The strict seniority system for House committees lasted, with some changes, until Republicans finally won a majority in the chamber in 1994. Led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Georgia Republican and longtime architect of an eventual GOP breakthrough win, Republican rank-and-file lawmakers were determined to instill regular turnover into top committee spots.

Shortly before the first House Republican majority in 40 years took office on Jan. 3, 1995, current and incoming GOP lawmakers adopted a House Republican Conference rule limiting lawmakers to six years atop a committee. That applied whether the House member was chairman or the top minority party position, which is known in congressional parlance as a ranking member.

And while House Republicans’ fealty to principles such as fiscal discipline over the past three decades is highly debatable, they’ve stuck to their committee top-spot term limits rule. Three decades in, there are enough political data points to assess whether the committee term limits have worked effectively. If the rule deserves a (slightly belated) “happy birthday,” or for critics, an aspirational wish of “good riddance.”

Steady churn at the top of House committees

The committee term limits rule adopted by House Republicans after the 1994 Republican Revolution was a long time coming. It was part of broader changes in how Congress operates, even with Democrats running the House for 40 straight years.

One change was a shift in power from House and Senate committee chairs to party leaders, according to a 2020 Congressional Research Service report.

“Numerous reform-oriented lawmakers won election to Congress (1958 for the Senate and 1974 for the House are classic examples). Dissatisfied with a seniority system that elevated lawmakers to positions of power regardless of their abilities or policy views, committee chairs, starting in the 1970s, became subject to secret ballot election by their party colleagues. Several House chairs were ousted from their chairmanships,” noted the CRS report.

“House and Senate Republicans also imposed six-year term limits on their committee leaders, in part to ensure that committee chairs, unlike the seniority leaders of old, could not accumulate independent power to challenge their top party leaders,” added the report.

Still, once in place starting in early 1995, House committee term limits never quite worked as planned. When the first batch of committee chairmen churn was set to take place in early 2001, several just took over other committees where they had seniority and infuriated less senior colleagues who had patiently waited their turns.

To be sure, committee slot term limits did a relatively steady turnover, a major change from the old House Democratic majorities. Then-Rep. Bill Archer, a Texas Republican, became chairman of the powerful tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee in early 1995. He gave up the post six years later and retired from Congress after 30 years.

Archer’s successor as Ways and Means Committee chairman, then-Rep. Bill Thomas, a California Republican, yielded the gavel six years later. He retired from a 28-year House career after wielding power in that influential position.

For some lawmakers, though, being forced from a prominent top committee post wasn’t enough to nudge them into retirement. Departures usually came through mortality or scandal.

Longtime Rep. Bill Young, a Florida Republican, chaired the House Appropriations Committee from 1999 to 2005, giving him significant sway over details of federal spending. But Young, having first been elected to the House in 1970, representing a St. Petersburg-area seat, stayed in Congress. In 2013, Young, after suffering a broken hip and fractured pelvis, reluctantly announced his retirement after the 2014 election cycle. He died less than two weeks later, in October 2013, at age 82.

A longtime House colleague, then-Rep. Joe Barton, also stuck around Congress for several years after ceding his committee gavel. The Texas Republican, first elected in 1984, diligently worked his way up to be chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which has jurisdiction over a large menu of public policy matters, such as telecommunications, food and drug safety, environmental quality, and much more.

Barton helmed the committee for a single, two-year term before Democrats won a House majority in 2006. He was the ranking member over the next four years. When Barton’s Energy and Commerce top Republican spot time was done after the 2010 elections, he stayed in Congress, representing a Fort Worth-area district. Barton only called it a congressional career ahead of the 2018 elections when explicit photos of him surfaced online —which the congressman, separated from his wife, had sent to another woman he was seeing. Barton acknowledged the pictures’ authenticity, apologized to his constituents, and ended his political career, voluntarily or otherwise.

Downsides of committee term limits

Though committee term limits have produced a steady churn of Republican lawmakers in and out of top panel spots, recent years have brought reconsideration about the rules’ wisdom. The regular changes have upended the policymaking process in unhealthy ways, according to a 2019 Congressional Institute report.

“Developing expertise and influence in the House takes time. It is a pity for the House to lose that expertise and clout — two important elements that allow for legislation to pass. Skilled committee and subcommittee Chairmen are assets to Congress and the country, so Republicans would do well to minimize the push to retirement,” the report said.

Current House Republican term limit rules should be relaxed, the Congressional Institute report added.

“The existing rule should be modified so that in years when the party in the minority — when the Ranking Member is not an actual Chair — should not count against the six years. Being Ranking Member affords a congressman influence, particularly within their own party, but the short-term legislative benefits can be minimal,” it continued.

The report noted the realities of being in the House minority — there is little to no real power, no matter how august a title like “ranking member” might sound.

“Since Chairmen control their committee’s agenda, they must be willing to work with the Ranking Members to advance any minority goals,” the report said. “For committees that traditionally tend to be more bipartisan, that might be doable, but good luck with the others. In no case is a ranking membership equivalent to a chairmanship, so they should not be treated like that in the House GOP rules.”

Contrast to House Democrats

While Republicans have steadfastly stuck to committee top-spot term limits over 30 years, House Democrats have gone the opposite way, leading to logjams at the top of panels reminiscent of Johnson’s early congressional days.

Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) has led Democrats on the House Small Business Committee since 1998, while House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) has held his party’s top spot on that panel since 2005. Both chaired their respective committees at various times when Democrats held the majority, then returned to the top minority party position.

House Democrats have taken some small and a couple of medium-sized steps to curtail the seniority system that keeps these kinds of long-term committee roster spots in place. In January, at the start of the 119th Congress, three veteran Democratic House members stepped down from or were defeated for reelection in their ranking member posts — Reps. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Jerry Nadler (D-NY), and David Scott (D-GA).

The moves came amid deep Democratic concerns about an emerging gerontocracy. Former President Joe Biden, after all, bowed out of his 2024 reelection bid at age 82 after a desultory debate performance. Not that Biden’s debate opponent, now-President Donald Trump, was and is exactly a spring chicken at age 78.

UK’S STARMER SAYS EUROPE AT CROSSROADS IN HISTORY AS WORLD LEADERS DISCUSS ENDING WAR IN UKRAINE

Younger and newer House Democrats have long expressed discontent about the party’s lack of term limits for its top officials on committees. They have argued that the current system provides few opportunities for advancement and promotion.

If and when Democrats win back a majority in the House — they’re only a handful of seats away currently — they’ll likely confront calls from younger lawmakers to impose committee head term limits the way Republicans have for 30 years. This will eventually make for a set of House rules that would be almost unrecognizable to a young, pre-presidential Johnson more than 80 years ago.