Thursday, April 17, 1997
Thursday, May 1, 1997

House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Rules & Organization of the House
Committee on Rules
Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m. in Room H-313, The Capitol, Hon. David Dreier [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Dreier, Diaz-Balart, Myrick, Hall and Slaughter.

Mr. Dreier. The subcommittee will come to order. The purpose of this hearing is to examine a number of issues raised by Professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson in her report entitled, "Civility in the House of Representatives." Dr. Jamieson is the Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Her report was prepared for the Bipartisan Congressional Retreat, which was held last month in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Last July, I was approached by my colleagues, David Skaggs and Ray LaHood, and asked to sign a letter to our leaders asking that they start a bipartisan retreat. Since an event of this nature had never been planned before and given the political environment in the House at that time, I was naturally skeptical that a bipartisan retreat could be held or that it could change the culture of this institution.

Nonetheless, I signed the letter because I believe greater civility in the House is a cause certainly worth pursuing. This is not to suggest that decline in civil behavior in Congress is unprecedented and spiraling out of control. In fact, the institution is more civil today than it was during the 19th Century and many parts of this century.

Throughout the planning, I often pointed out a number of historical contrasts, and I will seize this opportunity to do the same here. According to the Encyclopedia of the United States Congress, the institution, during the 19th Century, "was for most of the century an unruly arena to which flowed men of vastly different cultures, education, experiences and temperaments.

From frontier States came rugged individualists, some more accustomed to settling disputes with fists or weapons than with gentlemanly compromise. From the South came a number of hot-tempered aristocrats schooled in the manly arts, brave to a fault and alert to any slur on their honor."

So while we haven't witnessed in recent years any canings or pistol whippings, at least on the House Floor, there is evidence of a decline in debate decorum generally, certainly over the time that I have served in this House. This has created obstacles to productive legislative activity and it sets an undesirable tone for political discussion generally.

I was honored to serve on the original Bipartisan Retreat Planning Committee. For personal reasons, I was unable to attend the retreat, but it was by all accounts a tremendous success, and I want to thank the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Aspen Institute and the Congressional Institute for funding and organizing the event. It demonstrated their deep commitment to improving the quality of leadership and discourse in American society, both public and private.

It was the first time in history that every Member of the House of Representatives had been invited to meet informally outside of Washington, D.C. and free from the pressures of political and partisan competition. About 200 Members of the House and their families ultimately attended the retreat. But more important, as a result of the retreat, there is better scrutiny of the norms of behavior in the House and a greater awareness of how our behavior is projected to the American people.

Despite some recent setbacks that have gotten a great deal of attention, David Skaggs and Ray LaHood have been diligent in following up on the retreat to ensure that long-term institutional mechanisms are put in place to create a more civil, cooperative and productive work environment, while allowing vigorous debate to flourish. This hearing is intended to be a small part of that effort.

We have a distinguished list of witnesses who have a number of excellent observations and suggestions to share with us about the institutional environment here in the House. Their written statements can be obtained on the Internet.

In a few weeks, the transcript of this hearing will also be made available on that Web site. I also want to encourage those who may be watching this hearing on C-SPAN to give us their feedback and comments and suggestions either in writing or by clicking on the "feedback" link on our subcommittee Web site.

At this point, I ask unanimous consent that any feedback we receive from the public that is relevant to the topic of today's hearing be included in the hearing record. And without objection, that will take place.

Mr. Dreier. Before I introduce our panel, I would like to call on my very distinguished colleague from Florida, who is the Vice Chairman of this subcommittee, Mr. Diaz-Balart.

Mr. Diaz-Balart. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to commend you for holding this hearing. I look forward to hearing from our distinguished guests. I think that it was very important for you to point out, albeit briefly, some historical perspective on the issue that we are dealing with today. Not only do we see examples in the history of our Congress of physical violence and the famous duels that used to occur here, which I guess were not uncivil, but they were somewhat violent --

Mr. Dreier. I don't know that there are any duels that have been fairly civil.

Mr. Diaz-Balart. I think that they were supposed to be civil. But it is fortunate they have passed into the history books.

But there was a significant amount of uncivility, lack of civility, and even today -- even today, we see around the world in other democracies, I think, examples, significant examples of parliaments where recurring examples of disrespect and even interruptions of debate occur.

And so it is important to keep these perspectives, these comparisons in mind. And yet -- and yet build upon and improve our system to make it ever more not only efficient for the consideration of issues and legislation, but also for the consideration and respect of individual Members and, thus, their constituents' views.

And so that is why this hearing is important. And, again, I commend you for holding it. And look forward to what we will learn in the discourse and the dialogue that should ensue, so thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Dreier. Thank you very much, Mr. Diaz-Balart.

I am now pleased to call on the Ranking Minority Member of the subcommittee, Mr. Hall.

Mr. Hall. Thank you, Mr. Dreier, and thank you for holding this hearing. I think it is an important hearing. I think every Member of Congress has a vested interest in this subject. We feel it. We understand it. And we live it every day.

So, I want to thank the Chairman for holding this hearing. I look forward to the debate and testimony. I think any procedural change that affects the right of a House Member to express his views is a sensitive subject, and I look forward to the discussion.

I have a written statement, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Dreier. Without objection, that will appear in the record.

Mr. Dreier. Ms. Myrick?

Thank you very much. Let me, before I introduce the panel, say that it is fascinating that at this moment we will, following 1-minutes and, I am told, a journal vote or a quorum call, be hearing from the Speaker on the House Floor, who will make a presentation as to how he intends to deal with the ethics issue, which we have all gone through for a long period of time. So I will just say that when that takes place, we are going to recess for at least part of that time, because a number of us need to be on the House floor, and certainly people here are welcomed to go sit in the Gallery and observe that at that time.

So let me, as we move along, proceed with introduction of both members of the first panel.

Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, as I said, is the Dean of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the report that is the subject of this hearing. Her report entitled, "Civility in the House of Representatives," was prepared for the Bipartisan Congressional Retreat held last month in Hershey.

In 1992, The New York Times called Dr. Jamieson the leading academic authority on politics and advertising. She is the author of two recent books, one entitled "The interplay of influence: news, advertising, politics, and the mass media," and the other entitled "Packaging the presidency: a history and criticism of presidential campaign advertising." Dr. Jamieson even served a stint as a Hill staffer in the late 1970s as communications director for the House Permanent Select Subcommittee on Aging, which we abolished in 1993.

And our other witness on the panel is Mr. Donald Wolfensberger. One concern that has been raised is over the level of turnover in the House and that we are losing our institutional memory. Until his departure just a couple of months ago, Don was staff director of this full Rules Committee. Don Wolfensberger was the institutional memory of the House of Representatives, having served 28 years as a congressional staff member, 22 of them on the Rules Committee.

Anyone who doubts that he was deserving of that title was not at his retirement party, which was held right here in this room. In attendance we had former Congressman and Presidential Candidate John Anderson, who first brought Don to town, former Congressman and Labor Secretary Lynn Martin, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, former House Minority Leader Bob Michel, among others.

His departure was a great loss personally for many of us and for this institution. But we are now able to utilize his expertise in his new capacity as Guest Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and I want to welcome him back to this hearing room and say that both of your entire statements will appear in the record, and we look forward to your testimony. If you want to begin, Kathleen.

STATEMENT OF KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON, DEAN OF THE ANNENBERG SCHOOL FOR COMMUNICATION, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

Ms. Jamieson. I would like to thank you for inviting me and extend the personal regards of the founder of the school, Walter Annenberg, to you.

The Chairman. Thank you very much. A great man.

Ms. Jamieson. The premise of our report was that the norm in the House is a civil norm. And it is important to remember that those moments in which incivility is an issue are, in fact, very rare. Which doesn't mean that we shouldn't be concerned about it. But often lost in this discussion is the fact that day in and day out, most of the discourse which occurs in the House is thoughtful and evidence-driven and is not in any way what we would consider to be problematic.

And one of the reasons I think that the public thinks that this problem is worse than it is -- and I don't mean to say that there isn't a problem -- is that there is a tendency on the part of the news media to take those moments that are disruptive and to feature them and to feature them repeatedly without drawing attention to the fact that in most of those moments in which there has been problematic speech, the institution has dealt well. And also that the Member that has overstepped the lines has more often than not apologized to the person offended as well as to the institution. So my first point is that civility is the norm. It is important to remember that.

Secondly, I think it is important to note that our premise differs from some because we believe that comity works in service of strong partisanship; it does not work against strong partisanship. We don't mean to confuse the notion that discourse should be based on mutual trust with the notion that one should be effectively co-opted and one's voice should not be heard.

One of the things that is true historically is that when the minority feels obstructed or the majority feels thwarted or both occur simultaneously as is likely, incivility is more likely to occur. So any change that one makes that increases the likelihood that the Minority will feel obstructed is more likely to increase incivility, not to decrease it.

It is important as a result, as one looks at ways to change and shift the culture through small moves in the rules, that one be conscious that we have a common goal, which is constructive deliberation, and that in the process, the free airing of views is our goal and that what we are trying to extinguish is not partisanship, but the counterproductive name calling that occasionally occurs.

I would like, then, in that context to briefly summarize our findings. We examined the instances in which words were taken down from 1935 to 1996, and we found that -- and this is a reassuring finding -- there is not an increasing dramatic trend toward demands that words be taken down. In fact, consistent with my earlier premise, for much of the history of the modern institution the norm suggests that that is a rarely used move on the part of the House.

There is a spike in 1946, which is the year before the turnover to the Republican Congress of 1947-48. There is a spike again in the first session of the 104th. But then in the second session of the 104th, that spike goes back down, which suggests that the natural adaptive mechanisms of the House began to address some of those concerns.

It is natural, I think, to assume that when one party has been in power for 40 years and the other party has been out of power for 40 years, the transition is going to be difficult, and I think we saw that in that first year. I think as a result, what we see is a healthy institution that has natural adaptive tendencies and the question one should ask is how can one increase the likelihood of these tendencies to operate?

We saw, secondly, the exact same pattern when we looked at the Chair asking that the House be in order or asking that the gentlewoman or the gentleman suspend. In 1995, you see a spike, but you see a drop in 1996. We looked at vulgarity in the House and there is a vulgarity chart in the report we submitted. I will not indicate the words in the vulgarity chart, and we found that the level dropped in the 104th Congress, which is suggestive that at least in that dimension this problem is not worsening in that Congress.

But we did find one trend that was problematic, and that is that when we looked at the earlier history of words taken down, meaning the 1930s and 1940s when the word, "liar," was used it was not usually used to describe the other person involved in the exchange with the Member. In fact, into the late 1980s, that also was not the case. We tended to call our foreign enemies liars, but we didn't tend to call each other liars.

In 103rd Congress, which is before the turnover, the number of times that Members called each other liars began to spike and that trend has continued. What that suggests is that we have a problem on the margin and that it deals directly with a specific rule of the House which says that you can't impugn the integrity of another Member. And the question I think then is are there ways to minimize those occasions in which one moves to that level of attack, which I think is not productive in discourse.

We made a series of recommendations in the report that were based -- were predicated on our two premises. So the recommendations that we made were based on the assumption that there, in fact, are in the existing rules the latitude to do most of what one needs to do if one is simply trying to head off moments in which there is direct impugning of someone else's integrity.

We know, for example, that Rule 1, Clause 2 gives the Chair the obligation to preserve order and decorum. We know that the Chair, as well as Members in Rule 14, Clause 4, have the power to call to order a Member who has transgressed the rules. And so what we are suggesting is that within the existing culture, Members be more cautious and work more to minimize the likelihood that their own side is going to engage in direct name calling, or impugning integrity, or in those instances in which the debate is moving to that trajectory, the Chair moves to caution. These recommendations are working within the existing rules and simply asking for a cultural change.

We also recommended that there be some very small changes in the way in which the House reports its records. And I am now in part speaking on behalf of the scholarly community that 100 years from now will look back to your records and will have C-SPAN as the back-up document.

I think it would be very helpful if the Congress would adopt the model of the court system and provide descriptions of the visual aids that are being brought to the Floor. Not simply the visual aids that are problematic, but the aids in the form of charts and of graphs.

The advent of C-SPAN has made it possible for you to communicate much more effectively to the country by using charts and graphs, and I don't think anyone would want to do anything to minimize the ability on complex matters, in particular such as the budget, to provide those kinds of clarifying data. But when one looks to the printed record, one doesn't see the charts that are being referred to and as a result, one loses some of the impressiveness of the evidence that is being marshaled on behalf of the discourse on both sides. Because, as you know, you often have one side putting its interpretation on the data and the other side coming up to put its interpretation up as well. In other words, a form of discourse that is now more evidence-driven in some ways is being underreported.

And secondly, by recording the visuals it would make it possible for Members to see those instances in which the Chair has said that something is not appropriate. Right now, because of the nature of the process, someone will be told that something is inappropriate, but the record will not necessarily reflect it.

As we were reading the record, for example, we found a discussion about a pig that was being passed around the Floor. We reasonably assumed that you had not brought a pig on to the Floor and that it was oinking and squealing and thought perhaps this was a stuffed pig, but you cannot tell that by reading the record. It would be appropriate for someone to make a notation in the record and make it possible for one of the offices of Congress to catalog those instances that were considered to be inappropriate and begin to give new Members the sense of the parameters of official discourse.

Secondly, we think it would be helpful if you could record efforts to gavel down a Member. Often when we found what we thought was inconsistency in the behavior of the Speaker pro tem, the Speaker pro tem, in fact, was intervening, but not verbally. He was intervening by trying to gavel down. It would be important in the record, however, that one note when the Chair is gaveling to quiet the Gallery rather than gaveling to quiet the Floor.

We also recommend some very small fine tuning in the existing rules. First, in the special order time we think there is a parliamentary dilemma. I think the Special Orders are one of the important discourse forums in the House because they provide extended times for expository discourse and some of the best case making by both the Majority and the Minority to clarify its case occurs in Special Orders. But there is a dilemma during Special Orders when most of the gentlemen and gentleladies of Congress are home having dinner, and that is if a decision of the Chair is appealed, you can't really reassemble the Membership in order to carry the taking down process through.

As a result, on those rare occasions in which an individual is saying something that clearly during the regular discourse of the day would be handled strongly with the request to take down, we see that Member simply cautioned by the Chair. And I think you should consider changing the rules to say that appeals of the decisions of the Chair made after regular hours will be taken under consideration to be voted on at a specific time on the next legislative day, while in the meantime the Member whose words have been demanded to be taken down would retain the right to speak for the rest of the day, but after the vote on the appeal of the ruling of the Chair the following day, if the Chair's ruling were sustained, permission would be required for the member to proceed in order.

My guess is if one had this rule change in place, one would minimize the tendency on the part of that very rare Member to use that occasion to say things that that Member would not have said during the regular day, and hence that it would have what academics inappropriately call the prophylactic effect.

Additionally, when a Member uses unparliamentary language, the words are taken down, they are stricken from the record and the Member requires permission to regain speaking privileges for the day. But I couldn't find in your rules, something comparable in the form of a penalty for a Member who threatens another Member with violence or engages in acts of violence on the Floor, in areas adjacent to the Floor, or in committee meetings.

I think it is appropriate to ask whether there shouldn't be something explicit that creates a sanction for Members who engage not in dueling, because I think that is not likely to come back, but in shoving, pushing, and threats to punch someone out, invitations to come off the Floor to engage in a fist fight. Ordinarily, one reserves one's strongest sanctions for physical actions and one's weakest sanctions for verbal actions and the reverse appears to be true, although it is possible there is a rule someplace that I missed.

The rest of our recommendations are about the culture. We think that there are some rules that are ordinarily applied in every day communication with other people, whether we agree or disagree, and that it would be useful for people to simply remember them as they work through the legislative process.

For example, when a Member is named, questioned or referred to by another, and that other person requests the opportunity to respond, we think that it would be appropriate as a cultural norm, not a rule, that that person be yielded to for response because for among other reasons it lets the debate advance. It advances the potential discussion.

When a Member plans to criticize another Member on the Floor, particularly during Special Orders, he or she, we think, should have the courtesy to notice that Member. In the past, we found instances in which Members of both parties have assumed that they should be granted those courtesies and we think they are appropriate courtesies and that if one knows that that is the cultural expectation, one might be more careful about what one says in those few problematic moments.

We think, also, in terms of cultural considerations that when one side has repeatedly yielded to the other, and the other then has the Floor, it is courteous to reciprocate.

Third, we think that when a Member refuses to yield, the requests to yield should automatically cease. We think that when words are being withdrawn, the cultural norm should say it is inappropriate to repeat them in the act of agreeing to have the words withdrawn. And particularly repeating them on an ongoing basis, becomes a way to circumvent the intent of the taking down process and magnifies tensions.

And we think, fifth, that when a Member indicates a willingness to apologize, the apology should be accepted; that it ordinarily isn't appropriate in the culture when someone apologizes to say, no, we don't accept the apology; let's continue the sanctioning process. None of these things would take the form of rule changes. You don't set up rules in order to govern these sorts of things. But trying to establish a cultural expectation by having people behave in this way, we think, in a small way would improve the climate for deliberation.

We also think that it would be important to think about the roles that have been conventionalized in Congress, and to ask if we could conventionalize some additional roles not through rules, but through culture. We have observed over time and we saw it in the 1940s as well as in the 1980s and 1990s, that Members on the Minority side, in particular, but occasionally the Majority side as well, have begun to function as parliamentary watchdogs and an individual has often assumed that role very ably. The parliamentary watchdog's job is to aggressively challenge procedure and process to ensure that the rights of that person's party are not being taken advantage of.

We think that that is a perfectly appropriate role, but would ask whether it would not also be desirable to try to conventionalize a role for a person in each party who is tasked to try to ensure that if the Member of that party is edging toward impugning integrity, that the party itself begins to gently intervene in an effort to back down the tension in the exchange.

We do, in fact, see these things happening on the Floor, but after the taking down process occurs, where often we see the senior respected Members from the parties moving to try to get the request withdrawn or to get the words withdrawn, or to get an apology, we think that since you already conventionalize that structure after the fact, there might be a way to conventionalize it by moving it a little bit forward in the process.

We also think that as both parties proved in the debate over the Ethics Committee's recommendations on the Speaker in 1997, that the leaders in caucus can play a very important role when we know we are in a tense exchange in trying to ensure that the exchange stays focused on the issue and does not become a matter of personalities.

In that instance, we saw very strong leadership on the part of both the Democrats and the Republicans and we saw the Speaker pro tem issuing a statement that I think ought to be given to every new Member. It very well articulated the norms that ought to govern all debate in the House.

We also think it important that the staff people who handle press relations remind reporters that the norm in the House is apologizing when there has been an infraction and to focus attention on the apologies so that the audience, in the form of the voting public, is more likely to realize that day to day when the norm is breached, the norm is also to apologize; often to apologize eloquently, because the individual didn't mean to overstep and impugn the integrity of one of his or her colleagues.

Our most controversial recommendation is either eliminate or move the 1-minute speeches. I appreciate the importance of 1-minute speeches, particularly when the Minority feels it doesn't have much time to articulate its views, that becomes a forum for the Minority. One-minute speeches are not specified in the procedures of the House or the rules of the House. They are conventionalized in the House. But I recommend this as an alternative.

I appreciate the view on the part of whoever is in the Minority, and I think it is healthy to have the Democrats in the Minority and the Republicans in the Minority enough in the lives of both of them so they experience the problems of being in the Minority and are more sympathetic to the tensions of that relationship.

I would recommend that if we move or eliminate 1-minute speeches, we conventionalize Oxford debates as an additional forum available. In Oxford debate, strong partisanship should be the rule, but in an environment in which the debate structure increases the likelihood that one arbitrates evidence and doesn't engage in personalities. The third of your Oxford debates in 1994 was better than the second, which was better than the first. It takes time to learn this form.

There isn't a lot of real debate in Congress anymore because of the way Congress is structured. I think the American people would come to view this as a forum to learn deeply about issues and also to recognize that your differences are philosophical and not personal and that you all care about the well-being of the country, regardless of your political affiliation.

Finally, I would ask that you consider increasing the vigilance of the Speaker and the Members in some small ways. First, since there is no appeal from the Speaker's recognition or nonrecognition, I think the Speaker needs to be cautious when you begin to see a pattern of inflammatory parliamentary inquiries during the taking down process.

The best Speakers pro tem were legislative Chairs in their States, and as a result are more comfortable acting in a nuanced fashion. When you get into those subtle moments in which being able to determine what is appropriate and isn't to dampen down the tension is in order. And those people have often done that very well. Those who have had less experience in those tense moments are more likely to engage in the kinds of recognition that make, I think, the problems worse.

Secondly, since Members, according to the rules, are to be referred to as gentleman or gentlewoman from such and such a State, the Speaker should intervene to caution against the use of pejorative nicknames. I think, in fact, your rules tell the Speaker that, but it has not been happening recently.

For example, one Member called another "stonewall" and then her last name. Another called the gentleman "feel good" and then his last name. A third called another "closed rule" and then his last name.

I don't think that is an appropriate way to refer to another Member. And I think the Speaker should -- we should take the same expectation that the Speaker has an obligation to intervene when the name of a Member of the Senate is articulated or when a matter before a committee is articulated before it comes to the Floor. The Speaker should be proactive about assuming that name calling isn't appropriate.

Mr. Dreier. But it would not be a pejorative if we referred to him as "open rule."

Ms. Jamieson. One might say that the positive statements that one might make in adjective form wouldn't be attached directly to the name, so one could praise the "gentlewoman from" for her championship of the open rule.

Third, we think that to help Members develop a clear sense of decorum whenever the Chair feels that it would not be inflammatory, it would be useful to cite precedent and explain the justification for the rules. We have many new Members of Congress and many who have not served in State legislatures where the rules are very much the same as they are here and that that would be a useful way and a subtle way to increase the likelihood that the norms of the institution were carried forward.

Finally, we would recommend that the Parliamentarian's Office publish a short, clear guide to behavior on the Floor, which could be give to new Members at orientation, and I hope that the orientation would have Members of both parties present, and that it would have both the parliamentary watchdogs and the comity watchdogs instructing the Members, not just the parliamentary watchdogs, and would, among other things, explain the principles governing the precedents and the explicit norms central to maintaining a climate of comity.

Your rules, I think, are very difficult for a new Member to fathom. Particularly, given the nature of the precedent structure here. And a clear guide, I think, would be helpful.

In summary, the norm is a norm of comity. , strong productive partisanship, I think, is better achieved in that kind of an environment. And just as the public reflected its disapproval of the first session of the 104th with the disapproval level dropping to a point only exceeded to the depth at the point in which the House Banking scandal was occurring, the country approved of the second session of the 104th. It may just be coincidental, but you got a lot more done in the second session, and also the level of civility by all Members was substantially higher. Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

Mr. Dreier. Thank you very much. Don?

STATEMENT OF DONALD WOLFENSBERGER, GUEST SCHOLAR, WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS

Mr. Wolfensberger. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Members of the subcommittee, it is good to see you all again.

I am glad to have this chance to testify on civility in the House today, although I did not expect my first return visit to this committee would be as a witness. I sort of hoped I would be sitting in the audience watching the rest of you work for a change. It would be kind of nice.

I want to commend Chairman Dreier on his leadership in working with Representatives LaHood and Skaggs and others in putting together the bipartisan retreat in Hershey. I think it was a great idea. But more importantly, I want to commend this subcommittee on following through on the spirit of Hershey and trying to develop some concrete recommendations for the leadership on how you best restore comity in the House.

I recall very distinctly last September when Representative Skaggs appeared before this committee and testified on the retreat concept, and he said something that struck me quite profoundly at the time. And I will quote: "It seems to me that what we are really talking about here is changing a culture and creating a different sense within the Membership of the House of Representatives as to what the norms are here and what is appropriate and what isn't."

That statement sort of gnawed at me ever since. Sometimes when you are so close to a situation so for long that you don't notice the culture slowly changing around you. Yet when I thought about it after hearing that statement, it hit me that it really had been gradually changing in the House. What is this new culture? What is behind it and what do you do about it? I think that is why you are here today.

My analysis is and it might be a little exaggerated, but I am going to make the point anyway, that I think the culture in the House is slowly evolving from one of governing through deliberation to one of perpetual campaigning through confrontation.

Now, that would not be so bad if your campaigns were great debates between the two parties on their different philosophies and competing programs to solve important national problems. But I think Lincoln and Douglas would not recognize campaigns today, frankly.

Campaigns today, I think, are driven primarily by polls, promises, pandering, personalities and peccadillos. Your professional campaign managers tell you that to win you must demonize your opponent, paint issues in terms of good versus evil, avoid the tough issues, oversimplify and magnify the importance of your key wedge issues, and attack, attack, attack.

To the extent this campaign culture and these tactics are carried over to the House, it seems to me there would be no middle ground left for the type of compromise that is so necessary for effective governance. Unlike a campaign, Congress is not a zero sum game where you must destroy your enemy for you to succeed. Here you must continue to work with your political opposition day, after day, after day.

In fact, many of you realize that today's political adversary on the House Floor may be tomorrow's ally. If partisan tactics and wedge issues replace deliberation over real problems, it seems to me the more there will be a breakdown in comity and decorum that is necessary to sustain this system.

My analysis is not meant to be an indictment of anyone or any party. I think both parties do it. We see a lot of the same thing from the White House, the same type of political advice flows from the professional campaign managers. Indeed, a breakdown in comity in the House may well reflect what is happening in the society at large, and that is the thesis of one of the succeeding witnesses, Eric Ulsaner, who says there is a breakdown of trust among individuals at large in our society.

But most Members are concerned about this institution. They are upset by the collapse of comity and civility, and they prefer to work in a culture of governance through deliberation rather than a culture of constant campaigning.

The response to your retreat and the follow-on contacts and the meetings that you have had, I understand, really affirm there is a desire in the House of Representatives to turn things around. I think that is encouraging. Restoring civility and comity do not lend themselves to a procedural or legislative quick fix any more than you can legislate morality, but you can take certain steps to create an environment in which good conduct is rewarded and bad conduct is discouraged and punished. That will require really going back to the basics, the basic rules on decorum in debate. Learning them, teaching them, and enforcing them.

Jefferson, in his Manual of Parliamentary Practice, said it is very important that you have a uniform set of rules "so that order, decency and regularity be preserved in a dignified public body." And that is what you want: a dignified public body.

The rules of decorum were laid out in House Rule 14, but they were laid out during the first Congress 7 days after it convened on April 7, 1789, and, stated simply they are the following: Members shall address themselves directly to the Chair, not to other Members. They shall confine themselves to the question under debate. They shall avoid engaging in personalities in debate, including not questioning a Member's motives, integrity or veracity. And if called to order for transgressing the rules, they should immediately sit down.

It has been my observation that there are three types of breaches of decorum in the House. The unknowing, the unthinking, and the intentional, and each has to be dealt with differently.

The unknowing breaches are by Members who haven't bothered to learn the rules. And this is not confined to junior Members; a lot of senior Members have not bothered learning the rules. To address this, you have to have an ongoing educational effort by the parties, the Parliamentarian, the Chair, and your peers. In this regard, I commend the Rules Committee for putting out this pocket guide for Members, "Key Forms of Proceedings in the House of Representatives." It tells a lot about what happens on the Floor and why, the very back page of which is a summary of rules of decorum and debate. And this is, I think, available to all Members on the House Floor and it is a great thing and the way to go.

Mr. Dreier. It is also available on the Web site, I should say.

Mr. Wolfensberger. I did see that yesterday. The second type is the unthinking breach. That is committed by Members who do know better, but in the heat of the moment, may forget themselves and fly off the handle and say things they shouldn't.

Obviously, there is no way to guard against this type of thing happening. It is a spontaneous outburst. It should be recognized that they will occur over issues where there are great emotional divisions, partisan divisions, or especially late at night when Members are tired and nerves are taut and frayed anyway.

In this situation, the leadership has to recognize that that type of debate will trigger these outbursts and the leadership should maintain a constant presence on the Floor to immediately step in and help deescalate a situation. And the person responsible for that unthinking outburst should be immediately ready to tender an apology to the House so that the House can get back to the regular order.

The third type is the intentional breach. It is the most egregious and I think it should be dealt with the most harshly when committed by Members who do know better, but violate the rules of decorum intentionally in order to provoke confrontation with the other side or attract media attention. And they are the easy ones to spot. They are repeat offenders. They have been advised previously on these kinds of violations and they persist in doing it day after day.

I have recommended in this situation that the Chair adopt a new approach, which I call "two strikes and you're out." If the Chair cautions a Member that he is engaging in improper conduct and that Member persists, the Chair would exercise his clear authority under Clause 4 of Rule 14 and order that Member to immediately sit down.

I have recommended a similar thing when it comes to exhibits that are in violation of the rules of decorum. And I call it "one strike and it is out." That is, if a poster or some visual display is brought to the Floor, a point of order is sustained that it is not in keeping with the decorum of the House, the Speaker should order the Sergeant at Arms to remove that display from the House Floor and the chamber altogether and no other Member can use that same poster to provoke another point of order later in the day or on any subsequent day. It has been established that that is out of order.

In this regard, I have another recommendation that you repeal Rule 30 of the House regarding exhibits. That rule now says if anybody objects to an exhibit on the Floor, there is an automatic vote as to whether to allow it. This has been abused by the Minority just to get dilatory votes just as the Republican Minority used to abuse the rule of reading on papers in the House in order to get dilatory votes. That rule was repealed and this should be repealed for the same reason.

The Majority could abuse the current rule by objecting to a perfectly legitimate Minority exhibit and then getting a vote on that and having it taken off the Floor on a party line vote. If you repeal this rule, you still have a point of order against improper exhibits and you still have an appeal of the ruling of the chair. But you still get a vote and the ruling of the Chair will probably be upheld in those areas.

On the 1-minute speeches I have a compromise between abolishing 1-minute speeches and moving them to the end of the day. At the beginning of the day, you could allow for 1-minute announcements of a factual nature. If you have introduced a bill, if you are inviting cosponsors, or cosigners if you have a discharge petition, or an important meeting in your committee, or have an important constituent achievement that you would like to announce to the House and so on.

Factual nature 1-minutes would be okay. This would be a kind of House bulletin board. One-minutes of a political nature that you get involved with views on policy, legislation, on politics whatever, would be moved to the end of the day just prior to Special Orders. That is my suggestion on the 1-minutes.

I do have a final section that I will not take the time to go into in any detail. It simply cautions you against thinking that if you restore civility and comity in the House that somehow you will restore public confidence in the institution. Some of the reading that I have been doing recently indicates that even if you are perfectly polite to each other, as long as you are having any kind of partisan differences, prolonged deliberations, or perception that you are reconciling competing interests which the public sees as special interests, then this is messy, this is bad, and they don't want to see it.

So you are going to somehow need to work through that to better educate the public that the diverse interests that you are dealing with are their diverse interests and you are not doing something that is out of order. And I think that is a hard one to overcome.

Sam Rayburn, the Speaker of the House, said "too many critics mistake the deliberations of Congress for its decisions," and I think that is true. Let me just conclude by saying that I think partisanship is good in the best sense of the term. It simply means that you have a view, a belief in a program of your party that you adhere to. And I think that is a sign that our system is healthy.

We have full and free ranging debates over competing solutions and beliefs. I think it is something we should celebrate rather than something that we should say it is disgusting. I think it is good that you have your differences. You would not have this opportunity in a one-party or no-party state.

Let me conclude by quoting a Russian visitor to our shores early in this century, Boris Marshalov. He was taken to the House Gallery and he came away from watching the House in action and he had the following observation: "Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens. And then everybody disagrees."

I have related the story to make two concluding points: First, some things don't change; and, second, an American visitor to our Gallery would come away and not think that is strange at all. Why? Because we take for granted our great tradition of open dissent and disagreement. But people recognize this is the way our democracy works. May you continue to thrash out your differences and disagreements with deliberation and civility. Thank you.

The Chairman. Thank you very much, Don, and thank you, Kathleen. Both of you were talking about what at this moment can certainly be considered extraordinarily timely. On the House Floor, we are getting ready to vote on whether a Member's words are to be taken down. I was just told this by staff, and I don't know exactly what the vote is, but there apparently was just a real ruckus during the 1-minutes taking place. And so we are going to be going downstairs to do that.

I have loads of questions and want to proceed with a discussion. I don't know if you two and others who are here want to go across into the Speaker's Gallery if there is room there to see what is taking place because we are going to take a recess. But before we do, let me call on the Vice Chairman of the subcommittee to see if he would like to begin with any questions.

Mr. Diaz-Balart. Mr. Chairman, thank you, but I would rather after the recess resume the debate. And I do look forward to finding out what we are going to vote on before we do vote on it.

Mr. Dreier. Tony? Do you want?

Mr. Hall. I think it is good to wait if they can come back and we can.

Mr. Dreier. Is that all right with everybody? We are going to stand in recess and we will try and come back soon. I will speak to the Members of the subcommittee before we come back, but we are going to go to the Floor for this and you all are certainly welcome to watch from the gallery. I know there is a television in here, too. We will try to come back at a mutually agreeable time and in the not too distant future. Thank you very much.

[Recess.]

[Whereupon, at 10:53 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned, subject to the call of the Chair.]