Resolutions of Inquiry in the House
March 31, 2025
A resolution of inquiry is a simple House resolution (H.Res.) making a direct request or demand of the
President and/or the head of an executive department to provide to the House specific factual information
in the Administration’s possession.
Under clause 7 of House Rule XIII, such resolutions, if properly drafted, are given a special parliamentary
status. If the committee to which such a resolution is referred has not reported the measure back to the
House within 14 legislative days after its introduction, a privileged and non-debatable motion to discharge
the committee of further consideration of the resolution becomes available. If the House agrees to the
privileged motion to discharge, the resolution of inquiry would be taken out of committee and become
available for floor consideration.
If the committee of referral reports a resolution of inquiry within the 14-legislative-day time frame,
however—regardless of whether the report is favorable, adverse, or without recommendation—the
privileged resolution can be called up on the floor only by a Member who has been authorized by the
reporting committee to do so. In other words, by reporting a resolution of inquiry, a committee can
preclude the privileged motion to discharge and preserve to itself the decision of whether to call up the
resolution on the floor. As such, in recent practice, a House committee will virtually always mark up and
report a resolution of inquiry that has been referred to it—even one it opposes—in order to retain control
of the measure and prevent supporters from triggering floor votes on questions related to considering it.
While resolutions of inquiry have been used since the earliest Congresses to seek information from the
executive branch, the basic form of the present House rule was adopted in 1879. The rule was last
amended in 1983 to lengthen the time period for a committee to report from one week to 14 legislative
days. In the recent past, when the House had expected to hold pro forma sessions for extended periods of
time (for example, during the traditional August recess), it adopted an order dictating that those pro forma
days would not count against the 14-day period the committee has to report a resolution of inquiry. A
similar order was in place for most of the 117
th
Congress (2021-2022) in response to the COVID-19
pandemic. A provision pausing the 14-day count during “district work periods” declared by the Speaker
was made part of the standing rules of the House in the 119
th
Congress (2025-2026).
In order to be privileged, a House resolution of inquiry:
• must be directed to the President or the head of a Cabinet-level executive department (not
to a subordinate official such as the Internal Revenue Service commissioner or the
director of the Central Intelligence Agency),
