EPA /LANDOV CHAPTER 13 Congress LEARNING OBJECTIVES 13-1 Contrast congressional and parliamentary systems. 13-2 Trace the evolution of Congress in American politics. 13-3 Discuss who serves in Congress and what influences their votes. 13-4 Summarize the organization of Congress. 13-5 Explain how a bill becomes a law. 13-6 Discuss possibilities for congressional reform. Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Chapter 13 Congress If you are like most Americans, you trust the Supreme Court, respect the presidency (whether or not you like the president), and dislike Congress (even if you like your own representative and senators). Congress is the most unpopular branch of government. But it is also the most important one. You cannot understand the national government without first understanding Congress. Glance at the Constitution and you will see why Congress is so important: the first four and a half pages are about Congress, while the presidency gets only a page and a half and the Supreme Court about three-quarters of a page. To the Framers of the Constitution, the bicameral (two-chamber) Congress was “the first branch.” They expected Congress to wield most of the national government’s powers, including its most important ones like the “power of the purse” (encompassing taxation and spending decisions) and the ultimate authority to declare war. They understood Congress as essential to sustaining federalism (guaranteeing two senators to each state without regard to state population) and maintaining the separation of powers (ensuring that no lawmaker would be allowed to serve in either of the other two branches while in Congress). They also viewed Congress as the linchpin of the system of checks and balances, constitutionally empowered as it was both to override presidential vetoes and to determine the structure and the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court. Most contemporary Americans and many experts, however, think of Congress not as the first branch but as “the broken branch,” unable to address the nation’s most pressing domestic, economic, and international problems in an effective way; unduly responsive to powerful organized special interests; awash in nonstop campaign fundraising and other activities that many believe border on political corruption; and unlikely to fix itself through real reforms.1 Consistent with this broken branch view, in recent decades, less than one-third of Americans typically approve of Congress. In the 2000s, ratings in the 20s or 30s were the norm. Since mid-2011, public approval of Congress has dropped into the teens (rising just above 20 percent briefly in December 2012), and after the government shutdown in October 2013, it fell below 10 percent. As of the summer of 2015, Congress’s approval was around 17 percent.2 Many academic analysts and veteran Washington journalists echo the popular discontent with Congress as the broken branch, but the experts focus more on two things, the first a paradox and the second a puzzle. The paradox is that most Americans consistently disapprove of Congress yet routinely reelect their own members to serve in it. In political scientist Richard F. Fenno’s famous 297 phrase, if “Congress partisan polarization is the broken branch A vote in which a majority then how come we love of Democratic legislators our congressmen so opposes a majority of much more than our Republican legislators. Congress?”3 Despite public approval ratings that almost never reach as high as half, since 1980 over 90 percent of all congressional incumbents who have sought reelection have won it, most by comfortable margins. Even in elections in which “anti-incumbent” public sentiment seems rife and voters effect a change in party control of one or both chambers of Congress, incumbents prevail and dominate the institution. For example, in the 2010 midterm elections, Democrats suffered historic losses in the House, but most Democratic and Republican incumbents alike who sought reelection won it. In the 112th Congress that began in 2011, 80 percent of House members, and 70 percent of Senators, were incumbents. Likewise, in 2012, despite gains by Democrats in both chambers, about 90 percent of House incumbents and 91 percent of Senate incumbents that sought reelection won it. In 2014, well over 90 percent of House incumbents won reelection, but the percentage of Senate incumbents who won reelection dropped to just above 80 percent, which was not surprising, given that party control of the chamber changed. Even though they have been fussing over it for several decades now, political scientists are still not sure how to answer Fenno’s question and resolve the paradox. The puzzle is why the post-1970 Congress has become even more polarized by partisanship and divided by ideology, and whether this development reflects everwidening political cleavages among average Americans or instead constitutes a disconnect between the people and their representatives on Capitol Hill. THEN During 1890–1910, about two-thirds of all votes in Congress evoked a party split, and in several sessions more than half the roll calls found about 90 percent of each party’s members opposing the other party.4 But, during the 1970s, such partisan polarization in Congress was very much the exception to the rule. Well into the 1960s, Congress commonly passed major legislation on most issues on a bipartisan basis, and there were liberal members and conservative members in leadership positions in both parties and in both chambers. Such liberal and conservative voting blocs as existed typically crossed party lines, like the mid-20th-century conservative bloc featuring Republicans and Southern Democrats. Leaders in Congress in each party were Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 298 Chapter 13 Congress usually veteran politicians interested mainly in winning elections, dispensing patronage, obtaining tangible benefits for their own districts or states and constituents, and keeping institutional power and perks. Even members with substantial seniority did not get the most coveted committee chairmanships unless they were disposed to practice legislative politics as the art of the possible and the art of the deal. This meant forging interparty coalitions and approaching interbranch (legislative–executive) relations in ways calculated to result ultimately in bipartisan bargains and compromises, and doing so even on controversial issues and even when congressional leaders and the president were not all in the same party. NOW When the 91st Congress ended in 1970, the more liberal half of the House had 29 Republicans and the more conservative half of the House had 59 Democrats.5 By the time the 105th Congress ended in 1998, the more liberal half of the House had only 10 Republicans while the more conservative half of the House had zero Democrats.6 (Zero!) In the 2000s, liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats became virtually extinct in both the House and the Senate. For example, in 2010, the major health care reform bill (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) proposed by Democrats passed in Congress without a single Republican voting for it. In 2011, the far-reaching Fiscal Year 2012 budget plan (cutting trillions of dollars in spending over the next decade) drafted by Republicans passed in the House without a single Democratic member of the House voting for it. The 112th Congress began in January 2011, and during its first quarter-year a post-1945 record high of about 80 percent of all roll-call votes in the House pitted a majority of Democrats against a majority of Republicans.7 Or consider: In the 93rd Congress that began in 1973, the GOP’s House “conservative caucus” (the Republican Study Committee) claimed just four of the chamber’s 192 Republican House members (or about 2 percent); but, four decades later, in the 113th Congress that began in 2013, it claimed 171 of the 233 Republican members of the House (or about 74 percent).8 As we discuss in more detail later in this chapter, some scholars insist that the “disappearing center” in Congress reflects partisan and ideological divisions among average Americans,9 while other scholars seem equally sure that we are instead witnessing a “disconnect” between a still nonideological and politically centrist mass public and its representatives on Capitol Hill.10 Whichever side is more right, three things remain clear. HOW THINGS WORK The Powers of Congress The powers of Congress are found in Article I, section 8, of the Constitution. To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises To borrow money To regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the states To establish rules for naturalization (i.e., becoming a citizen) and bankruptcy To coin money, set its value, and punish counterfeiting To fix the standard of weights and measures To establish a post office and post roads To issue patents and copyrights to inventors and authors To create courts inferior to (below) the Supreme Court To define and punish piracies, felonies on the high seas, and crimes against the law of nations To declare war To raise and support an army and navy and make rules for their governance To provide for a militia (reserving to the states the right to appoint militia officers and to train the militia under congressional rules) To exercise exclusive legislative powers over the seat of government (the District of Columbia) and other places purchased to be federal facilities (forts, arsenals, dockyards, and “other needful buildings”) To “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States.” (Note: This “necessary and proper,” or “elastic,” clause has been generously interpreted by the Supreme Court, as explained in Chapter 16.) Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 13-1 Congress Versus Parliament First, Congress has never perfectly embodied the Founders’ fondest hopes for the first branch, not when the First Congress met in 1789–1791 (and wrangled endlessly over the Bill of Rights); not during the decades before, during, and just after the Civil War; not during the late 19th century through 1970; and certainly not since. James Madison envisioned members of Congress as “proper guardians of the public weal,” public-spirited representatives of the people who would govern by intelligently mediating and dispassionately resolving conflicts among and between the large republic’s diverse and competing financial, religious, and other interests.11 Representatives or senators who might instead fan partisan passions, stir civic discord while refusing all compromises, or otherwise fuel rather than frustrate “factions” that trample citizens’ rights or toy with the public’s true needs, were disparaged by Madison as selfish, unenlightened, or “theoretic politicians” (what today we might call “extremists,” “hyper-partisans,” or “ideologues”).12 At least if judged by the Founders’ highest aspirations for the first branch and its members, Congress has always been something of a broken branch. Second, Congress is now home to ideologically distinct political parties that seem more unified than ever with respect to how their respective members vote, but the body still does not come close to matching the neartotal party unity that has been typical in the national legislatures of the United Kingdom and other parliamentary democracies. Third, Madison and the other Framers expressly rejected a parliamentary system like Great Britain’s in favor of a system featuring both a separation of powers and checks and balances. They understood the fundamental differences between a “congress” and a “parliament,” and so must every present-day student who hopes to really understand the U.S. Congress. 13-1 Congress Versus Parliament The United States (along with many Latin American nations) has a congress; the United Kingdom (along with most Western European nations) has a parliament. A hint as to the difference between the two kinds of legislatures can be found in the original meanings of the words. Congress derives from a Latin term that means “a coming together,” a meeting, as of representatives from various places. Parliament comes from a French word, parler, which means “to talk.” There is of course plenty of talking—some critics say there is nothing but talking—in the U.S. Congress, and certainly members of a parliament represent to a degree their local districts. But the differences implied by the 299 names of the lawmaking groups are real ones, with profound significance for how laws are made and how the government is run. These differences affect two important aspects of lawmaking bodies: how one becomes a member and what one does as a member. Ordinarily, a person becomes a member of a parliament (such as the British House of Commons) by persuading a political party to put his or her name on the ballot. Though usually a local party committee selects a person to be its candidate, that committee often takes suggestions from national party headquarters. The local group selects as its candidate someone willing to support the national party program and leadership. In the election, voters in the district choose not between two or three personalities running for office, but between two or three national parties. By contrast, a person becomes a candidate for representative or senator in the U.S. Congress by running in a primary election. Except in a very few places, political parties exercise little control over the choice of who is nominated to run for congressional office. (This is the case even though the person who wins the primary will describe him- or herself in the general election as a Democrat or a Republican.) Voters select candidates in the primaries because of their personalities, positions on issues, or overall reputation. Even in the general election, where the party label affects who votes for whom, many citizens vote for the person, not for the party. As a result of these different systems, a parliament tends to be made up of people loyal to the national party leadership who meet to debate and vote on party issues. A congress, on the other hand, tends to be made up of people who think of themselves as independent representatives of their districts or states and who, while willing to support their party on many matters, expect to vote as their (or their constituents’) beliefs and interests require. Once they are in the legislature, members of a parliament discover they can make only one important decision—whether or not to support the government. The government in a parliamentary system such as that of the United Kingdom consists of a prime minister and various cabinet officers selected from the party that has the most seats in parliament. As long as the members of that party vote together, that government will remain in power (until the next election). Should members of a party in power in parliament decide to vote against their leaders, the leaders lose office, and a new government must be formed. With so much at stake, the leaders of a party in parliament have a powerful incentive to keep their followers in line. They insist that all members of the party vote together on almost all issues. If someone refuses, the penalty is often drastic: The party does not renominate the offending member in the next election. Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Chapter 13 Congress work of a congress is representation and action, most of which takes place in committees. What this means in practical terms to the typical legislator is easy to see. Since members of the British House of Commons have little independent power, they get rather little in return. They are poorly paid, may have no offices of their own and virtually no staff, are allowed only small sums to buy stationery, and can make a few free local telephone calls. Each is given a desk, a filing cabinet, and a telephone, but not always in the same place. By contrast, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, even a junior one, has power and is rewarded accordingly. For example, in 2015, each member earned a substantial base salary ($174,000) plus generous health care and retirement benefits, and was entitled to a large office (or “clerk-hire”) allowance, to pay for about two dozen staffers. (Each chamber’s majority and minority leaders earned $193,400 a year, and the Speaker of the House earned $223,500.) Each member also received individual allowances for travel, computer services, and the like. In addition, each member could mail newsletters and certain other documents to constituents for free using the “franking privilege.” Senators, and representatives with seniority, received even larger benefits. Each senator is entitled to a generous office budget and legislative assistance allowance and is free to hire as many staff members as he or she wishes with the money. These examples are not given to suggest that members of Congress are over-rewarded, but only that their importance as individuals in our political system can be inferred from the resources they command. AP Photo Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Members of the U.S. Congress do not select the head of the executive branch of government—that is done by the voters when they choose a president. Far from making members of Congress less powerful, this makes them more powerful. Representatives and senators can vote on proposed laws without worrying that their votes will cause the government to collapse and without fearing that a failure to support their party will lead to their removal from the ballot in the next election. Congress has independent powers, defined by the Constitution, that it can exercise without regard to presidential preferences. Political parties do not control nominations for office, and thus they cannot discipline members of Congress who fail to support the party leadership. Because Congress is constitutionally independent of the president, and because its members are not tightly disciplined by a party leadership, individual members of Congress are free to express their views and vote as they wish. They are also free to become involved in the most minute details of lawmaking, budget making, and supervision of the administration of laws. They do this through an elaborate set of committees and subcommittees. A real parliament, such as that in Britain, is an assembly of party representatives who choose a government and discuss major national issues. The principal daily work of a parliament is debate. A congress, such as that in the United States, is a meeting place of the representatives of local constituencies—districts and states. Members of the U.S. Congress can initiate, modify, approve, or reject laws, and they share with the president supervision of the administrative agencies of the government. The principal Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division[LC-DIG-hec-15306] 300 Three powerful Speakers of the House: Thomas B. Reed (1889–1891, 1895–1899) (left), Joseph G. Cannon (1903–1911) (center), and Sam Rayburn (1941–1947, 1949–1953, 1955–1961) (right). Reed put an end to a filibuster in the House by refusing to allow dilatory motions and by counting as “present”—for purposes of a quorum—members in the House even though they were not voting. Cannon further enlarged the Speaker’s power by refusing to recognize members who wished to speak without Cannon’s approval and by increasing the power of the Rules Committee, over which he presided. Cannon was stripped of much of his power in 1910. Rayburn’s influence rested more on his ability to persuade than on his formal powers. Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 13-2 The Evolution of Congress Because the United States has a congress made up of people chosen to represent their states and districts, rather than a parliament made up to represent competing political parties, no one should be surprised to learn that members of the U.S. Congress are more concerned with their own constituencies and careers than with the interests of any organized party or program of action. And since Congress does not choose the president, members of Congress know that worrying about the voters they represent is much more important than worrying about whether the president succeeds with his programs. These two factors taken together mean that Congress tends to be a decentralized institution, with each member more interested in his or her own views and those of his or her voters than with the programs proposed by the president. Indeed, Congress was designed by the Founders in ways that almost inevitably make it unpopular with voters. Americans want government to take action, follow a clear course of action, and respond to strong leaders. Americans dislike political arguments, the activities of special-interest groups, and the endless pulling and hauling that often precede any congressional decision. But the people who feel this way are deeply divided about what government should do: Be liberal? Be conservative? Spend money? Cut taxes? Support abortions? Stop abortions? Since they are divided, and since members of Congress must worry about how voters feel, it is inevitable that on controversial issues Congress will engage in endless arguments, worry about what interest groups (who represent different groups of voters) think, and work out compromise decisions. When it does those things, however, many people feel let down and say they have a low opinion of Congress. Of course, a member of Congress might explain all these constitutional facts to the people, but not many members are eager to tell their voters that they do not really understand how Congress was created and organized. Instead, they run for reelection by promising voters they will go back to Washington and “clean up that mess.” 13-2 The Evolution of Congress The Framers chose to place legislative powers in the hands of a congress rather than a parliament for philosophical and practical reasons. They did not want to have all powers concentrated in a single governmental institution, even one that was popularly elected, because they feared such a concentration could lead to rule by an oppressive or impassioned majority. At the same time, they knew the states were jealous of their independence and would never consent to a national constitution if it did not protect their interests and strike a reasonable balance between large and small states. Hence, they created a bicameral (twochamber) legislature—with a House of Representatives, 301 elected directly by the bicameral legislature people, and a Senate, A lawmaking body made up consisting of two memof two chambers or parts. bers from each state, chosen by the legislatures of each state. Though “all legislative powers” were vested in Congress, those powers would be shared with the president (who could veto acts of Congress), limited to powers explicitly conferred on the federal government, and, as it turned out, subject to the power of the Supreme Court to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional. For decades, critics of Congress complained that the body cannot plan or act quickly. They are right, but two competing values are at stake: centralization versus decentralization. If Congress acted quickly and decisively as a body, then there would have to be strong central leadership, restrictions on debate, few opportunities for stalling tactics, and minimal committee interference. If, on the other hand, the interests of individual members—and the constituencies they represent—were protected or enhanced, then there would have to be weak leadership, rules allowing for delay and discussion, and many opportunities for committee activity. Though there have been periods of strong central leadership in Congress, the general trend, especially since the mid-20th century, has been toward decentralizing decision making and enhancing the power of the individual member at the expense of the congressional leadership. This decentralization may not have been inevitable. Most American states have constitutional systems quite similar to the federal one, yet in many state legislatures, such as those in New York, Massachusetts, and Indiana, the leadership is quite powerful. In part, the position of these strong state legislative leaders may be the result of the greater strength of political parties in some states than in the nation as a whole. In large measure, however, it is a consequence of permitting state legislative leaders to decide who shall chair what committee and who shall receive what favors. The House of Representatives, though always powerful, often has changed the way in which it is organized and led. In some periods, it has given its leader, the Speaker, a lot of power; in other periods, it has given much of that power to the chairs of the House committees; and in still other periods, it has allowed individual members to acquire great influence. To simplify a complicated story, the How Things Work box starting on page 303 outlines six different periods in the history of the House. The House faces fundamental problems: it wants to be big (it has 435 members) and powerful, and its members want to be powerful as individuals and as a group. But being big makes it hard for the House to be powerful unless some small group is given the authority to run it. Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 302 Chapter 13 Congress TABLE 13.1 Comparing the House of Representatives and the Senate House Senate elected) seven years elected) ← Qualifications → nine years (custom but not the Constitution requires that a representative live in the district he or she represents) ← Number of Members → ← Length of Terms → nominees Electoral College tie ← Special Powers → (by two-thirds vote) and amend treaties presidency of an electoral college tie two-thirds vote two-thirds vote ← Procedures → Congress cannot be sued or prosecuted for anything they say or write in connection with their legislative duties ← Privileges → If a group runs the place, however, the individual members lack much power. Individuals can gain power, but only at the price of making the House harder to run and thus reducing its collective power in government. There is no lasting solution to these dilemmas, and so the House will always be undergoing changes. The Senate does not face any of these problems. It is small enough (100 members) that it can be run without giving much authority to any small group of leaders. In addition, it has escaped some of the problems the House once faced. During the period leading up to the Civil War, it was carefully balanced so that the number of senators from slave-owning states exactly equaled the number from free states. Hence, fights over slavery rarely arose in the Senate. Congress cannot be sued or prosecuted for anything they say or write in connection with their legislative duties From the first, the Senate was small enough that no time limits had to be placed on how long a senator could speak. This meant there never was anything like a Rules Committee that controlled the amount of debate. Finally, senators were not elected by the voters until the 20th century. Prior to that, they were picked instead by state legislatures. Thus senators often were the leaders of local party organizations, with an interest in funneling jobs back to their states. The big changes in the Senate came not from any fight about how to run it (nobody ever really ran it), but from a dispute over how its members should be chosen. For more than a century after the Founding, members of the Senate were chosen by state legislatures. Though often these legislatures picked popular local figures to be Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 13-2 The Evolution of Congress 303 CONSTITUTIONAL CONNECTIONS From Convention to Congress Article I of the Constitution (on Congress) is several times longer than Article II (on the presidency and executive branch) and Article III (on the federal judiciary) combined. gates would go on to serve in the new Congress created by American national government. As evidenced by the the Constitutional Convention, they had good philosophical reasons for treating the new republic’s new legislature with special care. Besides, most of the delegates were themthe time of the Convention, were still serving, as members Constitution’s chief intellectual architect, James Madison. Madison would also go on to serve as Secretary of State (under President Thomas Jefferson) and, of course, as the nation’s fourth president (succeeding Jefferson). Source: HOW THINGS WORK House History: Six Phases Phase One: The Powerful House Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (LC-DIG-ppmsca-09398) often was supplied by the president or his cabinet officers. nent institution, overshadowing the Senate. Phase Two: The Divided House wane. Andrew Jackson asserted the power of the presidency by vetoing legislation he did not like. The party unity necessary for a Speaker, or any leader, to control the representatives from the South did not attend during the by men such as Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, produced strong majorities for measures aimed at punishing the defeated South. But as time passed, the hot passions the war had generated began to cool, and it became clear Phase Three: The Speaker Rules Toward the end of the 19th century, the Speaker of the One of the most powerful Speakers of the House, Henry Clay, is shown here addressing the U.S. Senate around 1850. and decided what business would come up for a vote, any limitations on debate, and who would be allowed to became Speaker in 1889, he obtained by vote of the cessors, including the right to select the chairs and memranks. Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 304 Chapter 13 Congress Phase Four: The House Revolts voting to strip the Speaker of his right to appoint committee powers lost by the Speaker flowed to the party caucus, the - efforts to restore some of the power the Speaker had once had. The number of committees and subcommitdominated the choice of committee chairs, often passing over more senior members for more agreeable junior decision not to pass some appropriations bills forced many government offices to close for a short period, he had to pay a fine for using tax-exempt funds for politi- Phase Five: The Members Rule on a meaningful civil rights bill until 1964 because powerful committee chairs, most of them from the South, kept such legislation bottled up. In response, Democrats changed the rules so that chairpersons lost much of their authority. be selected simply on the basis of seniority: they had to be elected by the members of the majority party. Chairpersons could no longer refuse to call committee meetings, and most meetings had to be public. Committees without subcommittees had to create them and allow their members to choose subcommittee chairs. Individual members’ staffs were greatly enlarged, and half of all majority-party members were chairs of at least one committee or subcommittee. Phase Six: The Leadership Returns Since every member had power, it was harder for the - senators, just as often there was intense political maneuvering among the leaders of various factions, each struggling to win (and sometimes buy) the votes necessary to become senator. By the end of the 19th century, the Senate was known as the Millionaires’ Club because of the number of wealthy party leaders and businessmen in it. There arose a demand for the direct, popular election of senators. Naturally the Senate resisted, and without its approval the necessary constitutional amendment could not pass Congress. When some states threatened to demand a new constitutional convention, the Senate feared that such a convention would change more than just the way in which senators were chosen. A protracted struggle ensued, during which many state legislatures devised ways to ensure that the senators they picked would already have won a popular filibuster An attempt to defeat a bill in the Senate by talking indefinitely, thus preventing the Senate from taking action on the bill. of Illinois, with a penchant for accommodating his colDemocrat Nancy Pelosi of California held the Speaker’s struck assorted (and some critics claimed sordid) deals with members of her own party to garner their votes for the president’s sweeping health care overhaul plan. - some liberal Democratic members of his state’s conKucinich) characterized Boehner as a committed but pragmatic conservative and professional legislator. election. The Senate finally agreed to a constitutional amendment that required the popular election of its members, and in 1913 the Seventeenth Amendment was approved by the necessary three-fourths of the states. Ironically, given the intensity of the struggle over this question, no great change in the composition of the Senate resulted; most of those members who had first been chosen by state legislatures managed to win reelection by popular vote. The other major issue in the development of the Senate was the filibuster. A filibuster is a prolonged speech, or series of speeches, made to delay action in a legislative assembly. It had become a common—and unpopular—feature of Senate life by the end of the 19th century. It was used by liberals and conservatives alike and for lofty as well as self-serving purposes. The first serious effort to restrict the filibuster came in 1917, after an important foreign policy measure submitted by President Wilson had been talked to death by, as Wilson put it, “eleven willful men.” Rule 22 was adopted by a Senate fearful of tying a president’s hands during a Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. The New York Public Library/Art Resource, NY 13-3 Who Is in Congress? A cartoon from Puck in 1890 expressed popular resentment over the “Millionaires’ Club,” as the Senate had become known. wartime crisis. The rule provided that debate could be cut off if two-thirds of the senators present and voting agreed to a “cloture” motion (it has since been revised to allow 60 senators to cut off debate). Two years later, it was first invoked successfully when the Senate voted cloture to end, after 55 days, the debate over the Treaty of Versailles. Despite the existence of Rule 22, the tradition of unlimited debate remains strong in the Senate. 13-3 Who Is in Congress? With power so decentralized in Congress, the kind of person elected to it is especially important. Since each member exercises some influence, the beliefs and interests of each individual affect policy. Viewed simplistically, most members of Congress seem the same: the typical representative or senator is a middle-aged white Protestant male lawyer. If all such persons usually thought and voted alike, that would be an interesting fact, but they do not, and so it is necessary to explore the great diversity of views among seemingly similar people. Gender and Race Congress has gradually become less male and less white. Between 1950 and 2015, the number of women in the House increased from nine to 84 (plus four delegates, who represent U.S. territories or Washington, D.C.) and 305 the number of African Americans from two to 44 (plus two delegates). There are also 32 Latino members (plus one delegate and the Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico).13 Until recently, the Senate changed much more slowly (see Figure 13.1). Before the 1992 election, there were no African Americans and only two women in the Senate. But in 1992, four more women, including one black woman, Carol Mosely Braun of Illinois, were elected. Two more were elected in 1994, when a Native American, Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, also became a senator. Today there are 20 women in the Senate. The relatively small number of African Americans and Latinos in the House understates their influence, at least when the Democrats are in the majority. In 1994, four House committees were chaired by blacks and three by Latinos. In the same year, however, no woman chaired a committee. The reason for this difference in power is that the former tend to come from districts in which incumbents have normally won reelection by comfortable margins and thus have more seniority than the latter. When the Democrats retook control of Congress in 2007, African Americans and Latinos became chairpersons of several important committees. Similarly, the first woman to become Speaker (Nancy Pelosi in 2007) was a Democrat, and the post1970 increase of women in Congress has been led by Democrats: in the 114th Congress that began in 2015, 14 of the 20 women in the Senate, and 62 of the 84 women in the House, were Democrats (plus three delegates). Among the notable women in the 112th Congress was Gabrielle Dee “Gabby” Giffords, a 41-year-old Democrat of Arizona elected to her third House term in 2010, and only the third woman from Arizona to serve in Congress. Representative Giffords served on the House Armed Services Committee and was a member of the “Blue Dog” Caucus of moderately conservative House Democrats. In January 2011, she was shot in the head by a would-be assassin, but made such remarkable and rapid progress toward recovery that in spring 2011 she was able to attend the scheduled but aborted launch of a NASA shuttle co-commanded by her husband. In 2012, she retired from Congress to concentrate more fully on her recovery, received a public tribute from all members of the House, and vowed that she would return to public service in the future. Middle-aged white males with law degrees are still prevalent in Congress, but as Table 13.2 shows, compared to the makeup of the 102nd Congress that began in 1991, the 114th Congress that began in 2015 had not only more women, blacks, and Latinos, but also fewer lawyers, fewer persons who had served in the armed forces, more businesspeople, more people over the age of 55, and more members (about one in six overall) serving their first term. Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 306 Chapter 13 Congress FIGURE 13.1 Blacks, Hispanics, and Women in Congress, 1971–2015 House of Repesentatives Black Latinos Women 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 92 nd (1 97 1– 72 ) 93 rd 94 th 95 th 96 th 97 th 98 th 99 th 10 0t h 10 1s 10 t 2n 10 d 3r d 10 4t 10 h 5t h 10 6t 10 h 7t h 10 8t h 10 9t 11 h 0t h 11 1t h 11 2t 11 h 11 2t 4t h h (2 113 01 th 5– 16 ) 0 Senate Black Latinos Women 30 25 20 15 10 5 92 nd (1 97 1– 72 ) 93 rd 94 th 95 th 96 th 97 th 98 th 99 th 10 0t h 10 1s 10 t 2n 10 d 3r d 10 4t 10 h 5t h 10 6t 10 h 7t h 10 8t h 10 9t 11 h 0t h 11 1t h 11 2t 11 h 11 2t 4t h h (2 113 01 th 5– 16 ) 0 Source: Congressional Quarterly, various years. Incumbency The recent spike in first-termers in Congress is interesting, but the most important change that has occurred in the composition of Congress has been so gradual that most people have not noticed it. In the 19th century, a large fraction—often a majority—of congressmen served only one term. In 1869, for example, more than half the members of the House were serving their first term in Congress. Being a congressman in those days was not regarded as a career. This was in part because the federal government was not very important (most of the interesting political decisions were made by the states); in part because travel to Washington, D.C., was difficult and the city was not a pleasant place in which to live; and in part because being a congressman did not pay well. Furthermore, many congressional districts were highly competitive, with the two political parties fairly evenly balanced in each. By the 1950s, however, serving in Congress had become a career. Between 1863 and 1969, the proportion of first-termers in the House fell from 58 percent to Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 307 Win McNamee/Getty Images Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images 13-3 Who Is in Congress? U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who previously was the first female Speaker of the House, speaks at a weekly press conference. U.S. House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, who was the Republican vice-presidential candidate in 2012, presents his party’s budget plan. 8 percent.14 As the public took note of this shift, people began to complain about “professional politicians” being “out of touch with the people.” A movement to impose term limits was started. In 1995, the House approved a constitutional amendment to do just that, but it died in the Senate. Then the Supreme Court struck down an effort by a state to impose term limits on its own members of Congress. As it turned out, natural political forces were already doing what the term limits amendment was supposed to do. The 1992 and 1994 elections brought scores of new members to the House, with the result that by 1995 the proportion of members who were serving their first or second terms had risen sharply. Three things were responsible for this change. First, when congressional district lines were redrawn after the 1990 census, a lot of incumbents found themselves running in new districts they couldn’t carry. Second, voter disgust at a variety of Washington political scandals made them receptive to appeals from candidates who could describe themselves as “outsiders.” And third, the Republican victory in 1994—made possible in part by the conversion of the South from a Democratic bastion to a Republican stronghold—brought a lot of new faces to the Capitol. In the 2006 midterm elections, the Democrats regained control of the House from Republicans; they retained it in 2008, but then lost it again in the 2010 midterm elections. As in 1994, in 2006 and in 2010 there was an influx of freshmen members. The November 2012 elections brought 75 first-term members to the House, and 58 new House members won election in November 2014. But these periodic power-shifts accompanied by the arrival of scores of new faces in Congress should not obscure an important fact that was documented decades ago by political scientists and is still true today: Even in elections that result in the out party regaining power, most incumbent House members who seek reelection not only win, but win big, in their districts.15 And while Senators have been somewhat less secure than House members, most Senate incumbents who have sought reelection have won it by a comfortable margin. Figure 13.2 shows the 1964–2010 reelection rates for incumbent House and Senate members who sought reelection. Over that span of two dozen elections, the average reelection rate for House incumbents was 93 percent and the average reelection rate for Senate incumbents was 82 percent. For the 16 elections from 1980 through 2012, the House and Senate incumbent reelection averages are 94 percent and 87 percent, respectively. In the 2010 midterm election, despite polls showing mass disaffection with Congress and a strongly “anti-incumbent” mood, 87 percent of House incumbents who sought reelection won it (53 House incumbents who sought reelection lost), and 84 percent of Senate incumbents TABLE 13.2 Who’s in Congress, 1991–1992 versus 2015–2016 102nd Congress (1991–1992) 114th Congress (2015–2016) Average Age Senate 61 Occupation Law Business 189 Military Incumbency In first term 44 Source: Polarization Abounds,” The New York Times Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 308 Chapter 13 Congress FIGURE 13.2 Reelection Rates for House and Senate Incumbents, 1964–2014 House Senate 120 100 Percentage 80 60 40 20 0 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012 Year Source: who sought reelection won it (four Senate incumbents who sought reelection lost, two in primary elections and two in the general election). In 2012, among reelection-seeking safe districts Districts in incumbents, 90 perwhich incumbents win by cent of House incummargins of 55 percent or bents and 91 percent more. of Senate incumbents won reelection. Even when the Democrats lost control of the Senate in the 2014 elections, 80 percent of incumbents won reelection in the chamber, and more than 90 percent did so in the House. House incumbents who seek reelection normally beat their opponents by 10 points or more. Political scientists call districts that have close elections (when the winner gets less than 55 percent of the vote) marginal districts and districts where incumbents win by wide margins (55 percent or more) safe districts. Even by a more exacting standard—winning with 60 percent or more of the vote—in all but one of the two elections from 1964 to 2010 (the election of 1994), between 60 and 80 percent of House incumbents who were reelected won with 60 percent or more of the vote.16 By contrast, over the same period, well under half of all Senate incumbents who won reelection did so by such a wide margin. In 1998 and again in 2008, about two-thirds of Senate incumbents won with 60 percent or more of the vote, but “safe states” remain far less common than safe districts. marginal districts Political districts in which candidates elected to the House of Representatives win in close elections, typically by less than 55 percent of the vote. Why congressional seats have become less marginal—that is, safer—is a matter on which scholars do not agree. Some feel it is the result of television and other media. But challengers can go on television, too, so why should this benefit incumbents? Another possibility is that voters are becoming less and less likely to automatically support whatever candidate wins the nomination of their own party. They are more likely, in short, to vote for the person rather than the party. And they are more likely to have heard of a person who is an incumbent: incumbents can deluge the voter with free mailings, they can travel frequently (and at public expense) to meet constituents, and they can get their names in the headlines by sponsoring bills or conducting investigations. Simply having a familiar name is important in getting elected, and incumbents find it easier than challengers to make their names known. Finally, some scholars argue that incumbents can use their power to get programs passed or funds spent to benefit their districts—and thereby to benefit themselves.17 They can help keep an army base open, support the building of a new highway (or block the building of an unpopular one), take credit for federal grants to local schools and hospitals, make certain a particular industry or labor union is protected by tariffs against foreign competition, and so on. Probably all of these factors make some difference. Whatever the explanation, the tendency of voters to return incumbents to office means that in ordinary times no one should expect any dramatic changes in the composition of Congress. Even when elections effect a change in party control in one or both chambers, even when new leaders are in charge and new members abound, many old hands will still be on hand in Congress. Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 13-3 Who Is in Congress? Party Forty-two Congresses convened between 1933 and 2015 (a new Congress convenes every two years). The Democrats controlled both houses in 27 of these Congresses and at least one house in 31 of them. Scholars differ in their explanations of why the Democrats have so often had the upper hand in Congress. Most of the research on the subject has focused on the reasons for Democratic control of the House. In every election from 1968 to 1992, the percentage of the popular vote for Republican candidates to the House was higher than the percentage of House seats that actually went to Republicans. For example, in 1976 the Republicans won 42.1 percent of the vote but received only 32.9 percent of the seats. Some argued that this gap between votes and seats occurred because Democraticcontrolled state legislatures redrew congressional district maps in ways that make it hard for Republicans to win House seats. Some striking anecdotal evidence supports this conclusion. For example, following the 1990 census, the Democratic-controlled Texas legislature crafted a new congressional district map clearly designed to benefit Democrats. In 1992, Republicans won 48 percent of the House vote in Texas but received only 30 percent of the seats. But after Republicans won control of more state legislatures, matters began to change. In Texas, a new districting plan was adopted that ensured more House seats would be won by Republicans. And when a court, rather than the Democratic legislature, redrew California’s district lines, both parties won the same proportion of seats as their share of the popular vote.18 Partisan tinkering with district maps and other structural features of House elections is not a sufficient explanation of why Democrats dominated the House in the four decades prior to 1994. As one study concluded, “Virtually all the political science evidence to date indicates that the electoral system has little or no partisan bias, and that the net gains nationally from redistricting for one party over another are very small.”19 To control the redistricting process, one party must control both houses of the legislature, the governor’s office, and, where necessary, the state courts. These conditions simply do not exist in most states. For these and related reasons, the gains made by Republicans in the 2010 elections are unlikely to be expanded to any significant degree in the decade ahead purely by virtue of the redistricting required by the results of the 2010 census.20 While redistricting alone does not give an advantage to one party or the other, the Republicans do have a small but persistent advantage in contemporary House elections. Simply put, Republican voters are more evenly spread across districts, whereas Democratic voters are more heavily concentrated in certain districts. Democrats 309 win a large share of voters from racial and ethnic minorities, young people, and liberals (see Chapter 10), who tend to be clustered in cities. As a result, Democrats tend to carry overwhelmingly districts located in urban areas. While Republicans currently do better in mostly rural districts, those districts are not as skewed toward Republicans because even rural areas tend to have pockets of Democrats (in, say, a college town or a former industrial city). For example, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (the nation’s fifth-largest city), contains two Congressional districts (PA-1 and PA-2), both of which the Democratic incumbents won with more than 80 percent of the vote in 2014. But even in the most rural parts of the state, Republicans do not win so overwhelmingly. Democrats have more votes that are “wasted” by being packed into overwhelmingly Democratic urban districts. As a result, Democrats must win a larger share of the vote to win the same number of seats as Republicans.21 Democrats can overcome this effect, as they did in 2006 when they retook the House. But this geographic dispersion helps Republicans in the contemporary era. Congressional incumbents have come to enjoy certain built-in electoral advantages over challengers. Democrats were in the majority as the advantages of incumbency grew, but Republicans enjoyed the same or greater advantages from 1994 to 2006. Studies suggest the incumbency advantage was worth about 2 percentage points prior to the 1960s but has grown to 6 to 8 points today. It is important to remember that from time to time major electoral convulsions do alter the membership of Congress. For example, in the election of 1938, the Democrats lost 70 seats in the House; in 1942, they lost 50; in 1950, they lost 29; and, in 1966, they lost 48. Despite these big losses, the Democrats retained a majority in the House in each of these years. Not so, however, in 1994, when the Democrats lost 52 House seats (the largest loss by either party since the Republicans had lost 75 seats in 1948), and Republicans gained majorities in both the House and the Senate. And not so in 2010, when Republicans gained more than 60 House seats and narrowly failed to take the Senate as well. Just as it is not easy to explain why Democrats dominated Congress for half a century, so it is not easy to explain why that domination ended when and as it did in 1994, or why Democrats regained control in 2006 only to lose it again just four years later. Several reasons, however, stand out. By the 1990s, certain advantages of incumbency had turned into disadvantages: Voters increasingly came to dislike “professional politicians,” whom they held responsible for “the mess in Washington.” Just what “the mess” was varied according to which voter Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 310 Chapter 13 Congress you asked, but it included chronic budget deficits, the congressional habit of exempting itself from laws that affected everybody else, constant bickering between Congress and the White House, and various congressional scandals. During the 1980s, about 40 members of Congress were charged with misconduct ranging from having sex with minors to accepting illegal gifts. When it was disclosed that the House had its own bank that would cash checks even for members who (temporarily) had no funds in their accounts, public indignation exploded, even though almost no taxpayer money was lost. Public respect for Congress, as measured by the polls, plummeted. The Democrats had the misfortune of being the majority party in Congress when all of this happened. The antiincumbent mood, coupled with the effects of redistricting after the 1990 census and the shift of the South to the Republican Party, brought the Republicans into power in the House and Senate in the 1994 elections. By 2006, however, with an unpopular Republican president in the White House and most voters blaming congressional leaders for moving the country in the “wrong direction,” Democrats regained control of both chambers. And, in 2010, with a Democrat in the White House and three years into a deep economic recession that had more people than ever feeling that the country was heading in the “wrong direction,” Republicans reclaimed the House, nearly retook the Senate, and also made historic gains in races for governorships and state legislatures. In the past, the Democratic party was more deeply divided than the Republicans because of the presence in Congress of conservative Democrats from the South. These Southern Democrats often would vote with the Republicans in the House or Senate, thereby forming what came to be called the conservative coalition. During the 1960s and 1970s, that coalition came together in about one-fifth of all roll-call votes. When it did, it usually won, defeating Northern Democrats. But since the 1980s, and especially since the watershed election of 1994, the conservative coalition has become much less important. The reason is simple: Many Southern Democrats in Congress have been replaced by Southern Republicans, and the Southern Democrats who remain (many of them African Americans) are as liberal as Northern Democrats. The effect of this change is to make Congress, and especially the House, more ideologically partisan—Democrats are liberals, Republicans are conservatives—and this in turn helps explain why there is more party unity in voting—no matter which party is in charge. conservative coalition An alliance between Republicans and conservative Democrats. Representation and Polarization In a decentralized, individualistic institution such as Congress, it is not obvious how its members will behave. They could be devoted to doing whatever their constituents want or, since most voters are not aware of what their representatives do, act in accordance with their own beliefs, the demands of pressure groups, or the expectations of congressional leaders. You may think it would be easy to figure out whether members are devoted to their constituents by analyzing how they vote, but that is not quite right. Members can influence legislation in many ways other than by voting: they can conduct hearings, help mark up bills in committee meetings, and offer amendments to the bills proposed by others. A member’s final vote on a bill may conceal as much as it reveals; some members may vote for a bill that contains many things they dislike because it also contains a few things they value. There are at least three theories about how members of Congress behave: representational, organizational, and attitudinal. The representational explanation is based on the reasonable assumption that members want to get reelected, and therefore they vote to please their constituents. The organizational explanation is based on the equally reasonable assumption that since most constituents do not know how their legislator has voted, it is not essential to please them. But it is important to please fellow members of Congress, whose goodwill is valuable in getting things done and in acquiring status and power in Congress. The attitudinal explanation is based on the assumption that there are so many conflicting pressures on members of Congress that they cancel one another out, leaving them virtually free to vote on the basis of their own beliefs. Political scientists have studied, tested, and argued about these (and other) explanations for decades, and nothing like a consensus has emerged. Some facts have been established, however, in regard to these three views. Representational View The representational view has some merit under certain circumstances—namely, when constituents have a clear view on some issue and a legislator’s vote on that issue is likely to attract their attention. Such is often the case for civil rights laws: representatives with significant numbers of black voters in their districts are not likely to oppose civil rights bills; representatives with few African Americans in their districts are comparatively free to oppose such bills. Until the late 1960s, many Southern representatives were able to oppose civil rights measures because the African Americans in their districts were prevented from voting. On the other hand, many representatives without black constituents have supported civil rights bills, partly Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. AP Images/Marco Garcia 13-3 Who Is in Congress? U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard is the first American Samoan, first Hindu, and one of the first female combat veterans to serve in Congress. She won election in 2012 from Hawaii. out of personal belief and partly perhaps because certain white groups in their districts—organized liberals, for example—have insisted on such support. From time to time, an issue arouses deep passions among the voters, and legislators cannot escape the need either to vote as their constituents want, whatever their personal views, or to anguish at length about which side of a divided constituency to support. Gun control has been one such question and the use of federal money to pay for abortions has been another. Some fortunate members of Congress get unambiguous cues from their constituents on these matters, and no hard decision is necessary. Others get conflicting views, and they know that whichever way they vote, it may cost them dearly in the next election. Occasionally, members of Congress in this fix will try to be out of town when the matter comes up for a vote. You might think that members of Congress who won a close race in the last election—who come from a ”marginal” district—would be especially eager to vote the way their constituents want. Research so far has shown that is not generally the case. There seem to be about as many independent-minded members of Congress from marginal as from safe districts. Perhaps it is because opinion is so divided in a marginal seat that one cannot please everybody; as a result, the representative votes on other grounds. In general, the problem with the representational explanation is that public opinion is not strong and clear on most measures on which Congress must vote. Many representatives and senators face constituencies that are divided on key issues. Some constituents go to special pains to make their views known (these interest groups were discussed 311 in Chapter 11). But as we indicated, the power of interest groups to affect congressional votes depends, among other things, on whether a legislator sees them as united and powerful or as disorganized and marginal. This does not mean that constituents rarely have a direct influence on voting. The influence they have probably comes from the fact that legislators risk defeat should they steadfastly vote in ways that can be held against them by a rival in the next election. Though most congressional votes are not known to most citizens, blunders (real or alleged) quickly become known when an electoral opponent exploits them. Still, any member of Congress can choose the positions he or she takes on most roll-call votes (and on all voice or standing votes, where names are not recorded). And even a series of recorded votes against constituency opinion need not be fatal: A member of Congress can win votes in other ways—for example, by doing services for constituents or by appealing to the party loyalty of the voters. Organizational View When voting on matters where constituency interests or opinions are not vitally at stake, members of Congress respond primarily to cues provided by their colleagues. This is the organizational explanation of their votes. The principal cue is party; as already noted, what party a member of Congress belongs to explains more about his or her voting record than any other single factor. Additional organizational cues come from the opinions of colleagues with whom the member of Congress feels a close ideological affinity: for liberals in the House, it is the Democratic Study Group; for conservatives, it often has been the Republican Study Committee or the Wednesday Club. But party and other organizations do not have clear positions on all matters. For the scores of votes that do not involve the “big questions,” a representative or senator is especially likely to be influenced by the members of his or her party on the sponsoring committee. It is easy to understand why. Suppose you are a Democratic representative from Michigan who is summoned to the floor of the House to vote on a bill to authorize a new weapons system. You haven’t the faintest idea what issues might be at stake. There is no obvious liberal or conservative position on this matter. How do you vote? Simple. You take your cue from several Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee that handled the bill. Some are liberal; others are conservative. If both liberals and conservatives support the bill, you vote for it unhesitatingly. If they disagree, you vote with whichever Democrat is generally closest to your own political ideology. If the matter is one that affects your state, you can take your cue from members of your state’s delegation to Congress. Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 312 Chapter 13 Congress Attitudinal View There is evidence that the ideology of a member of Congress affects how he or she votes. This should not be entirely surprising. As we saw in Chapter 7, political elites generally think more ideologically than the public. But, as we suggested at the start of this chapter, Congress has become an increasingly ideological organization, that is, its members are more sharply divided by political ideology than they once were. Today, all of Congress’s most liberal members are Democrats, and all of its most conservative ones are Republicans. Why attitudes have hardened along ideological and partisan lines in Congress is a topic of much scholarly debate. The representational view would suggest that members are simply behaving the way their constituents wish them to behave. The organizational view would suggest that members are responding to cues from their colleagues and party leaders. Of course, the representational and organizational influences on members’ attitudes could be mutually reinforcing, and one important recent study explains the “disappearing center” in Congress based on certain evidence suggesting that they are.22 According to this theory, growing ideological and partisan splits among voters themselves have resulted in ever more partisan polarization among congressional leaders and senior members from safe districts where the only serious threats to an incumbent’s reelection prospects are primary election challenges from the right (if a Republican) or the left (if a Democrat).23 This reflects the trends we discussed in Chapter 7: While most Americans are moderate, those who are the most engaged are more polarized. These are the voters who would turn out and vote in a primary election, and would support these more extreme candidates. Only about 20 percent of Americans who harbor moderate views and favor bipartisanship are politically attentive, while the rest are largely “disengaged moderates.”24 By contrast, a majority of the growing number of citizens who identify themselves as “strongly liberal” or “strongly conservative” are engaged in obtaining political news (often from sources like talk radio or preferred Internet blogs that mainly serve to reinforce their preexisting views), debating controversial issues, and influencing others (either in person or via the Internet and other means of communication) to think, join groups, and vote as they do.25 Most scholars agree that in recent decades, the parties in Congress have “sorted” themselves ever more clearly on ideological hot-button issues such as abortion, and increasingly favored candidates and leaders, including relative political novices, with ideologically consistent profiles.26 But as we discussed in Chapter 7, most voters are less polarized and divided, and remain quite moderate.27 Measured across dozens of domestic, economic, and other issues, the policy differences and ideological distances between registered Republicans and registered Democrats have increased only a bit since the mid-1980s; and, depending on how the survey questions are worded, there is substantial overlap among voters even on a topic such as abortion.28 In short, this theory holds that we are witnessing not a “disappearing center,” but rather a breakdown of representation in American politics, an attitudinal “disconnect” between average voters and national lawmakers that has made the post-1970 Congress far less representative of the American people than the pre-1970 Congress was.29 Both theories have some merit. Those who are more divided and polarized are more engaged, and they help drive members to be more extreme, even if most voters prefer centrism and moderation. For example, while voters overall strongly prefer compromise and bipartisanship, among the most engaged, these are viewed as negatives, not positives.30 This gives members incentives to behave in more polarized ways. At the same time, constituents will punish members when they get too far out of line with the overall, more moderate, sentiment of their district (though members are still more extreme than their constituents would like them to be).31 Neither theory is completely correct, and both have value for explaining how members behave. By the same token, how much congresspersons’ attitudes are influenced by committee chairpersons and other party leaders is also a matter of some scholarly dispute. The most sophisticated studies to date indicate that, while these organizational influences matter, individual members’ ideological views probably matter more. “Members of Congress,” one study concluded, “come to Washington with a staked-out position on the (liberal– conservative) continuum, and then, largely ‘die with their ideological boots on.’ ”32 Everything from which “ideological boots” a given member chooses to wear in the first place to how he or she votes on a particular issue “may result as much from external pressures of campaign donors and primary voters as from the internal pressures of the congressional party.”33 13-4 The Organization of Congress: Parties and Interests Congress is not a single organization; it is a vast and complex collection of organizations by which the business of Congress is carried on and through which members of Congress form alliances. Unlike the British Parliament, in which the political parties are the only important kind of organization, parties are only one of many important units in Congress. In fact, other organizations have grown in number as party influence has declined. Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 13-4 The Organization of Congress: Parties and Interests The Democrats and Republicans in the House and the Senate are organized by party leaders, who in turn are elected by the full party membership within the House and Senate. The Senate The majority party chooses one of its members—usually the person with the greatest seniority—to be president pro tempore of the Senate. This is usually an honorific position, required by the Constitution so that the Senate will have a presiding officer when the vice president of the United States (according to the Constitution, the president of the Senate) is absent. In fact, both the president pro tem and the vice president usually assign the tedious chore of presiding to a junior senator. The real leadership is in the hands of the majority and minority leaders. The principal task of the majority leader is to schedule the business of the Senate, usually in consultation with the minority leader. A majority leader who has a strong personality and is skilled at political bargaining (such as Lyndon Johnson, the Democrats’ leader in the 1950s) may also acquire much influence over the substance of Senate business. A whip, chosen by each party, helps party leaders stay informed about what the party members are thinking, rounds up members when important votes are taken, and attempts to keep a nose count of how voting on a controversial issue is likely to go. Several senators assist each party whip. Each party also chooses a Policy Committee composed of a dozen or so senators who help the party leader schedule Senate business, choosing what bills will be given major attention and in what order. For individual senators, however, the key party organization is the group that assigns senators to the Senate’s standing committees: for the Democrats, a 22-member Steering Committee; for the Republicans, an 18-member Committee on Committees. For newly elected senators, their political careers, opportunities for favorable publicity, and chances for helping their states and constituents depend in great part on the committees to which they are assigned. Achieving ideological and regional balance is a crucial—and delicate—aspect of selecting party leaders, making up important committees, and assigning freshmen senators to committees. Liberals and conservatives in each party fight over the choice of majority and minority leaders. The House of Representatives The party structure is essentially the same in the House as in the Senate, though the titles of various posts are different. But leadership majority leader The carries more power in legislative leader elected the House than in the by party members holding Senate because of the the majority of seats in the House rules. Being so House or the Senate. large (435 members), minority leader The the House must restrict legislative leader elected debate and schedule by party members holding its business with great a minority of seats in the care; thus leaders who House or the Senate. manage scheduling whip A senator or and determine how the representative who helps rules shall be applied the party leader stay usually have substantial informed about what party influence. members are thinking. The Speaker, who presides over the speaker The presiding officer of the House of House, is the most Representatives and the important person in that leader of his or her party in body and is elected by the House. whichever party has a majority. Unlike the president pro tem of the Senate, this position is anything but honorific, for the Speaker is also the principal leader of the majority party. Though Speakers as presiders are expected to be fair, Speakers as party leaders are expected to use their powers to help pass legislation favored by their party. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images Party Organizations 313 John Boehner (R-OH) became Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2011, after the Republican Party won control of the chamber in the 2010 elections. In the fall of 2015, he announced that he would resign from Congress. Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 314 Chapter 13 Congress In helping his or her party, the Speaker has some important formal powers. He or she decides who shall be recognized to speak on the floor of the House, rules whether a motion is relevant and germane to the business at hand, and decides (subject to certain rules) the committees to which new bills shall be assigned. He or she influences what bills are brought up for a vote and appoints the members of special and select committees. Since 1975, the Speaker has been able to select the majority-party members of the Rules Committee, which plays an important role in the consideration of bills. The Speaker also has some informal powers. He or she controls some patronage jobs in the Capitol building and the assignment of extra office space. Though now far less powerful than some of his or her predecessors, the Speaker is still an important person to have on one’s side. In the House, as in the Senate, the majority party elects a floor leader, called the majority leader. The other party chooses the minority leader. Traditionally, the majority leader becomes Speaker when the person in that position dies or retires—provided, of course, that his or her party is still in the majority. Each party also has a whip, with several assistant whips in charge of rounding up votes. For the Democrats, committee assignments are made and the scheduling of legislation is discussed in a Steering and Policy Committee chaired by the Speaker. The Republicans have divided responsibility for committee assignments and policy discussion between two committees. Each party also has a congressional campaign committee to provide funds and other assistance to party members running for election or reelection to the House. party vote There are two measures of such voting. By the stricter measure, a party vote occurs when 90 percent or more of the Democrats in either house of Congress vote together against 90 percent or more of the Republicans. A looser measure counts as a party vote any case where at least 50 percent of the Democrats vote together against at least 50 percent of the Republicans. Party Voting The effect of this elaborate party machinery can be crudely measured by the extent to which party members vote together in the House and the Senate. A party vote can be defined in various ways; naturally, the more stringent the definition, the less party voting we will observe. Figure 13.3 shows party voting in the House of Representatives in the last sixty years. By the strictest measure, a party vote occurs when 90 percent or more of the Democrats vote together against 90 percent or more of the Republicans. A looser measure counts as a party vote one in which at least 50 percent of the Democrats vote together against 50 percent of the Republicans. By the 90 percent measure, the extent of party voting is low and has declined since the turn of the century. By the 50 percent measure, it is as high today as it was in 1920 and has risen sharply since 1970. Given that political parties as organizations do not tightly control a legislator’s ability to get elected, what is surprising is not that strict party votes are relatively rare, but that they occur at all. There are several reasons that congressional members of one party sometimes do vote together against a majority of the other party. First, members of Congress do not randomly decide to be Democrats or Republicans; at least for most members, these choices reflect some broad policy agreements. By tabulating the ratings that several interest groups give members of Congress for voting on important issues, it is possible to rank each member of Congress from most to least liberal in many policy areas, including economic affairs, social questions, and foreign and military affairs. Democrats in the House and Senate are much more liberal than Republicans across nearly all issues, and this has been true for many years. The ideological differences between the parties are so pronounced that even the average Southern Democrat in the House is more liberal than the average Northern Republican. In addition to their personal views, members of Congress have other reasons for supporting their party’s position at least some of the time. On many matters that come up for vote, members of Congress often have little information and no opinions. It is only natural that they look to fellow party members for advice. Furthermore, supporting the party position can work to the long-term advantage of a member interested in gaining status and influence in Congress. Though party leaders are weaker today than in the past, they are hardly powerless. Sam Rayburn reputedly told freshman members of Congress that “if you want to get along, go along.” That is less true today, but still good advice. In short, party does make a difference—though not as much as it did 90 years ago and not nearly as much as it does in a parliamentary system. Party affiliation is still the single most important thing to know about a member of Congress. Because party affiliation in the House today embodies strong ideological preferences, the mood of the House is often testy and strident. Members no longer get along with each other as well as they did 40 years ago. Many liberals and conservatives dislike each other intensely, despite their routine use of complimentary phrases. Although political parties may be less powerful in Congress than once was the case, ideology is more influential. In the last several Congresses, the 20 most liberal representatives were all Democrats and the 20 most conservative were all Republicans. Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 13-4 The Organization of Congress: Parties and Interests FIGURE 13.3 315 Party Unity Votes in House and Senate, 1953–2013 House Senate 1200 1000 800 600 400 0 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 200 Source: Caucuses Congressional caucuses are a growing rival to the parties as a source of policy leadership. A caucus is an association of members of Congress created to advocate a political ideology or to advance a regional, ethnic, or economic interest. In 1959, only four such caucuses existed; by the early 1980s, there were more than 70. The more important among them have included the Democratic Study Group (uniting more than 200 liberal Democrats, though their names are not publicized to avoid embarrassing them with constituents), the Coalition (more popularly known as the Blue Dog Democrats), a group of moderate-to-conservative Democrats, and the Tuesday Lunch Bunch. Other caucuses include the delegations from certain large states who meet on matters of common interest, as well as the countless groups dedicated to racial, ethnic, regional, and policy interests. The Congressional Black Caucus in the House is one of the best known of these and is probably typical of many in its operations. It meets regularly and employs a staff. As with most other caucuses, some members are very active, others only marginally so. On some issues it simply registers an opinion; on others it attempts to negotiate with leaders of other blocs so that votes can be traded in a mutually advantageous way. It keeps its members informed and on occasion presses to put a member on a regular congressional committee that has no blacks. In 1995, the House Republican majority decided to eliminate government funding of caucuses, forcing some to shrivel and others to seek outside support. caucus An association of congressional members created to advance a political ideology or a regional, ethnic, or economic interest. The Organization of Congress: Committees The most important organizational feature of Congress is the set of legislative committees of the House and Senate. In the chairmanship of these committees, and their subcommittees, most of the power of Congress is found. The number and jurisdiction of these committees are of the greatest interest to members of Congress because decisions on these subjects determine what groups of legislators with what political views will pass on legislative proposals, oversee the workings of agencies in the executive branch, and conduct investigations. A typical Congress has, in each house, about two dozen committees and well over 100 subcommittees. Periodically, efforts have been made to cut the number of committees to give each a broader jurisdiction and to reduce conflict between committees over a single bill. But as the number of committees declined, the number Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 316 Chapter 13 Congress of subcommittees rose, leaving matters much as they had been. There are three kinds of committees: standing committees (more or less permanent bodies select committees with specific legislative Congressional committees responsibilities), select appointed for a limited time committees (groups and purpose. appointed for a limited joint committees purpose, which do not Committees on which introduce legislation both senators and and which exist for only representatives serve. a few years), and joint committees (on which conference committee both representatives and Joint committees appointed to resolve differences in the senators serve). An Senate and House versions especially important kind of the same bill. of joint committee is the conference committee, made up of representatives and senators appointed to resolve differences in the Senate and House versions of a bill before final passage. Though members of the majority party could in theory occupy all the seats on all the committees, in practice they take the majority of the seats, name the chairperson, and allow the minority party to have the standing committees Permanently established legislative committees that consider and are responsible for legislation within a certain subject area. remainder of the seats. The number of seats varies from about six to more than 50. Usually the ratio of Democrats to Republicans on a committee roughly corresponds to their ratio in the House or Senate. Standing committees are more important because, with a few exceptions, they are the only committees that can propose legislation by reporting a bill out to the full House or Senate. Each member of the House usually serves on two standing committees (but members of the Appropriations, Rules, or Ways and Means committees are limited to one committee). Each senator may serve on two major committees and one minor committee (see the boxes below and on page 318), but this rule is not strictly enforced. In the past, when party leaders were stronger, committee chairs were picked on the basis of loyalty to the leader. When this leadership weakened, seniority on the committee came to govern the selection of chairpersons. Of late, however, seniority has been under attack. In 1971, House Democrats decided in their caucus to elect committee chairs by secret ballot; four years later, they used that procedure to remove three committee chairs who held their positions by seniority. Between 1971 and 1992, the Democrats replaced a total of seven senior Democrats with more junior ones as committee chairs. When Republicans took control of the House in 1995, Speaker Newt Gingrich ignored seniority in selecting HOW THINGS WORK Standing Committees of the Senate Major Committees No senator is supposed to serve on more than two.* Judiciary Minor Committees Appropriations No senator is supposed to serve on more than one. Armed Services Small Business and Entrepreneurship Budget Commerce, Science, and Transportation Select Committees Aging Ethics Indian Affairs Intelligence *Despite the rules, some senators serve on more than two major committees. Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 13-4 The Organization of Congress: Parties and Interests several committee chairs, picking instead members who he felt would do a better job. In this and other ways, Gingrich enhanced the Speaker’s power to a degree not seen since 1910. Throughout most of the 20th century, committee chairs dominated the work of Congress. In the early 1970s, their power came under attack, mostly from liberal Democrats upset at the opposition by conservative Southern Democratic chairs to civil rights legislation. The liberals succeeded in getting the House to adopt rules that weakened the chairs and empowered individual members. Among the changes were these: Committee chairs must be elected by the majority party, voting by secret ballot. The ability of committee chairs to block legislation by refusing to refer it to a subcommittee for a hearing is banned. All committees and subcommittees must hold public meetings unless the committee has voted to close them. Subcommittee chairs must be elected by committee members. Subcommittee chairs can hire their own staffs, independent of the committee chair. The effect of these and other changes was to give individual members more power and committee chairs less. When the Republicans took control of the House in 1995, they made more changes, including the following: They reduced the number of committees and subcommittees. They authorized committee chairs to hire subcommittee staffs. They imposed term limits on committee and subcommittee chairs of three consecutive terms (or six years) and on the Speaker of four consecutive terms (or eight years). They prohibited chairs from casting an absent committee member’s vote by proxy. The House Republican rules gave back some power to chairpersons (e.g., by letting them pick all staff members) but further reduced it in other ways (e.g., by imposing term limits and banning proxy voting). The commitment to public meetings remained. In the Senate there have been fewer changes, in part because individual members of the Senate have always had more power than their counterparts in the House. There were, however, three important changes made by the Republicans in 1995: A six-year term limit was set on all committee chairs (but not on the term of majority leader). 317 Committee members were required to select their chairs by secret ballot. Beginning in 1997, the chairs of Senate committees were limited to one six-year term. Despite these new rules, the committees remain the place where the real work of Congress is done. These committees tend to attract different kinds of members. Some, such as the committees that draft tax legislation (the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee) or that oversee foreign affairs (the Senate and House Foreign Relations Committees), have been attractive to members who want to shape public policy, become experts on important issues, and have influence with their colleagues. Others, such as the House and Senate committees dealing with public lands, small business, and veterans’ affairs, are attractive to members who want to serve particular constituency groups.34 The Organization of Congress: Staffs and Specialized Offices In 1900, representatives had no personal staff, and senators averaged fewer than one staff member each. By 1979, the average representative had 16 assistants and the average senator had 36. Since then the numbers have remained about the same. To the more than 10,000 people on the personal staffs of members of Congress must be added another 3,000 who work for congressional committees and yet another 3,000 employed by various congressional research agencies. Congress has produced the most rapidly growing bureaucracy in Washington: The personal staffs of legislators have increased more than fivefold since 1947.35 Though many staffers perform routine chores, many others help draft legislation, handle constituents, and otherwise shape policy and politics. Tasks of Staff Members A major function of a legislator’s staff is to help constituents solve problems and thereby help that member of Congress get reelected. Indeed, over the last two decades, a growing portion of congressional staffs have worked in the local (district or state) offices of the legislator rather than in Washington. Almost all members of Congress have at least one such home office, and most have two or more. Some scholars believe that this growth in constituency-serving staff helps explain why it is so difficult to defeat an incumbent.36 The legislative function of congressional staff members is also important. With each senator serving on an average of more than two committees and seven subcommittees, it is virtually impossible for members of Congress to become familiar with the details of all the Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 318 Chapter 13 Congress HOW THINGS WORK Standing Committees of the House Exclusive Committees Nonmajor Committees Member may not serve on any other committee, except Budget. Member may serve on one major and one or two nonmajor committees. Appropriations Budget Major Committees Member may serve on only one major committee. Science and Technology Agriculture Small Business Armed Services Education and Labor Select Committees Energy and Commerce Intelligence Note: Judiciary duties to other standing committees. ...
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