Executive Summary
Change the Rules to Give Substantial
Bipartisan Majorities Greater Access to
the Floor
- Improve the discharge petition, giving petition
f
ilers the option to collect signatures privately
and setting the threshold to a majority of
sitting members
• Improve the consensus calendar, closing
loopholes in the rule and thus ensuring that
bills that reach 290 cosponsors receive
f
loor votes
• Create a new procedure, Guaranteed Regular
Order, empowering committees to advance
important bipartisan legislation – particularly
on reauthorizations – to the floor if they
conduct a thorough deliberative process
including hearings and markups
• Require consideration of bipartisan
amendments with 10 cosponsors from
each party
Make Committees Stronger, More
Substantive, and More Effective
• Reduce member conf licts through block
scheduling and a mandatory deconflicting tool,
and then publish member attendance
• Promote alternative hearing setups to further
inquiry rather than adversarial position-taking
• Enhance staff professionalization by reducing
turnover, with partisan balance of 60-40
instead of 2-1
• Give subcommittee chairs control over hiring at
least one staffer - Give committee members the chance to weigh
in on chairs and ranking members, by holding a
secret advisory vote before selection is made by
party steering committee
Give Members More Time for Legislative Work
• Fix the House calendar, giving members
more time for sustained attention to issues by
increasing the number of five-day work-weeks
per session
Promote Bipartisan Collaborations
• Promote relationships across party lines,
providing more resources for bipartisan
retreats, lunches, educational sessions, codels,
and staffdels, and providing physical space near
the House floor reserved for members of both
parties
• Promote conference committees
Raise Member Pay
• Raise Congressional salaries, which have
stagnated and lagged executive branch pay
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