Question: When did the majority party in the House of Representatives gain control of the body which determines rules of the US House and US Senate?

the constitution designates the vice president of the united states as president of the united states senate. the constitution also calls for a president pro tempore to serve as the leader of the body when the president of the senate (the vice president) is absent. in practice, neither the vice president nor the president pro tempore -- customarily the most senior (longest - serving) senator in the majority party -- actually presides over the senate on a daily basis; that task is given to junior senators of the majority party. since the vice president may be of a different party than the majority and is not a member subject to discipline, the rules of procedure of the senate give the presiding officer very little power and none beyond the presiding role. for these reasons, it is the majority leader who, in practice, manages the senate. this is in contrast to the house of representatives where the elected speaker of the house has a great deal of discretionary power and generally presides over votes on bills. <SEP> however, at the state level, the pattern of split ticket voting and divided government holds. democrats currently hold one of the state's u.s. senate seats, as well as four of the five statewide offices (governor, superintendent of public instruction, secretary of state and state auditor). the lone congressional district has been republican since 1996 and in 2014 steve daines won one of the state's senate seats for the gop. the legislative branch had split party control between the house and senate most years between 2004 and 2010, when the mid-term elections returned both branches to republican control. the state senate is, as of 2015, controlled by the republicans 29 to 21, and the state house of representatives at 59 to 41. <SEP> They had needed a net gain of at least six seats to obtain a majority. They held all of their seats, and gained nine Democratic - held seats. The Republicans regained the majority of the Senate in the 114th Congress, which started in January 2015; the Republicans had not controlled the Senate since January 2007. Republicans defeated five Democratic incumbents: <SEP> The 2014 elections gave the Republicans control of the Senate (and control of both houses of Congress) for the first time since the 109th Congress. The One Hundred Fourteenth United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C. from January 3, 2015, to January 3, 2017, during the final two full years of Barack Obama's presidency. With 248 seats in the House of Representatives and 54 seats in the Senate, this Congress began with the largest Republican majority since the 71st Congress of 1929 -- 1931. <SEP> The Standing Rules of the Senate are the parliamentary procedures adopted by the United States Senate that govern its procedure. The Senate's power to establish rules derives from Article One, Section 5 of the United States Constitution: ``Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings... ''