rules by which the chamber was to operate. The members of the inaugural Senate rules committee included Oliver Ellsworth, Richard Henry Lee, Caleb Strong, William Maclay, and Richard Bassett. All were lawyers who had previous legislative experience. In short order, the committee produced a set of nineteen rules that were ultimately adopted on April 16. An additional rule was subsequently adopted two days later. With that, the original Senate rules were formally in place.

In the years after the first rules committee completed its work, nine other temporary rules committees were formed to reexamine the Senate rules and recommend possible changes. In the course of their work, seven of these committees filed reports to the Senate, and three rules were revised. Existing rules were also amended on a number of occasions during this period.

A continuous rules committee was first created on April 17, 1867. On that day, three Senators were appointed to what was then known as the Select Committee on the Revision of the Rules. The committee’s initial report led to a revision of Senate rules that was adopted on March 21, 1868. Another important step forward came when the Continuous Revision of the Rules Committee was designated as a standing committee and renamed the Committee on Rules on December 9, 1874. This version of the rules committee filed reports on rules revisions in both 1875 and 1876. The latter report was adopted in January 1877. Since that time, general revisions of the Senate rules have been adopted only on rare occasions.

Over time, the jurisdiction of the Committee on Rules and Administration—as the body eventually came to be known—grew to expand beyond simply overseeing changes to Senate rules. Other matters that fall under the committee’s jurisdiction include the following.

• the administration of the Senate Office Buildings and Senate wing of the US Capitol
• the credentials and qualifications of Senators, contested elections, and acceptance of incompatible offices
• federal elections, including those of the president, vice president, and members of congress
• the Government Printing Office and the publication of the Congressional Record
• meetings of Congress and attendance of its members
• payment of monies from the Senate’s contingent fund and the creation of charges from the same
• presidential succession
• corruption in government
• the purchase of books and manuscripts and the erection of monuments in memory of individuals
• the Senate Library and all statuary, art, and pictures in the Capitol and Senate office buildings
• senate services such as the Senate restaurant
• the US Capitol and congressional office buildings, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Botanic Gardens

Notable Legislation

While the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration rarely takes action on any major matters relating to the Senate rules, the legislation it does put forward is often quite influential. By a wide margin, the most impactful measures the committee has ever considered are those relating to the filibuster and cloture. Contrary to popular belief, the filibuster was neither included in the original Senate rulebook nor part of the founders’ intended design for the Senate. In fact, the addition of the filibuster to the Senate rulebook was essentially an accident. When Congress convened for the first time in 1789, the House and Senate rulebooks were virtually identical. While presiding over the chamber in 1805, Vice President Aaron Burr suggested that the Senate should have a cleaner rulebook than that of the House. In particular, he focused his criticism on the previous question motion, which was then used in both chambers. The motion was not yet used as a way of cutting off debate, and Burr recommended that the motion be removed from the Senate rulebook. Although the motion’s subsequent excision the following year cleared the way for the filibuster, it was not actually used until 1837. After that, the filibuster was employed with increasing frequency. In 1917, the reliance on the filibuster was becoming a growing problem. President Woodrow Wilson demanded the implementation of a cloture rule. Adopted later that same year, the cloture rule offered Senators a means of breaking filibusters and, at least in some cases, preventing legislation from dying on the Senate floor because of endless grandstanding.

The contributions made by the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration go well beyond the role it played in the emergence of the filibuster and cloture. In the 1950s, the committee responded to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s abusive treatment of witnesses during his anticommunist campaign by encouraging other committees to adopt rules, ensuring that witnesses have an opportunity for rebuttal. In the 1980s, the committee endorsed a move to allow television cameras in the Senate chamber for the first time. After a disputed 1996 Senate election in Louisiana and nearly a year of debate, the committee found that allegations of voting irregularities were insufficient to warrant overturning Democrat Mary L. Landrieu’s state-certified victory. In one of its most unique moves, the committee in April 2018 approved a rule change that allowed infants under the age of one on the Senate floor so that Senator Tammy Duckworth could participate in floor votes with her newborn daughter at her side.

Bibliography

"About." Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, www.rules.senate.gov/about. Accessed 9 Feb. 2025.

Binder, Sarah A. “The History of the Filibuster.” Brookings Institute, 22 Apr. 2010, www.brookings.edu/testimonies/the-history-of-the-filibuster. Accessed 9 Feb. 2025.

Heitshusen, Valerie. “Committee Types and Roles.” Congressional Research Service, 2 May 2017, crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RS/98-241. Accessed 9 Feb. 2025.

“History.” Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, 21 Aug. 2019, www.rules.senate.gov/about/history. Accessed 9 Feb. 2025.

“Rules and Administration Committee, Senate.” Congress A to Z, 5th ed., CQ Press, 2008, pp. 477–78.

“Senate Committees.” United States Senate, www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Committees.htm. Accessed 9 Feb. 2025.

“Senate Rules and Administration Committee.” Center for Responsible Politics, 2018, www.opensecrets.org/cong-cmtes/overview?cmte=SRUL&cmtename=Rules+and+Administration&cong=115&cycle=2018. Accessed 9 Feb. 2025.

Sweet, Lynn. “Senate Changes Rules: Sen. Tammy Duckworth Baby to Be Allowed on Senate Floor.” Chicago Sun Times, 18 Apr. 2019, chicago.suntimes.com/2018/4/18/18410172/senate-changes-rules-sen-tammy-duckworth-baby-to-be-allowed-on-senate-floor. Accessed 9 Feb. 2025.