Congressional Glossary
What is a motion to recommit?
A motion to recommit is the House minority's last chance to derail a bill, offered after debate ends and just before the vote on final passage. If it carries, the bill goes back to committee.
In one sentence
A motion to recommit is the House minority's last chance to derail a bill, offered after debate ends and just before the vote on final passage. If it carries, the bill goes back to committee.
Votes needed: A simple majority of the House
What a motion to recommit is
Just before the House votes on final passage, one motion stands in the way: the motion to recommit, which would send the bill back to its committee. House rules give preference in offering it to a member opposed to the bill, which in practice means the minority party. It is often described as the minority's one guaranteed moment in a process the majority otherwise controls (house.gov).
With instructions, and without
For decades the motion usually came "with instructions," directing the committee to report the bill back at once with a specified amendment. That made it a disguised final amendment vote and a reliable source of ambush politics, since the amendment was drafted to be painful to vote against. The House changed its rules in 2021 to eliminate instructions. Today's motion to recommit is a straight motion: adopt it and the bill returns to committee, which usually means the bill is dead.
What actually happens
Almost always, the motion fails on party lines and the House proceeds immediately to final passage. In the roll-call record, a recommit vote typically appears moments before the passage vote on the same bill, and the two tallies tend to mirror each other. For a reader of this site's roll calls, the pattern is easy to spot: a failed recommit vote followed within minutes by passage of the same measure. When a motion to recommit succeeds, which is rare, it signals that the majority has lost control of its own floor, and leadership usually pulls the bill rather than watch it happen twice.
Common questions
A motion offered in the House after debate closes and before final passage that would send the bill back to committee. Preference in offering it goes to a member opposed to the bill, effectively reserving it for the minority party. If adopted, the bill usually never returns.
House rules give priority to a member opposed to the bill, so the minority party controls it. Since a 2021 rules change removed instructions, the motion no longer proposes an amendment; it simply asks the House to return the bill to committee, and it nearly always fails.