page_title: David Dreier
section_title: House leadership
hierarchical_section_title: David Dreier / U.S. House of Representatives / Tenure / House leadership
caption_attribution_description: English: President Ronald Reagan, Congressman David Dreier, and an Afghan youth
context_page_description: David Timothy Dreier OAE is an American entrepreneur and Republican Party politician who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from California from 1981 to 2013. He was one of the youngest members ever elected to the United States Congress. He is also the youngest chairman of the House Rules Committee in U.S. history. After leaving Congress, Dreier served on the Foreign Affairs Policy Board under President Barack Obama. He also served as the chairman of the Tribune Publishing Company from 2019 to 2020. Dreier founded and chairs the Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation.
context_section_description: Dreier is the youngest chairman of the House Rules Committee in U.S. history. As well as being the only Californian to hold that position, he is the third-longest-serving chairman of the Rules Committee (1999 to 2007 and 2011 to 2013) and the longest-serving chairman since 1967. When the Democrats gained control of the House in the 2006 midterm elections, Dreier served as ranking member for the 110th and 111th Congresses. With the Republicans regaining control of the House in the 2010 midterm elections, Dreier again assumed the chairmanship during the 112th Congress.
  Beginning with Dreier's chairmanship in 1999, the Speaker of the House of Representatives appoints the chairman of the Rules Committee to the elected House leadership.
  Following the indictment of Tom DeLay on September 28, 2005, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert asked Dreier to assume temporarily the position of House Majority Leader, as Dreier had consistently adhered to the views of the Republican leadership on many issues and would have been willing to relinquish the title immediately should DeLay have been able to return to the Majority Leader position. However, a conference of rank-and-file Republican representatives disapproved of the choice of Dreier largely because many conservative members believed that Dreier was too politically moderate. According to Dreier spokeswoman Jo Maney, Dreier did not seek the temporary Majority Leader position because he "would have had to give up his chairmanship of the Rules Committee to move to another position, and that's not something that he wanted to do."
  The House Majority Leader position instead went to then-Majority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri, though both Dreier and then-Deputy Majority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia shared in some duties.
caption: Dreier (center), President Ronald Reagan (left), and an Afghan boy who was shot by a Soviet helicopter (right) meet in the Oval Office on January 28, 1988.
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