page_title: Hastert Rule
section_title: Speakers' views and use of the policy
hierarchical_section_title: Hastert Rule / Speakers' views and use of the policy
caption_attribution_description: Speaker of the House John Boehner speaking at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, DC. Please attribute to Gage Skidmore if used elsewhere.
context_page_description: The Hastert Rule, also known as the "majority of the majority" rule, is an informal governing principle used in the United States by Republican and Democratic Speakers of the House of Representatives since the mid-1990s to maintain their speakerships and limit the power of the minority party to bring bills up for a vote on the floor of the House. Under the doctrine, the Speaker will not allow a floor vote on a bill unless a majority of the majority party supports the bill.
  The Hastert Rule is an informal rule and the Speaker is not bound by it; they may break it at their discretion. Speakers have at times broken the Hastert Rule and allowed votes to be scheduled on legislation that lacked majority support within the Speaker's own party. Hastert described the rule as being "kind of a misnomer" in that it "never really existed" as a rule.
  Under House rules, the Speaker schedules floor votes on pending legislation. The Hastert Rule says that the Speaker will not schedule a floor vote on any bill that does not have majority support within his or her party—even if the majority of the members of the House would vote to pass it.
context_section_description: Tip O'Neill (Speaker from 1977–1987): According to John Feehery, a Hastert aide and speechwriter who coined the term "majority of the majority," O'Neill let the Republicans "run the floor" because he didn't have the votes and because he believed that if he gave President Ronald Reagan "enough rope, he would end up strangling himself."
  Tom Foley: (1989–1995): In 2004, Foley said, "I think you don't want to bring bills to the floor that a majority of your party is opposed to routinely but sometimes when a great issue is at stake, I think you need to do that."
  Newt Gingrich (1995–1999): Although the majority-of-the-majority rule had not been articulated at the time, Gingrich followed it in practice.
  Dennis Hastert (1999–2007): In 2003 Hastert said, "On occasion, a particular issue might excite a majority made up mostly of the minority.  Campaign finance is a particularly good example of this phenomenon.  [But] the job of speaker is not to expedite legislation that runs counter to the wishes of the majority of his majority." During his speakership, he broke the Hastert Rule a dozen times. In mid-2013 he said, "If you start to rely on the minority to get the majority of your votes, then all of a sudden you’re not running the shop anymore." Later that year, Hastert said, "The Hastert Rule never really existed. It's a non-entity as far as I'm concerned." Reflecting on his time as speaker, he said, "This wasn’t a rule. I was speaking philosophically at the time.... The Hastert Rule is kind of a misnomer."
  Nancy Pelosi (2007–2011, 2019–present): In 2003 Pelosi, then the House Minority Leader under Speaker Hastert, decried the Hastert Rule as a partisan attempt to marginalize elected members of the Democratic Party in Congress. In May 2007 Pelosi said, "I'm the Speaker of the House...I have to take into consideration something broader than the majority of the majority in the Democratic Caucus." She also said at that time, "I would encourage my colleagues not to be proposing resolutions that say 'the majority of the majority does this or that.' We have to talk it out, see what is possible to get a job done. And as I say, we do that together." Pelosi's former chief of staff, George Crawford, expanded upon this saying, "On the larger issue of the 'majority of the majority,' she has talked about that for quite a while. She does want the minority party to engage in the legislative process... That's the kind of Speakership she wants." However, when Pelosi became speaker for the second time, she succeeded in obtaining a rules package that would require a majority of the majority to remove her from power.  In other words, Republicans could not unite with a minority of Democrats to vacate her from the Speakership.
   John Boehner (2011–2015):
  In December 2012 Boehner told his caucus in a conference call, "I'm not interested in passing something with mostly Democrat votes" and that did not have the support of the majority of the Republican caucus.  Nonetheless, Boehner allowed a vote on January 1, 2013 on the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (also known as the "fiscal cliff bill") with only 85 out of 241 Republicans in favor (a support level of only 35%) and the bill passed with the support of 90% of Democrats (172 out of 191). The bill's passage marked the first time in more than ten years that a measure passed a Republican-controlled House when opposed by a majority of House Republicans. In response, former House Speaker Hastert criticized Boehner for not adhering to the "majority of the majority" governing principle by saying, "Maybe you can do it once, maybe you can do it twice, but when you start making deals when you have to get Democrats to pass the legislation, you are not in power anymore."
  Two weeks later, on January 15, 2013, Boehner allowed a vote on aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy to take place without the support of a majority of the Republican caucus. The vote passed with 241 votes, but only 49 of the votes were from Republicans or a mere 21% of the majority. Since then some notable Republicans have publicly questioned wh
caption: Speaker John Boehner violated the Hastert Rule at least six times.
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