yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

What kind of levers does the Speaker have? | US Government and Civics | Khan Academy


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

What kind of levers does the Speaker have in relation to the other House representatives?

The Speaker has all kinds of levers, both formal and informal. In fact, a lot of them are informal. The Speaker can name a lot of people to the committees, particularly to the, quote, "rules committee" in the House.

And what does the rules committee do? The rules committee sets the rules for what's debated and what comes onto the floor. Through controlling the rules committee, you can control what kinds of amendments come up, how much debate there is for unpopular ideas, and you can help get legislation through by managing the rules under which it's debated.

There's a famous instance in which Dennis Hastert, who was Speaker of the House under George W. Bush, held open a vote on Medicare Part D. This was adding prescription drugs to the Medicare plan. Holding open a vote means you set a certain time for the number of votes that come in and, at the end of that time, you count the votes. Are they in? Does it pass?

Well, it wasn't passing. Hastert let the vote stay open while he went around and strong-armed individual members of the Republican side. He was a Republican Speaker. He strong-armed them, said, "You really got to vote for this," and finally got enough votes. Just when it went over the threshold, boom! He closed the window and said, "The vote's over," and it passed.

What did he do to get those extra votes? Well, you can give people plum committee assignments. You can help their legislation get to the floor that maybe wasn't getting there fast enough. Another power you have is you can go raise money for them or get the people you know on the political side to make their run for re-election easier.

So, there are lots of gifts you can give to your members or things you can withhold from them to make them do what you want.

More Articles

View All
Transforming exponential graphs (example 2) | Mathematics III | High School Math | Khan Academy
We’re told the graph of y equals 2 to the x is shown below. So that’s the graph; it’s an exponential function. Which of the following is the graph of y is equal to negative 1 times 2 to the x plus 3 plus 4? They give us 4 choices down here, and before we …
Warren Buffett: When to Sell a Stock
The question I want to answer in this video is probably the single most difficult question in all of investing: When is the perfect time to sell a stock? Countless books have been written and videos have been made on when the right time to buy a stock is.…
Inflection points (graphical) | AP Calculus AB | Khan Academy
We’re told let G be a differentiable function defined over the closed interval from 4 to 4. The graph of G is given right over here, given below. How many inflection points does the graph of G have? So let’s just remind ourselves what are inflection poin…
Submarine Diving in Deep-Sea Galápagos | Best Job Ever
Today’s office includes a submarine in the middle of the Galapagos. I would dare say that I have one of the coolest jobs in the world. Really, one animal that swims like that! I’m in the Galapagos with the National Geographic Pristine Seas team. We’re go…
See Why Sochi Is One of Russia's Best Vacation Spots | National Geographic
[Music] There have been a lot of problems coming out of Sochi. There’s con anxiety among, it’s still a ghost town. Stories such as these have dominated American media, but to me, the portrait seemed incomplete, and I wondered if there was another perspect…
Examples recognizing transformations
What we’re going to do in this video is get some practice identifying some transformations. The transformations we’re going to look at are things like rotations, where you are spinning something around a point. We’re going to look at translations, where y…