Dem
47
GOP
53
The House has an until-now fairly obscure rule called the discharge petition. If a majority of the House signs one for a certain bill tied up in a committee, that forces the bill out of the committee onto the floor for a vote of the full House. Using it is a clear rebuke to the speaker, who normally controls the flow of legislation. In this session of Congress, members are using discharge petitions like never before. It has now been used eight times in this session of Congress. It was also used successfully twice in 2024. This represents 20% of all successful discharge petitions in the past 90 years, going back to when the rule was created. This high number shows how weak Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is.
The most recent successful discharge petition got its 218th signature last Wednesday. It will force a vote on a law that would speed up unionization negotiations. It was signed by 211 of the 212 Democrats and seven Republicans. Johnson is not a big fan of unions and would have preferred for this bill to die in committee.
Discharge petitions have a mixed record, other than embarrassing the speaker 100% of the time. Often they pass the House because it would be odd for 218 members to sign up to force it out of committee and then have some of them vote against it. If a member does not like some bill, usually he or she is content to have it die in committee. However, many of them die in the Senate. The Senate also has a discharge rule, but to get a bill out of committee, a senator must introduce a motion to free the bill. That motion can be filibustered, so successful discharges are very rare in the Senate. One recent example of a House discharge petition that made it all the way to a law is the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
One recent discharge petition that failed is Rep. Anna Paulina Luna's (R-FL) that would have allowed limited proxy voting for members with newborn children. When the House rules were written, no one was thinking that there could be pregnant members who could give birth when the House was in session and who were in no condition to come to the floor of the House to vote. Johnson has no interest in changing the rules, so Luna tried to make an end run around him. She had a baby in August 2023 and she wanted to vote on bills after her son was born but before she could get back to work. The Freedom Caucus opposed the petition and it didn't get 218 signatures. Luna responded by resigning from the Freedom Caucus. Proxy voting is still not allowed. (V)