"Czar" Reed And The "Reed Rules"

In 1889, the House elected Thomas B. Reed as Speaker. Over the next decade, Reed would push for changes that increased the power of the Speaker to its highest level yet. These changes would affect the House for several decades.

Before Reed became Speaker, the minority party in the House had a number of parliamentary tricks that it could use to block legislation. These tactics, designed merely to delay and disrupt the legislative process, are known as "dilatory" tactics. For example, one of the most common tricks that the minority party would use was to manipulate the quorum requirement. Before the House can proceed with any business, a quorum (a majority of all the members) must be present. If a few members of the majority party were absent, a few minority members might absent themselves as well. Then the House would not have the quorum necessary to proceed, and the legislation would become stalled.

Until Reed assumed the Speakership, the majority party disliked the dilatory tactics used by the minority party, but tolerated them as an inevitable part of the legislative process. (After all, today's majority party might become tomorrow's minority party.) However, Reed made it clear that he would not tolerate such tactics, writing: "the majority must govern... If the majority does not govern, the minority will... The rules, then, ought to be arranged to facilitate action of the majority."

In February 1890, the House of Representatives adopted a sweeping set of rules, known as the "Reed Rules," which strictly limited the power of the minority to obstruct legislation. For example, the Reed Rules enabled the Speaker to declare dilatory motions out of order. In other words, if the Speaker believed that the sole purpose of a motion was delay, the Speaker had the power simply to refuse to consider the motion.

The Reed Rules were a sweeping, systematic effort to lodge more power with the Speaker. These rules paved the way for the most powerful Speaker in the history of the United States: Joseph Cannon.