George W. Norris
Nebraska insurgent whose rules revolt tamed the speakership and whose bills built the TVA.
Overview
A Republican district judge, Norris entered the House in 1903 and wrote the 1910 resolution that removed the Speaker from the Rules Committee, opening the committee system. Moving to the Senate in 1913, he served until 1943, opposing US entry into World War I as an agricultural populist, sponsoring the Tennessee Valley Authority Act of 1933, the Twentieth Amendment ending lame-duck sessions, and Nebraska's unique one-house unicameral legislature. Never a party man, he backed La Follette in 1924, Hoover in 1932 as an independent Republican, and FDR's New Deal, until Nebraska voters retired him in 1942.
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