The Rules Don't Apply

Speaker Johnson’s quiet subversion of checks on Trump’s economic volatility

I'm writing today's newsletter from Gate D41 at National Airport in Washington, D.C.

Behind me, a live band plays anthems from the military branches to welcome veterans to the nation's capitol. In front of me, through floor-to-ceiling windows, the city is spread out in panorama. I cannot help but hear the lyrics in my head as I write, with regular applause pulling my attention from the somber subject matter.

I've been reading Nathan Tankus's newsletter Notes on the Crises. It's an expert take on the plumbing of our financial system and how the volatility in our politics intersects with volatility in our economics. In a recent article, Tankus compared the financial crises in 2008 and 2020 with what's happening today.

It may not feel like a financial crisis, but a few weeks ago Trump's tariffs possibly came within a hairbreadth of taking down the global economic system. Read Paul Krugman's recent interview with Nathan to get a flavor of that analysis.

My newsletter is not an economics newsletter and I'm in no position to evaluate his claims. What caught my attention was Tankus's analysis that the current economic instability can be traced to a singular cause – the "volatility" of President Trump. By that, he is referring to the inability of the markets to predict or understand Trump's economic decisions combined with his power to make those decisions unilaterally.

What interests me is how Congress has worked to make the president the sole point of inflection on financial and political matters. Congress is the place where policymaking decisions are supposed to be made – and by tying its own hands, Congress is increasing political and economic volatility.

In the case of tariffs, the term "Congress" is not precise. These self-limitations are not so much imposed by Congress as the House of Representatives, and that restraint is being imposed through leadership mechanisms on the body.

How House Leadership Prevents Tariff Votes

Tariffs, or taxes on goods brought into the US, are set by laws enacted by Congress. Congress, in turn, gave the Executive Branch the authority to impose tariffs when certain circumstances are met. One provision, the one used by Trump, allows the president to declare an emergency. The original statutory framework allowed the emergency to be terminated by Trump or by a joint resolution of Congress, i.e., a vote by the two chambers.

That framework was undermined by the Supreme Court, which removed Congress's power to end the declaration of emergency by a joint resolution and instead requires the passage of a law. (This was part of a larger jurisprudential effort to undermine Congress and strengthen the White House.) Under the new framework, the president must agree to the joint resolution passed by Congress, or Congress must override his veto.

This legislative framework is still in place, and it provides for expedited consideration of a vote to end the declaration of emergency. Under expedited consideration, any member can introduce a resolution to terminate the declaration of emergency, the resolution is referred to the committee of jurisdiction, the committee must report the resolution within 15 days, and a final floor vote must occur 3 days after that. Should the resolution pass one chamber, a similar process is required in the second chamber. It's not lightning fast, but it's fast enough to force a meaningful debate and timely vote.

Passage of a resolution by either chamber, or by both chambers, would put significant political pressure on the president even when he retains the capability to veto the measure. It also puts members on record on tariffs, which according to Gallup, are widely unpopular. 70% of Americans believe they will cause economic disruptions in the short term, 62% think they will do so in the long term, and most Americans have little tolerance for economic disruptions.

Special Rules & the Rules Committee: House Leadership's Gatekeeping Tool

Speaker Johnson, to forestall a vote on tariffs, jammed a provision into the rules that govern the House to prevent any member from using expedited voting procedures. This means that he can retain control over whether members vote on tariffs, and on what terms.

What's notable is the way he prevented members from forcing a vote on tariffs. It was designed to provide political cover for their votes and also to force members to acquiesce to this limitation on their powers.

As a general rule, legislation comes to the floor for a vote in two ways. In the first way, the majority and minority leaders agree to consider legislation on the floor "under suspension," which means the legislation needs a 2/3 vote to pass the House.

In the second way, the majority uses its control over the Rules Committee to favorably report a "special rule" that governs the consideration of a bill or set of bills on the floor. The House majority then adopts the rule, which controls the terms of debate. This is how House leadership controls what happens on the floor and tees up passage of partisan bills and nonpartisan bills under terms favorable to the majority. There are other ways to get to the floor, such as expedited consideration for tariffs, which is what Johnson is choking off.

Special rules dictate which amendments can be offered, the order of consideration, and the duration of debate. But these rules can go even further. Leadership can jam non-germane provisions into special rules. For example, they can change the House rules, change how rules are interpreted, and even deem other legislation to be passed by the chamber. Members of the House may not even know this is happening, or feel they have little meaningful choice on how they vote.

The way this works is the House Rules Committee favorably reports a resolution that contains all these fancy provisions. As the Rules Committee membership is chosen by the Speaker and Minority Leader, the Rules Committee members almost always does what leadership says. House rules privilege (i.e. prioritize) legislation reported by the Rules Committee, so their resolution can be brought up by any time. And thus leadership brings up the resolution and the chamber adopts it.

The Political Value of Special Rules

The thing is, Rules Committee resolutions are wonky, obscure, and complicated. It's not the kind of thing you can explain in a 30 second ad. So, if a Rules Committee resolution sets in motion a vote on a popular bill, and the resolution includes something that's controversial, that bill still will sail through.

In fact, leadership punishes members who vote against rules resolutions. It's okay to defect on the underlying bill, but you are in deep trouble if you vote against the rules resolution. This is viewed by leadership as an affront to their power. These rules resolutions are a major mechanism by which leadership exercises power. But because the whole process is Rube Goldbergian, it's really, really hard to explain.

Not just that, you're not going to see newspapers devoting many column inches to the work of the Rules Committee. They should. The procedures under which votes happen matter as much, and sometimes more, than the votes on the underlying legislation.

How Speaker Johnson Quietly Changed the Rules — Twice

Speaker Johnson included a tricky provision in one of these special rules to prevent a debate and vote on anti-tariff legislation. His provision does not apparently turn off the expedited consideration authority. Instead, it makes time stand still.

Remember how committees have up to 15 days before they must report a resolution to end the tariffs? His provision said that the House won't count calendar days. And if you're not counting elapsed days, there's no trigger by which the legislation to repeal tariffs must be reported by committee. Read the text yourself, from H. Res. 313, enacted on April 9th.

Sec. 2. Each day during the period from April 9, 2025, through September 30, 2025, shall not constitute a calendar day for purposes of section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622) with respect to a joint resolution terminating a national emergency declared by the President on April 2, 2025.

This is a trick so nice, Speaker Johnson pulled it twice. H. Res. 211, which is a resolution that governs House floor consideration of a bunch of resolutions to repeal government regulations, tucked this provision at the end of a resolution back in March.

Sec. 4. Each day for the remainder of the first session of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day for purposes of section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622) with respect to a joint resolution terminating a national emergency declared by the President on February 1, 2025.

How the Senate Acted and the House Was Silenced

It just happens that the Senate – the Senate! – managed to pass S.J. Res. 37, a joint resolution to end the use of emergency tariffs on Canada. That's the emergency declaration made by the president on February 1. But, alas, Speaker Johnson has disarmed the mechanism to force a vote in the House.

To make a long and excessively complicated story short: when Congress gave the president the authority to declare emergencies and impose tariffs, the House Speaker pushed legislation through an unrelated Rules Committee resolution to ensure that efforts to undo the emergency wouldn't even come up for a straight up-or-down vote. Why? Presumably because the House would join the Senate and vote down the tariffs, placing the Congress and the White House at opposite ends of an issue.

This doesn't just matter for politics, but for the world's economy. The problem with Trump's tariffs isn't necessarily the policy decisions that they embody — although there are many reasons to be concerned — but rather that Trump keeps changing his positions. He first imposed tariffs on one country, and then lifted, and then increased, and then expanded, and then suspended. Businesses and governments cannot predict what will happen next.

Johnson Short Circuited the Circuit Breaker

Trump's volatility on tariffs is placing extraordinary stress on our global economic system. The Legislative branch could create predictability by tightening the discretion it has given the president. It could signal that the president does not have carte blanche to do anything. That is, in fact, their jobs.

But Speaker Johnson has made it very difficult for Congress to do so, thereby increasing the likelihood of systemic economic collapse. Trump's volatility is what's creating undue economic stress. Speaker Johnson has made sure that a majority of the House of Representatives cannot rein him in. Now, only Speaker Johnson and his allies could tee up a tariffs vote. Through his agenda setting authority, Speaker Johnson is making sure a minority of the House can defy the (possible) desires of a majority.

But Wait, There's More to Power Concentration in House Leadership

There are other examples of Speaker Johnson using the House Rules or Rules Committee resolutions to neuter majorities in the House. We saw it with the recent effort to obviate resolutions of inquiry. We saw it with the rules change where only members of the majority could offer a privileged resolution to remove the Speaker. We also saw it with the rules package provision that previously allowed seven members of the House Oversight Committee to demand information from the Executive branch, but now requires agreement of the Chair.

I've previously written about what was included in the Rules package and the negative consequences of concentrating power in one person. Speaker Johnson didn't invent these maneuvers – far from it. There's plenty of examples of speakers from both parties playing these kinds of games – and on matters of great importance, including war and peace.

Tyranny of The Minority

These maneuverings could be viewed as leaders trying to protect their members from taking tough votes. Another way of viewing it, however, is that they are examples of leaders using their agenda-setting ability to allow the preferences of the majority to be subordinated to the minority. This super speaker model historically has resulted in a rank-and-fine revolt against the centralization of power.

In the Trump administration, the Speaker using his power to thwart the will of the chamber and to be in lock step with the White House this is particularly dangerous because the Trump administration has even less respect for Congress's policymaking role than his predecessors. The alignment of party interests between the leaders of the Executive and Legislative branches has come to entirely supplant the Constitutional framework that our framers preferred: where the Executive and Legislative branches jealously protect their institutional powers.

The result is tyranny of the minority. In the case of tariffs, economic instability with global ramifications. The big question is: when disaster strikes, what do we do then?