Congressional Glossary
What is a motion to recommit?
A motion to recommit asks the House to send a bill back to its committee. It is offered after debate ends and before the vote on final passage, and House rules give preference in offering it to a member opposed to the bill.
In one sentence
A motion to recommit asks the House to send a bill back to its committee. It is offered after debate ends and before the vote on final passage, and House rules give preference in offering it to a member opposed to the bill.
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. That preference rule is in clause 2 of House Rule XIX; the House's own description of the legislative process is at 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, which made it function as a final amendment vote. 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.
How to read one in the roll-call record
A motion to recommit and the vote on passage are two different questions about the same bill, and the Clerk records them as separate roll calls with the same measure named on each. A tally on a motion to recommit is therefore not a tally on the bill: rejecting the motion leaves the bill before the House, and agreeing to it returns the bill to committee. On this site, the question decided is listed beside every roll call, and a bill's page counts only a vote on passage as passage.
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, which in practice reserves it for the minority party.
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.
No. They are separate questions. A motion to recommit that fails leaves the bill before the House; whether the bill then passed is shown by the roll call on passage, which the Clerk records separately.