Political Science 345: The Legislative Process Class 12: Committees

1. Political Science 345:The Legislative ProcessClass 12: Committees Professor Jon Rogowski

2. Delegation in Congress • Again, Congress is self-organized • Collective action problems • Legislative activity and oversight are costly • Policymaking requires expertise • Different constituencies seek representation on different issues • Gatekeeping – Why spend time on bad ideas?

3. Morphology of Committees

4. Committee of the Whole • Fictional “committee” to which every member of the House belongs (there is no analogue in the Senate) • Quorum in the CoW is 100 members (following Reed’s Rules of 1888) • Rules are less formal than those for the House

5. The CoW is not the HoR • All business conducted in the CoW must be ratified by the full House • All amendments approved by the CoW must be revoted upon in the full House • This implies that amendments that are successful in the CoW might fail in the full House • The Speaker generally does not preside over the CoW

6. Standing Committees • Committees that persist from Congress to Congress • Typically legislative in nature (govern substantive business in a jurisdiction) • Jurisdictions established by precedent and Speaker (& Parliamentarian’s) judgments • Memberships relatively stable over time

7. Select (or “Special”) Committees • More Narrowly Focused • Fewer membership restrictions • Generally fewer legislative prerogatives • Often investigative/topical in nature • Intelligence • Indian Affairs • Ervin Committee (Watergate) • Kefauver Committee (Organized Crime)

8. Joint Committees • Inter-Chamber committees • Economic - informational • Taxation - informational • Library – coordination (runs Library of Congress) • Printing (runs GPO) • Atomic Energy (1947-1979)

9. Conference Committees • Joint Ad Hoc committees appointed to negotiate compromise between chambers after each passed a different version of the same bill • House members are appointed by the Speaker • In many ways, this is where the real decisions are made on controversial legislation

10. Interchamber Bargaining Authority • If the two chambers pass a bill in different forms, a conference committee must work out a compromise • Conferees are almost always drawn from the committees that had original jurisdiction over the bill • Representation in conference constitutes ex post power that complements the ex ante gatekeeping and proposal power

11. Delegation of Authority • Parent legislature delegates authority to committees: • Proposal power • Oversight authority • Interchamber bargaining authority • But delegation is provisional • Committees are agents of the parent body • Committee authority can be taken away, although not easily

12. Committee history in Congress • Originally, neither chamber had any standing committees • Only after deliberation by whole was a committee established to work on the bill • Committee had no veto power, modest proposal power, was dismissed after work on bill completed • Why no standing committees? • Not a radical concept (were used in many colonies) • Early forms didn’t entail tremendous amounts of agenda or decision-making power

13. Why no standing committees? • A deliberate choice • Jeffersonian Republicans disliked idea of a small group being disproportionately influential at prelegislative stage • Felt principles of bill should emerge from deliberation • Federalists had no problem with standing committees, but felt they were redundant • Agenda-setting power of executive branch good enough • In reality, bills started being referred to legislators that had established expertise on the matter

14. Change in congressional organization In the first 9 Congresses (18 years), the House had 8 standing committees. The Senate had 1.The House created 2 in the 10th Congress (1807-09). The Senate created 1.The House created 10 standing committees between 1812 and 1817. The Senate created 12.

15. Committees and the Centralization of Congressional Power

16. Committees and the Centralization of Congressional Power

17. American political science is born “Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition, whilst Congress in its committee-rooms is Congress at work.”

18. Committees: The Basics • What do committees do? • Study issues and provide expertise • Channel ambition • Provide for representation of groups • House/Senate comparisons • House more reliant on committees than the Senate • House more specialized • First-mover advantage may give Ways and Means great power

19. Membership • Party ratios • Renegotiated every Congress • Sometimes a bone of contention with minority party • There is usually a bonus given to the majority party • Special bonus for certain committees • 112th House: 1.3:1 for “important” committees, closer to 1.1:1 for others • House Ag: 27/25, Banking, 37/33; *Judi: 21/16, *Ed: 27/21, Rules: 9/4, *WAM: 34/27

20. Selecting Committee Members • Chamber differences • House tends to rely on party committees • Senate tends to go by seniority • Republicans pure seniority • Democrats weight seniority highest • Formal and informal constraints • Property rights in committee assignments arose around the turn of the last century • Allocation restrictions • Both Parties in both chambers create rank listings of committee exclusivity • “Johnson rule”: all junior senators get one “good” assignment before a senior senator gets a second

21. Grosewart Scores for the House

22. The Price of Seniority

23. Role of Subcommittees • Subcommittees sometimes just smaller versions of committees • The congressional receptor for the “Iron Triangle” (+ industry and agency) • Increasing importance of subcommittees • “Subcommittee bill of rights” in 1973 (House Dems) • Written jurisdictions • Members given rights to pick memberships and bid for chairmanships

24. Changes Made by House Republicans after 1994 • Committees eliminated • DC • Merchant Marine & Fisheries • Post Office & Civil Service • Staff cut by 1/3 • Subcommittee limits (generally 5) • Subcommittee staff controlled by committee chair • Assignment limits • Proxy voting banned • Committees must publish roll call votes on all bills and amendments • Meetings may be closed to the public rarely • All committees open to broadcast coverage & still photography • Multiple referrals eliminated • Speaker may still serially refer bills

25. Proposal Power • Any member can submit a bill calling for changes to the status quo. • Every bill is assigned to a committee, and the committee decides whether it is acted on. • In a typical year, 15,000 bills are submitted, but fewer than 1,000 are acted on • The 1,000 are not selected at random • So committees decide not only whether to open the gates or not, but also which proposals get through the gates

26. Oversight Authority • Even after a bill becomes law, it is not self-implementing • Executive and bureaucracy have their own agendas, so implementation may differ from intent • Committees must be “continuously watchful” of implementation and administration of legislation in their domain. • Monitoring and oversight give committees additional policy leverage

27. Committees and the “Setter Model” • An agenda-setter has power to offer a “take it or leave it” motion. • If the agenda-setter is “high demand” and the reversion point is well below the median’s ideal point, the agenda-setter makes out like a bandit Proposal Q M S W(Q)

28. Application of Setter Model to Committees • Easy to think of committees as providing “take it or leave it” propositions and being composed of “high demanders” • “Deference” to committees • Supposed “self-selection” on committees • Problems with this view • “High demand committees” hard to sustain in a majoritarian institution • Empirical evidence mixed • Amendment opportunities galore • Discharge possible • Status quo rarely so Draconian

29. Theoretical Perspectives on Committees • Distributive Theories (Weingast and Marshall) • Emphasize gains from trade • Informational theories (Krehbiel) • Uncertainty about relationships between policies and outcomes

30. Outlier Committees? • Critical test between informational and distributive theories of committees • Though even informational theories do not predict perfect alignment of committees and floors • Need to consider both preferences of members and rules that govern the bills they introduce

31. Committee Composition (111th House)