Successful Use of Discharge Petitions

Notable for what it might signify regarding the strength of the House Speaker, Republican rank-and-file members of Congress are increasingly bypassing leadership to force House votes on their legislative priorities.

The discharge petition process is available for bills that have sat in committee for at least 30 legislative days. Once a member files a petition, the clerk holds it for signatures. If it gets 218 signatures (a majority of the full House), the clerk enters a discharge motion on the House calendar.  After seven legislative days, any member who signed the petition may notify the House of an intention to offer the motion on the floor, and the Speaker then must schedule a vote on the measure within two legislative days.

Until recently, discharge petitions very rarely resulted in a floor vote. Typically, members of the majority party face a real disincentive to sign a discharge petition because such public rebuke of one’s own party’s leadership can invite political retribution.

But since Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) won his leadership position, members of his own party have collected the required number of signatures on five discharge petitions:

• Petition introduced by Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA) to expand Social Security payments for public sector workers (the House passed that bill by a vote of 327-75)
• Petition introduced by Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) to provide tax relief for losses from federally declared disasters (that bill pased the House by a vote of 382-7)
• Petition relating to a bill introduced by Reps. Brittany Pettersen (D-CO) and Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) to change House rules to allow members to vote by proxy for a certain period of time after having a baby (the Speaker avoided a vote on the proposal by negotiating an agreement with Rep. Luna to revive “vote pairing,” an old parliamentary procedure that has the same effect as proxy voting)
• Petition relating to a bill introduced by Reps. Tom Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) to force the Department of Justice to release files relating to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein (the House passed that bill by a vote of 427-1)
• Petition relating to a bill introduced by Reps. Jared Golden (D-ME) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) to reverse an Executive Order issued by President Trump that prohibits collective bargaining for certain federal employees (this petition got the required number of signatures just before Thanksgiving; negotiators are working to add it to the NDAA rather than bring it to the floor as a standalone bill, which will make it easier to pass both chambers)

Republican’s very narrow majority in the House contributes to the unusually successful use of discharge petitions in the past couple years, but increasing reliance on the procedure could also reflect weak Republican leadership.  Concededly, in some instances, most notably relating to the Epstein files, the Speaker might have chosen to rely on a discharge petition to limit his own risk when dealing with politically tricky problems. But the trend indicates growing disorder in the House.