It's Driving Me Nuts That Everybody's Misreporting the "Hastert Rule"

It's not a parliamentary rule, and it's been "broken" 26 times over the past 24 years.

The former House speaker after whom the Hastert Rule is named, Dennis Hastert, served a year in the pen for making illegal bank payments to silence a man he’d abused sexually when he was a high school wrestling coach.

The Washington Post and the New York Times both say the debt-ceiling compromise can’t be brought to the floor without support from a majority of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s Republican caucus. The question may be moot because McCarthy says he’s got a “majority of the majority.” Or the question may not be moot because McCarthy often says things that aren’t true. Either way, it’s just wrong to say the debt-ceiling compromise can’t be brought to the floor without support from a majority of the GOP caucus. The vote is scheduled for tonight, and we won’t actually know whether McCarthy has support from a majority of House Republicans until the votes are counted.

Here’s the offending passage from the Post, in a piece by Rachel Siegel, Marianna Sotomayor, Amy Wang, and Paul Kane:

To avoid a disastrous default, McCarthy would need the support of a “majority of the majority,” or at least half of the 222 Republicans in the House, even to bring the bill to the floor. He could lose up to 111 of his own party members but then would need up to 107 Democratic votes.

There is no parliamentary rule or other circumstance that bars McCarthy from bringing this (or any other bill) to the House floor without support from the majority of his caucus. The Post is here confusing what McCarthy wants with what he needs. (And incidentally, if such a rule did exist, “at least half of the 222 Republicans in the House” would not be sufficient, because half is not a majority. It’s just half. The Post can’t even count.)

The Times’s Catie Edmondson writes a more nuanced version of this error, to wit:

Mr. McCarthy, a California Republican, has repeatedly said that he would secure the support of a majority of his conference for the bill itself — an unwritten but virtually inviolable rule long adhered to by speakers of both parties for bringing up legislation.

Give the Times credit for recognizing that the thing that might keep McCarthy from bringing the debt-ceiling bill to the House floor without “a majority of the majority” is not an actual rule but mere custom. But take away points for characterizing this custom as “virtually inviolable” and “long adhered to be speakers of both parties for bringing up legislation.” Incorrect! The unwritten rule, often referred to as the Hastert Rule because the former House speaker Dennis Hastert yakked about it a lot, has been broken multiple times by every House speaker since Hastert save one. The exception was Paul Ryan, who never particularly wanted to be speaker and held the job only a little more than three years.

Hastert may have broken his own rule more than any of his successors; he broke it 12 times. John Boehner broke it half a dozen times. Nancy Pelosi broke it eight times. If an “unwritten rule” is broken 26 times over the course of 24 years, I don’t see how we can call it “virtually inviolable,” or say it’s been “long adhered to.” All we can say is that House speakers don’t like breaking it if they can avoid doing so.

This nonsense about the “majority of the majority” is an awkward shorthand way to say that if McCarthy passes the debt-ceiling bill without a majority of the majority he’ll probably get the heave-ho as speaker. True! But that isn’t because of tradition; Hastert and Pelosi never got themselves into any particular trouble for violating the Hastert Rule. Boehner did, and eventually he was forced out, but that was because Boehner’s right flank couldn’t stand him. McCarthy’s right flank dislikes him even more than Boehner’s did. That’s why he’ll probably lose the speaker’s job if the debt-ceiling bill passes without a majority of House Republicans. But I’m guessing he’ll be out by the end of the year even if the debt-ceiling bill passes with, say, one-third of House Republicans voting against. Sad for McCarthy, but not really for anybody else. That, and also the lost opportunity to include tax increases in the debt-ceiling bill, are the subject of my latest New Republic essay.You can read it here.

Update, June 1: McCarthy got his “majority of the majority,” but 71 Republicans, or about one-third of those in the Republican caucus who voted (Indiana’s Jim Banks and Colorado’s Lauren Boebert abstained), voted against. The full roll call is here. One of the nays, Dan Bishop of North Carolina, a Freedom Caucus nutter, tweeted, “This is what it looks like when the uniparty cartel sells out the American people.” Bishop also retweeted Sean Davis, chief executive of The Federalist, saying, “The term for a bill that gets more Democrat votes than Republican votes is a Democrat bill.” The knives are out, and I stand by my prediction that McCarthy will be gone before we ring in 2024.

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