On January 20, 2018, exactly one year into Donald Trump’s presidency, the federal government shut down. Congress could not pass a bill to fund the government. Democrats insisted that the bill include protection against deportation for Dreamers, undocumented and generally long-time U.S. residents brought to this country as children. Republicans and the president opposed doing so. The president wanted to use protection for Dreamers as leverage for obtaining increased border security in separate legislation. Ultimately, Congress passed a short-term bill, creating the possibility of another funding crisis, which occurred the next month.

What happened in Congress in 2018 was extreme. But even under more ordinary circum-stances, the Madisonian system of the separation of powers and checks and balances compli-cates policymaking. Moreover, power is fragmented within Congress, and representatives and senators tend to be fiercely independent. One Senate leader declared that trying to move the Senate to act is like “trying to push a wet noodle”: when Congress faces the great issues of the day, it often cannot arrive at any decision at all.

The inability to compromise and make important policy decisions—what we commonly refer to as gridlock—does not please the public. Its approval of Congress has been in the single digits, the lowest it has ever been. Nevertheless, most of the members of Congress who ran for reelec-tion in 2018 won. It seems as though individual senators and representatives were doing what their constituents wanted them to do, although Congress as a whole was not.

Congress is both our central policymaking branch and our principal representative branch. As such, it lies at the heart of American democracy. How does Congress combine its roles of rep-resenting constituents and making effective public policy? Some critics argue that Congress is too responsive to constituents and, especially, to organized interest groups and is thus unable to make difficult choices regarding public policy, such as reining in spending. Others argue that Congress is too insulated from ordinary citizens and makes policy to suit the few rather than the many. Yet other critics focus on Congress as the source of government expansion. Does Congress’s responsiveness predispose the legislature to increase the size of government to please those in the public wanting more or larger government programs?

* * * * *

The Framers of the Constitution conceived of the legislature as the center of policy-making in America. Their plan was for the great disputes over public policy to be resolved in Congress, not in the White House or the Supreme Court. Although the prominence of Congress has ebbed and flowed over the course of American history, as often as not, Congress has been the true center of power in Washington. The tasks of Congress become more difficult each year. On any given day, a repre-sentative or senator can be required to make sensible judgments about missiles, nuclear waste dumps, abortion, trade competition with China, income tax rates, the soaring costs of Social Security and Medicare, or any number of other issues. The proposal for the 2010 health care reform bill was about 1,400 pages long and weighed 6 pounds. Just finding the time to think about the issues—much less debate them—has become increasingly difficult. Despite the many demands of being a senator or representative, there is no shortage of men and women running for congressional office. The following sections will introduce you to these people.

REPRESENTATIVES AND SENATORS

11.1 Characterize the backgrounds of members of Congress and assess their impact on the ability of members of Congress to represent average Americans. Being a member of Congress is a difficult and unusual job. A person must be willing to

spend considerable time, trouble, and money to obtain a crowded office on Capitol Hill. To nineteenth-century humorist Artemus Ward, such a quest was inexplicable: “It’s easy to see why a man goes to the poorhouse or the penitentiary. It’s because he can’t help it. But why he should voluntarily go live in Washington is beyond my comprehension.”1

The Members

To many Americans, being a member of Congress may seem like a glamorous job. What citizens do not see are the 14-hour days spent dashing from one meeting to the next (members are often scheduled to be in two places at the same time),2 the con-tinuous travel between Washington and constituencies, the lack of time for reflection ongress, and—perhaps most important of all—the feeling of many members that Congress is making little headway in solving the country’s problems. There are attractions to the job, however. First and foremost is power. Members

of Congress make key decisions about important matters of public policy. In addition, members of Congress earn a salary of $174,000—about three times the income of the typical American family, although far below that of hundreds of corporate presidents—and they receive generous retirement and health benefits. There are 535 members of Congress. An even 100—two from each state—are members of the Senate. The other 435 are members of the House of Representatives. The Constitution specifies only that members of the House must be at least 25 years old and have been American citizens for 7 years, that senators must be at least 30 years old and have been American citizens for 9 years, and that each member of Congress must reside in the state from which he or she is elected. Members of Congress are not typical or average Americans, however, as the figures

in Table 11.1 reveal. Those who argue that the country is run by a power elite are quick to point out that members come largely from occupations with high status and usu-ally have substantial incomes. Although calling the Senate a “millionaire’s club” is an exaggeration, the proportion of millionaires and near millionaires in Congress is much higher than it is in an average crowd of 535 people. Business and law are the dominant prior occupations; other elite occupations such as academia are also well represented. The prominence of lawyers in Congress is not surprising. Law especially attracts persons interested in politics and provides the flexibility (and often the financial support of a law firm) to wage election campaigns. In addition, many government po-sitions in which aspiring members of Congress can make their mark, such as district attorney, are reserved for lawyers. Some prominent groups are underrepresented. The percentage of Hispanics in both chambers is much smaller than their percentage of the population (17 percent). There are only three African Americans in the Senate. Asian and Native Americans are also under-represented. However, women may be the most underrepresented group; they account for more than half the population but for only about a fifth of both houses of Congress. Americans value descriptive representation—that is, representing constituents by

mirroring their personal, politically relevant characteristics.3 But how important are the personal characteristics of members of Congress? Can a group of predominantly white, upper-middle-class, middle-aged, Protestant males adequately represent a much more diverse population? Would a group more typical of the population be more effective in making major policy decisions? The backgrounds of representatives and senators can be important if they influence how they prioritize and vote on is-sues. There is evidence that African American members are more active than are white members in serving African American constituents,4 and they appear to increase African American constituents’ contact with and knowledge about Congress.5 On average, women legislators seem to be more active than are men in pursuing the inter-ests of women.6 In some instances women are also more effective lawmakers.7 By the same token, representatives with a business background are more pro-business (less supportive of regulations, for example) than are other members,8 while members from working-class occupations are more liberal on economic matters.9 Veterans are more willing to challenge the president’s use of force.10 Obviously, few members of Congress can claim descriptive representation. They may,

however, engage in substantive representation and so speak for the interests of groups of which they themselves are not members.11 For example, a member of Congress with a background of wealth and privilege may champion the interests of the poor, as did the late Senator Edward Kennedy. Moreover, most members of Congress have lived for many years in the constituencies they represent and share many of the beliefs and attitudes of their constituents, even if they do not share their demographic characteristics. If they do not share their constituents’ perspectives, they may find it difficult to keep their seats come election time. At the same time, women and African Americans in Congress are achieving important positions on committees, increasing the chances of making descrip-tive representation effective.

Why Aren’t There More Women in Congress? Sarah Fulton, a scholar of women in politics, found that in the 2016 elections,

women won 50 percent of the House races in which they competed and 38 percent of the Senate races.13 Yet, despite this record, women constitute only about a fifth of Congress. If women have proven themselves capable of competing with and winning against men, why aren’t there more women in Congress? Part of the reason for women’s underrepresentation is that fewer women than men become major party nominees for office. For example, in 2016, a female major-party nomi-nee contested only 38 percent of the 435 House races and 47 percent of the Senate races. In one article, Fulton and her coauthors found that women with children are significantly less ambitious about running for office than are their male counterparts, largely because of greater child care responsibilities; however, they found no gender disparity in ambition among women without children. The authors also suggest that women’s decisions to run are more sensitive than are men’s to their perceptions of the odds of winning: women are less likely than are men to run when they perceive their odds to be poor; however, they are more likely than are men to run when they detect a political opportunity.14 In addition to the supply of female candidates, there is the issue of the electorate’s

demand. Voters appraise women candidates higher than male candidates on non-policy characteristics such as integrity, competence, collaboration, and problem-solving skills. Once women’s quality advantage is taken into account, women encounter a 3 percent vote deficit relative to their male counterparts. Male independent voters are equally supportive of male and female candidates when women have a quality advantage. But when candidates have the same quality, male independents are 23 per-cent less likely to vote for female than male candidates. Thus, to win, women must be more qualified on average than their male opponents.

Congressional elections are demanding, expensive,16 and, as you will see, generally foregone conclusions—yet members of Congress are first and foremost politicians. Men and women may run for Congress to forge new policy initiatives, but they also enjoy politics and consider a position in Congress near the top of their chosen profes-sion. Even if they dislike politics, unless they get reelected they will not be around long enough to shape policy.

Who Wins Elections?

Incumbents are individuals who already hold office. Sometime during each term, the incumbent must decide whether to run again or to retire voluntarily. Most decide to run for reelection. They enter their party’s primary, almost always emerge victorious, and typically win in the November general election too. Indeed, the most predictable aspect of congressional elections is this: incumbents usually win (see Figure 11.1). In 2016, only seven House incumbents lost general elections. (Five others were defeated in primaries, three of them victims of redistricting.) Even in a year of great political upheaval such as 2010, in which the Republicans gained 6 seats in the Senate and 63 seats in the House, 84 percent of incumbent senators and 85 percent of incumbent representatives won their bids for re-election. In the case of the House, not only do more than 90 percent of incumbents seeking reelection usually win, but most of them win with more than 60 percent of the vote. The picture for the Senate is a little different. Even though senators still have a good chance of beating back challengers, the odds of reelection are often not as handsome as they are for House incumbents; senators typically win by narrower week, members spend some time in their home states or districts, even though that may mean traveling far from Washington. Similarly, members use the franking privi-lege to mail newsletters to every household in their constituency. In recent years, members of Congress have brought communication with their constituencies into the digital age. Congressional staffers track the interests of indi-vidual voters, file the information in a database, and then use e-mails, social media, or phone calls to engage directly with voters on issues they know they care about. Using taxpayers’ money, legislators employ a technology that allows them to call thousands of households simultaneously and deliver a recorded message, inviting people in their districts to join in on a conference call. With the push of a button, a constituent can be on the line with the House member—and often with 1,000 or more fellow constituents. Equally important, lawmakers know from the phone numbers where the respondents live and, from what constituents say on the call, what issues interest them. Information gathered from these events, as well as from e-mails and phone calls from constituents and from their social presences online, gets plugged into an electronic database, giv-ing incumbents something challengers can only dream of: a detailed list of the specific interests of thousands of actual or potential voters. E-mail allows for personal interac-tion—and another reminder of why the incumbent should be reelected.

CREDIT CLAIMING Congresspersons also seek to engage in credit claiming, which involves enhancing their standing with constituents through service to individuals and the district.18 Members of Congress can service their constituents and constitu-ency in two ways: through casework and through obtaining federal funds. Doing casework means helping individual constituents with problems such as Social Security checks or federal loans.

The second way of servicing a constituency involves winning federal funds for states and districts. The so-called pork barrel is composed of federal projects, grants, and contracts available to state and local governments, businesses, colleges, and other institutions. Members of Congress love to take credit for federally financed new highways, sewage treatment plants, or research institutes in their constituen-cies. Often they announce the awards through their offices. Moreover, the more often they claim credit, the more constituents support them.19 In the past, members have worked hard to obtain appropriations earmarked for specific projects in their districts, and members who succeeded have had an easier time in their reelection campaigns.20 Today, it may be that the impact of constituency-related activities has diminished as they have become an expected part of congressional service.21 As a result of the advantages incumbents have in advertising and credit claiming, incumbents, especially in the House, are usually much better known than their oppo-nents and have a more favorable public image.22 Nevertheless, advertising and credit claiming by themselves do not determine outcomes of congressional elections.23 WEAK OPPONENTS Another advantage for incumbents, particularly in the House, is that they are likely to face weak opponents.24 In part because the advantages of in-cumbency scare off potentially effective opponents, those individuals who do run are usually not well known or well qualified and lack experience and organizational and financial backing.25 The lack of adequate campaign funds is a special burden because challengers need money to compensate for the “free” recognition incumbents receive from their advertising and credit claiming.26 CAMPAIGN SPENDING It costs a great deal of money to get elected to Congress. In the 2015–2016 election cycle, congressional candidates, party committees, and out-side groups spent more than $4 billion to contest 435 House and 34 Senate seats. Not counting the massive outside expenditures, the average winner in the House spent about $1.5 million while the average Senate winner spent more than 10.5 million.27 Challengers have to raise large sums if they hope to defeat incumbents; the more they spend, the more votes they receive. Money buys them name recognition and a chance to be heard. Incumbents, by contrast, already have high levels of recognition among their constituents and benefit less (although they do benefit) from campaign spending; what matters most to the outcome of an election is how much their oppo-nent spends. (In contests for open seats, discussed later in this chapter, the candidate who spends the most usually wins.)28 It is not surprising that incumbents find it easier to raise money than do challengers.29 In the end challengers, especially those for House seats, are usually substantially outspent by incumbents. In Senate races in 2016, the typical incumbent outspent the typical challenger by a ratio of 2 to 1. For elections for House seats, the ratio was 4 to 1.30 The candidate spending the most money usually wins—but not always. In the 2014 Senate race in North Carolina, in-cumbent Kay Hagen and supporting outside groups spent $65 million but still lost the election.31 Obviously, prolific spending in a campaign is no guarantee of success. PARTY IDENTIFICATION Most members of Congress represent constituencies in which their party is in the clear majority, which gives them yet another advantage when they run for reelection. Most people identify with a party, and most party identifiers reliably vote for their party’s candidates. Indeed, about 90 percent of voters who identify with a party vote for the House candidates of their party. State legislatures have eagerly employed advances in technology to draw the boundaries of House districts so that there is a safe majority for one party. In addition, it is now more common for people to live in communi-ties where their neighbors are likely to have political and other attitudes that are similar to their own,32 which reduces the basis for party competition. Equally important to the creation of safe seats have been the significant changes in American politics over the past generation. As the differences between the parties have increased and as people have sorted themselves into parties that more closely match their policy views,33 voters have been less willing to cross party lines and support candidates who, for example, provided services for their constituencies. Instead, voters are more likely to support candidates of their party at every level of government. Because of the increase in party-line voting, the electoral advantage enjoyed by incumbents as a result of advertising and credit claiming has fallen over the past several elections to levels not seen since the 1950s, and incumbents has a much harder time winning in districts and states that lean toward the other party.34 They still win most of the time, but these victories are the result of districts that lack effective competition from one of the parties.

For decades, the Supreme Court declined to evaluate the boundaries of legislative districts because it would involve it in “political” questions. In Baker v. Carr (1962), the Supreme Court changed its view, ruling that the federal courts could review districts. In Wesberry v. Sanders (1964), the Court held that each state should draw its congressional dis-tricts so they are approximately equal in population, thus instituting the principle of “one person, one vote.” Of course, being of equal size does not mean that districts are competi-tive. In 2018, the Court declined to decide two cases of partisan gerrymandering in which supporters of one party were disadvantaged by the drawing of district boundaries. We saw in Chapter 5 that the Court has made a number of decisions regarding race and the drawing of district boundaries, and it remains to be seen whether the Court will expand its definition of what violates fair districting.

Defeating Incumbents

Because incumbents almost always win reelection, it is reasonable to ask why anyone challenges them at all. One of the main reasons is simply that challengers are often naïve about their chances of winning. Because few have the money for expensive polls, they rely on friends and local party leaders, who often tell them what they want to hear. Sometimes challengers receive some unexpected help. An incumbent tarnished by scandal or corruption becomes instantly vulnerable. Voters do take out their anger at the polls. In a close election, negative publicity can turn victory into defeat.35 Incumbents can also lose many of their supporters when the boundaries of their districts change. After a federal census, which occurs every 10 years, Congress reap-portions its membership. States that have gained significantly in population will be given more House seats; states that have lost substantial population will lose one or more of their seats. The state legislatures must then redraw their states’ district lines; one incumbent may be moved into another’s district, where the two must battle for one seat.36 A state party in the majority is more likely to move two of the opposition party’s representatives into a single district than two of its own. Or it may split the district of an incumbent of the minority party to make that district more competitive. The Supreme Court has decided that state legislatures may redraw district boundaries at any time and not only after a census.37 And a state may draw its legislative districts based on the total population rather than only the total of U.S. citizens.38 Finally, major political tidal waves occasionally roll across the country, leaving defeated incumbents in their wake. One such wave occurred in 1994, when the public mood turned especially sour and voters took out their frustration on Democratic in-cumbents, defeating 2 in the Senate and 34 in the House. In 2006, the tide turned, and 6 Republican senators and 23 Republican representatives lost their seats. In 2010, it was again the Republicans’ turn: they defeated 2 Democratic senators and 52 Democratic representatives in the general election. In 2014, 5 Democratic incumbent senators lost.

Open Seats

When an incumbent is not running for reelection, and his or her seat is open, there is a greater likelihood of real competition for the seat. If the party balance in a constitu-ency is such that either party has a chance of winning, each side may offer a strong candidate who has name recognition among the voters or enough money to establish name recognition. Most of the turnover in the membership of Congress results when incumbents do not seek reelection.

Stability and Change

Because incumbents usually win reelection, there is some stability in the membership of Congress. This stability allows representatives and senators to gain some expertise in

dealing with complex questions of public policy. At the same time, longevity in office may insulate members from the winds of political change. Safe seats make it more difficult for citizens to “send a message to Washington” with their votes. It takes a large shift in votes to affect the outcomes of most elections, particularly in the House. To increase turnover in the membership of Congress, some reformers have proposed term limits for representatives and senators.39 Should we impose term limits on members of Congress? Enter the “You Are the Policymaker” debate to weigh the arguments for and against to vote for whomever they please. In addition, they argue, the U.S. Congress has plenty of new blood: at the beginning of the 115th Congress (in 2017), for example, most members of the House of Representatives and Senate had served fewer than 10 years. Moreover, changes in the party makeup of the House appear to reflect changes in voters’ preferences on public policy.* Congress seems to be responsive to public opinion. Proponents of term limits suffered two setbacks in 1995 when Congress failed to pass a constitutional amendment on term limits (which also failed in 1997) and when the Supreme Court, in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. et al. v. Thornton et al., decided that state-imposed term limits on members of Congress were unconstitutional. Here is the policy dilemma: Many Americans support a constitutional amendment to

impose term limits on members of Congress. At the same time, most voters are comfortable with their own representatives and senators and appear content to reelect them again and again.

HOW CONGRESS IS ORGANIZED TO MAKE POLICY

Of all the roles that senators and representatives play—including politician, fund-raiser, and constituency representative—policymaker is the most difficult. Congress is a collection of generalists, short on time, trying to make policy on specialized topics. As generalists on most subjects, they are surrounded by people who know (or claim to know) more than they do—lobbyists, agency administrators, even their own staffs. Even if they were specialists and had time to study all the issues thoroughly, making wise national policy would be difficult. If economists disagree about policies to fight unemployment, how are legislators supposed to know which policies will work better than others? Thus, the generalists must organize Congress to help them make special-ized decisions. The Founders introduced just a hint of specialization into Congress when they split it into the House and the Senate.

American Bicameralism

A bicameral legislature is a legislature divided into two houses. The U.S. Congress is bi-cameral, as is every American state legislature except Nebraska’s, which has one house: it is unicameral. Our bicameral Congress is the result of the Connecticut Compromise at the Constitutional Convention. Each state is guaranteed two senators, and the num-ber of representatives a state has is determined by its population—so California, for example, has 53 representatives while Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming each have just one. By creating a bicameral Congress, the Constitution set up yet another check and balance. No bill can be passed unless both House and Senate agree on it; each body can thus veto the policies of the other. Table 11.2 shows some of the basic differences between the two houses. THE HOUSE More than four times as large as the Senate, the House is also more institutionalized—that is, more centralized, more hierarchical, and more disciplined.40 Party loyalty to leadership and party-line voting are more common in the House than in the Senate. Partly because there are more members, leaders in the House do more leading than do leaders in the Senate. First-term House members have less power than senior representatives; they are more likely than first-term senators to be just seen and not heard.

THE SENATE

The Framers thought the Senate would protect elite interests, coun-teracting the tendency of the House to protect the interests of the masses. They gave the House the power to initiate all revenue bills and to impeach officials; they gave the Senate the power to ratify all treaties, to confirm important presidential nomina-tions (including nominations to the Supreme Court), and to try impeached officials. Despite the Framers’ expectations, history shows that when the same party controls both chambers, the Senate is just as liberal as—and perhaps more liberal than—the House.42 The real differences between the bodies lie in the Senate’s organization and decentralized power.

Smaller than the House, the Senate is also less disciplined and less centralized.

Today’s senators are more nearly equal in power than representatives are. Even in-coming senators sometimes get top committee assignments; they may even become chairs of key subcommittees.

Congressional Leadership

Leading 100 senators or 435 representatives in Congress—each jealous of his or her own power and responsible to no higher power than the constituency—is no easy task. Few members of Congress consider themselves followers. Much of the leader-ship in Congress is really party leadership. There are a few formal posts whose oc-cupants are chosen by nonparty procedures, but those who have the real power in the congressional hierarchy are those whose party put them there. THE HOUSE The Speaker of the House is the most important leader in the House of Representatives. The Speaker holds the only legislative office mandated by the Constitution. In practice, the majority party selects the Speaker. Before each Congress begins, the majority party presents its candidate for Speaker, who—be-cause this person nearly always attracts the unanimous support of the majority party—is a shoo-in. Typically, the Speaker is a senior member of the party. The Speaker is also two heartbeats away from the presidency, being second in line (after the vice president) to succeed a president who resigns, dies in office, or is convicted after impeachment. Years ago, the Speaker was king of the congressional mountain. Autocrats such as “Uncle Joe Cannon” and “Czar Reed” ran the House like a fiefdom. A great revolt in 1910 whittled down the Speaker’s powers and gave some of them to committees, but six decades later, members of the House restored some of the Speaker’s powers. Today, the Speaker: • Presides over the House when it is in session • Plays a major role in making committee assignments, which are coveted by all members to ensure their reelection

• Appoints or plays a key role in appointing the party’s legislative leaders and the party leadership staff

• Exercises substantial control over assigning bills to committees

In addition to these formal powers, the Speaker has a great deal of informal clout inside and outside Congress. When the Speaker’s party differs from the president’s party, as it frequently does, the Speaker often serves as a national spokesperson for the party. A good Speaker knows the members of the House well—including their past im-proprieties, the ambitions they harbor, and the pressures they feel. Speakers try to keep their parties unified and pass legislation that will create an attractive party record. Leadership in the House, however, is not a one-person show. The Speaker’s princi-pal partisan ally is the majority leader—a job that has been the main stepping-stone to becoming Speaker. The majority leader is elected by his or her party and is responsible for scheduling bills and rounding up votes on behalf of the party’s position on legisla-tion. Working with the majority leader are the party’s whips, whose job it is to convey the party’s position to rank-and-file congresspersons. Whips count votes before they are cast and lean on any waverers whose votes are crucial to the passage of a bill. Whips also report the views and complaints of the party rank and file back to the House leadership. The minority party is also organized, poised to take over the Speakership and other key posts if it should win a majority in the House. It has a minority leader as well as party whips, who operate much like their counterparts in the majority party. THE SENATE The vice president’s only constitutionally defined job is to serve as president of the Senate. However, vice presidents usually slight their senatorial chores, except in the rare case when their vote can break a tie. Modern vice presidents are active in representing the president’s views to senators, however. It is the Senate majority leader who, aided by the majority whip, serves as the workhorse of the party, corralling votes, scheduling floor action, and influencing com-mittee assignments. The majority leader’s counterpart in the opposition, the minority leader, has similar responsibilities and is supported by the minority whip. Power is widely dispersed in the contemporary Senate. Therefore, party leaders must appeal broadly for support, often speaking to the country directly or indirectly over television.

CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP IN PERSPECTIVE

Congressional party leaders have two main goals: making policy and maintaining a majority. When policy goals are the priority, leaders will try to exercise more party discipline to achieve those goals.43 Nevertheless, despite their stature and power, congressional leaders can-not always move their troops. Power in both houses of Congress, but especially the Senate, is decentralized. Leaders are elected by members of their own party and must remain responsive to them. Except in the most egregious cases (which rarely arise), leaders cannot administer severe punishments to those who do not support the party’s stand, and no one expects members to vote against their constituents’ interests. Former Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole nicely summed up any congressional leader’s situation when he dubbed himself the “Majority Pleader.”

Until recently, party leadership in the House has been more effective. Greater pol-icy agreement within each party and greater differences between the parties encour-aged members to delegate power to their leaders. This delegation made it easier for the Speaker to exercise his or her prerogatives regarding the assignment of bills and members to committees, the rules under which the House considers legislation on the floor, and the use of an expanded whip system. Thus it became easier for a Speaker to advance an agenda that reflected the policy preferences of the majority party.44 In the last few years, however, the Republican delegation in the House has been

large and diverse. A group of members on the far right of the political spectrum chal-lenged Speaker John Boehner repeatedly, leading to his resignation in the fall of 2015. Lack of party agreement made it difficult to select a successor and challenging for the new Speaker to lead his party. Paul Ryan chose to leave Congress after serving less than four years as Speaker.

The Committees and Subcommittees

Will Rogers, the famous Oklahoman humorist, once remarked that “outside of traffic, there is nothing that has held this country back as much as committees.”45 Members of the Senate and the House would apparently disagree. Most of the real work of Congress goes on in committees, and committees are central to congressional policymaking. Committees regularly hold hearings to investigate problems and possible wrongdo-ing and to oversee the executive branch. Most of all, they control the congressional agenda and guide legislation from its introduction to its send-off to the president for signature. We can group committees into four types, the first of which is by far the most important.

1. Standing committees handle bills in different policy areas. Each house of Congress has its own standing committees. In Congress today, the typical repre-sentative serves on two committees and four subcommittees. (Subcommittees are smaller units of a committee created out of the committee membership). Senators average three committees and seven subcommittees.

2. Joint committees exist in a few policy areas, such as the economy and taxation, and draw their membership from both the Senate and the House.

3. Conference committees are formed when the Senate and the House pass differ-ent versions of the same bill (which they typically do). Appointed by the party leadership, a conference committee consists of members of each house chosen to iron out the differences between the Senate and the House bills and to report back a compromise bill.

4. Select committees may be temporary or permanent and usually have a spe-cific focus. The House and Senate each have a permanent Select Committee onIntelligence, for example. In 2015 a House Select Committee on Benghazi was given responsibility for investigating the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that resulted in the deaths of four American officials.

GETTING ON A COMMITTEE

One of the primary objectives of an incoming mem-ber of Congress is to get on the right committee. A new member of the House from Iowa would probably prefer to be on the Agriculture Committee, while a freshman senator from New York might seek membership on the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. Members seek committees that will help them achieve three goals: reelection, influence in Congress, and the opportunity to make policy in areas they think are important.46

Just after their election, new members communicate their committee preferences to their party’s congressional leaders and members of their state delegations. Every committee includes members from both parties, but a majority of each committee’s members (except for the House Ethics Committee), as well as its chair, come from the majority party in the chamber. Each party in each house has a slightly different way of picking its committee members. Party leaders almost always play a key role. Those who have supported the leadership are favored in the committee selection process, but generally the parties try to grant members’ requests for committee assign-ments whenever possible. They want their members to please their constituents and to develop expertise in an area of policy. (Being on the right committee helps members represent their constituencies more effectively and furthers their ability to engage in credit claiming.) The parties also try to apportion the influence that comes with com-mittee membership Until the 1970s, there was a simple way of picking committee chairs: the seniority

system. If a committee member had served on a committee the longest and his or her party controlled the chamber, he or she got to be chair—regardless of his or her party loyalty, mental state, or competence. The chairs were so powerful for most of the twentieth century that they could bully members or bottle up legislation at any time—and with the almost certain knowledge that they would be chairs for the rest of their careers in Congress. The more independent committee chairs are and the more power they have, the more difficult it can be to make coherent policy. Independent and powerful commit-tee chairs can represent another obstacle to overcome in the complex legislative process.

In the 1970s younger members of Congress rebelled, and as a result both parties in both branches permitted members in both houses to vote on committee chairs. Today seniority remains the general rule for selecting chairs, especially in the Senate, but there are plenty of exceptions. In addition, new rules have limited both committee and sub-committee chairs to three consecutive two-year terms; committee chairs have lost the power to cast proxy votes for those committee members not in attendance. In general, committee chairs are not as powerful as they were before the reform era. The party leadership in the House has much more control over legislation, often giving com-mittees deadlines for reporting legislation and at times even bypassing committees to draft priority legislation.among the state delegations in order to accord representation to diverse components of the party.

COMMITTEE CHAIRS AND THE SENIORITY SYSTEM

Committee chairs are the

most important influencers of their committees’ agendas. Committee chairs play the dominant roles in scheduling hearings, hiring staff, appointing subcommittees, and managing committee bills when they are brought before the full house.

Until the 1970s, there was a simple way of picking committee chairs: the seniority

system. If a committee member had served on a committee the longest and his or her party controlled the chamber, he or she got to be chair—regardless of his or her party loyalty, mental state, or competence. The chairs were so powerful for most of the twentieth century that they could bully members or bottle up legislation at any time—and with the almost certain knowledge that they would be chairs for the rest of their careers in Congress. The more independent committee chairs are and the more power they have, the more difficult it can be to make coherent policy. Independent and powerful commit-tee chairs can represent another obstacle to overcome in the complex legislative process.

In the 1970s younger members of Congress rebelled, and as a result both parties in both branches permitted members in both houses to vote on committee chairs. Today seniority remains the general rule for selecting chairs, especially in the Senate, but there are plenty of exceptions. In addition, new rules have limited both committee and sub-committee chairs to three consecutive two-year terms; committee chairs have lost the power to cast proxy votes for those committee members not in attendance. In general, committee chairs are not as powerful as they were before the reform era. The party leadership in the House has much more control over legislation, often giving com-mittees deadlines for reporting legislation and at times even bypassing committees to draft priority legislation.

Caucuses: The Informal Organization of Congress

Although the formal organization of Congress consists of its party leadership and its committee structures, the informal organization of Congress is also important. Informal networks of trust and mutual interest spring from numerous sources, includ-ing friendship, ideology, and geography. Lately, the informal organization of Congress has been dominated by a growing number of caucuses. In this context, a caucus is a group of members of Congress who share some interest or characteristic. There are about 250 caucuses, most of them in-cluding members from both parties and some including members from both the House and the Senate. The goal of all caucuses is to promote the interests around which they are formed. Caucuses press for committees to hold hearings, push particular legisla-tion, and pull together votes on bills they favor. They are somewhat like interest groups but with a difference: their members are members of Congress, not petitioners to Congress on the outside looking in. Thus caucuses—interest groups within Congress—are nicely situated to pack more punch.48 This explosion of informal groups in Congress has made the representation

of interests in Congress more direct. Some caucuses, such as the Black Caucus, the Caucus for Women’s Issues, and the Hispanic Caucus, focus on advancing the in-terests of demographic groups. Others, such as the Sunbelt Caucus, are based on regional interests. Still others, such as the Republican Study Committee, represent ideological groupings. Many caucuses are based on economic interests. For example, the Congressional Bourbon Caucus advocates for the bourbon industry by fighting proposals like a tax increase on liquor, while the Congressional Gaming Caucus deals with issues like reinvigorating the tourism industry and making sure regulations for Internet gambling are fair. Other caucuses focus on health issues or on foreign policy matters dealing with specific countries.

Congressional Staff

As noted earlier, members of Congress are overwhelmed with responsibilities. It is virtually impossible to master the details of the hundreds of bills about which they must make decisions each year or prepare their own legislation. They need help to meet their obligations, so they turn to their staffs.

PERSONAL STAFF

Most staff members work in the personal offices of individual members of Congress. The average representative has 14 assistants and the average senator has 39. In total, about 10,000 individuals serve on the personal staffs of mem-bers of Congress. (Another 400 serve the congressional leaders.)49 Most of these staffers spend their time on casework, providing services to con-stituents. They answer mail, communicate the members’ views to voters, and help constituents solve problems. Nearly one-half of the House staffers and nearly one-third of the Senate personal staff work in members’ offices in their home states or dis-tricts, not in Washington, which makes it easier for constituents to make contact with the staff. Other personal staff help members of Congress with legislative functions, including drafting legislation, meeting with lobbyists and administrators, negotiating agreements on behalf of their bosses, writing questions to ask witnesses at commit-tee hearings, summarizing bills, and briefing legislators.50 Senators, who must cover a wider range of committee assignments than members of the House, are especially dependent on staff. Indeed, members of both houses are now more likely to deal with each other through staff intermediaries than directly.

COMMITTEE STAFF

The committees of the House and Senate employ another 2,200 staff members. These staffers organize hearings, research legislative options, draft committee reports on bills, write legislation, and as we have seen, keep tabs on the activities of the executive branch. Committee staff members often possess high levels of expertise and can become very influential in policymaking. As a result, lobbyists spend a lot of time cultivating these staffers both to obtain information about likely legislative actions and to plant ideas for legislation.

STAFF AGENCIES

Congress has three important staff agencies that aid it in its work. The first is the Congressional Research Service (CRS), administered by the Library of Congress and composed of researchers, many with advanced degrees and highly de-veloped expertise. Each year it responds to more than 250,000 congressional requests for information and provides members with nonpartisan studies. CRS also tracks the progress of major bills, prepares summaries of bills, and makes information about bills available electronically. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), with about 3,000 employees, helps

Congress perform its oversight functions by reviewing the activities of the executive branch to see if it is following the congressional intent of laws and by investigating the efficiency and effectiveness of policy implementation. The GAO also sets govern-ment standards for accounting, provides legal opinions, and settles claims against the government. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) focuses on analyzing the president’s budget and making economic projections about the performance of the economy, the costs of proposed policies, and the economic effects of taxing and spending alternatives.

Committees, caucuses, and individual legislators follow bills from their introduc-tion to their approval. The next section discusses this process, which is often termed “labyrinthine” since getting a bill through Congress is very much like navigating a difficult, intricate maze.

THE LAWMAKING PROCESS

Describe the process of lawmaking in Congress. Congress’s agenda is a crowded one—members introduce about 11,000 bills in each Congress, that is, in every two-year period. A bill is a proposed law, drafted in precise

legal language. Anyone can draft a bill. The White House and interest groups are com-mon sources of bills. However, only members of the House or the Senate can formally submit a bill for consideration. The traditional route for a bill as it works its way through the legislative labyrinth is depicted in Figure 11.2.

Agenda Setting

Both the House and the Senate set their own agendas. An institution unique to the House plays a key role in setting the agenda there: the House Rules Committee. This committee reviews most bills coming from House committees before they go to the full House, giving each bill a “rule,” which schedules the bill on the calendar, allots time for debate, and sometimes even specifies what kind of amendments may be offered. Today the committee usually brings legislation to the floor under rules that limit or prohibit amendments and thus the opportunities for opponents to propose changes. The Rules Committee is generally responsive to the House leadership, in part because the Speaker of the House now appoints the committee’s members. Party leaders do for Senate scheduling what the Rules Committee does in the House. In recent years, House Republicans have operated under an informal rule when they have been in the majority. It holds that the Republicans will not allow the House to vote on a bill unless it has the support of a majority of the Republican caucus. As a result, representatives may be denied the opportunity to vote for a bill, even if a ma-jority of Republicans and Democrats combined would support it.

The Committees at Work: Legislation

With more than 11,000 bills submitted by members in the course of a two-year period, some winnowing is essential. Most bills go first to a standing committee and then are assigned to a subcommittee. Most bills are quietly killed off at this point. Members introduce some bills as a favor to a group or a constituent; others are private bills, granting citizenship to a constituent or paying a settlement to a person whose car was demolished by a postal service truck.

The whole House or Senate usually considers only bills that obtain a favorable

committee report. Committee and subcommittee staff conduct research, line up wit-nesses for hearings, and write and rewrite bills. Committees and their subcommittees produce reports on proposed legislation. A committee’s most important output, how-ever, is the “marked-up” (rewritten) bill itself, which it submits to the full House or Senate for debate and voting.

The work of a committee does not stop when a bill leaves the committee room. Members of the committee usually serve as “floor managers” of the bill, helping party leaders hustle votes for it. They are also the “cue givers” to whom other members turn for advice.51 When the Senate and the House pass different versions of the same bill, some committee members serve on the conference committee whose job it is to pro-duce a compromise.

The Committees at Work: Oversight

Congressional committees and subcommittees do not leave the scene even after leg-islation passes. They stay busy in legislative oversight, the process of monitoring the executive branch bureaucracy and its administration of policies, most of which Congress establishes by passing bills. Committees handle oversight mainly through hearings. When an agency wants a bigger budget, the relevant committee reviews its current budget. Even if no budgetary issues are involved, members of commit-tees constantly monitor how the bureaucracy is implementing a law.52 Agency heads and even cabinet secretaries testify, bringing graphs, charts, and data on the progress they have made and the problems they face. Committee staffs and committee mem-bers grill agency heads about particular problems. For example, one committee may ask the Department of Health and Human Services about problems with Medicare reimbursements to local hospitals. Another committee might focus on complaints from states regarding environmental protection regulations. In short, through over-sight, Congress can pressure agencies and, in extreme cases, cut their budgets in order to secure compliance with congressional wishes.53 Oversight also provides an opportunity to refine existing policies, such as reimbursements under Medicare, or to respond to new problems, such as regulations regarding offshore drilling for oil. Congress keeps tabs on more routine activities of the executive branch through its committee staff members. These members have specialized expertise in the fields and agencies that their committees oversee and maintain an extensive network of formal and informal contacts with the executive branch bureaucracy. By reading the volumi-nous reports that Congress requires of the executive branch and by receiving informa-tion from numerous sources—agencies, complaining citizens, members of Congress and their personal staff, state and local officials, interest groups, and professional organizations—staff members can keep track of the implementation of public policy.54 Congressional oversight grew as the size and complexity of the national govern-ment grew in the 1960s and in response to numerous charges that the executive branch had become too powerful. The tight budgets of recent years have provided additional incentives for oversight, as members of Congress have sought both to protect programs they favor from budget cuts and to get more value for the tax dollars spent on them. As the publicity value of receiving credit for controlling governmental spending has increased, so has the number of representatives and senators interested in oversight.55 Nevertheless, members of Congress have many competing responsibilities, and

there are few political payoffs for carefully watching a government agency to see whether it is implementing policy properly. It is difficult to go to voters and say, “Vote for me. I oversaw the routine handling of road building.” Because of this lack of incen-tive, Congress may overlook problems until it is too late to do much about them. For example, despite clear evidence that there were fundamental problems with how the Federal Emergency Management Agency responded to four hurricanes in 2004, when Hurricane Katrina hit the following year, Congress had still not held oversight hear-ings. Similarly, Congress missed the fact that various agencies with responsibility for overseeing the banking industry were negligent in identifying the looming problems in the financial sector that led to the recession of 2008–2009. Another constraint on effective oversight is the fragmentation of committee juris-dictions, which inhibits Congress from taking a comprehensive view of complex issue areas. For example, 10 committees and even more subcommittees have responsibil-ity for oversight over homeland security. Committees resist giving up jurisdiction over parts of the bureaucracy, even when it is reorganized, as happened when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created in 2002. In addition, the majority party largely determines if and when a committee will hold hearings. When the president’s party has a majority in a house of Congress, that chamber is generally not aggressive in overseeing the administration because it does not wish to embarrass the president. During the years when George W. Bush was president and Republicans held the majority in the House, Democrats were critical of what they regarded as timid Republican oversight of the nation’s intelligence establishment and the planning and implementation of the war in Iraq, including the treatment of prisoners. Nevertheless, the president’s partisans resisted holding the White House accountable, fearing that the Democrats would use hearings to discredit Bush. Critics charged that the failure to discern and make explicit the true costs of policy initiatives—not only on the war in Iraq but in a host of areas, from tax cuts to Medicare prescription drugs—made it impossible for Congress to do a realistic cost-benefit analysis before it voted on those initiatives.56 Once the Democrats gained majorities in Congress in the 2006 elections, the number of oversight hearings increased substantially. Significantly, the number of hear-ings diminished after the election of Democrat Barack Obama but then increased again in the House after the Republicans won a majority there in the 2010 elections.

Oversight investigations require some buy-in from the other party to be credible with the public and to persist long enough to pursue solutions. Moreover, good inves-tigations typically do not focus on blame-setting, instead seeking changes in the way agencies operate or in how they set policy. Bipartisanship has been lacking in most re-cent investigations, however.57 Nevertheless, historically congressional investigations, by bringing political pressure to bear on the White House, have been an effective check on presidential power.

Floor Debate and the Filibuster

For a bill to pass, it must receive the support of at least a majority of each house of Congress. In the House, time for debate is tightly controlled. In the Senate, it may not be.

The reason is a procedure unique to the Senate, the filibuster. The filibuster al-lows a senator who opposes a bill to engage in unlimited debate as a way to prevent the Senate from voting on that bill. Working together, like-minded senators can prac-tically debate forever, tying up the legislative agenda until the proponents of a bill finally give up their battle. In essence, they literally talk a bill to death. In 1957 Strom Thurmond of South Carolina conducted the longest filibuster ever, holding forth for 24 hours and 18 minutes to oppose that year’s Civil Rights Act. (Thurmond did not succeed in keeping the Senate from passing the bill ultimately.) The power of the filibuster is not absolute, however. Sixty members present and voting can halt a filibuster by voting for cloture on debate. However, many senators are reluctant to vote for cloture for fear of setting a precedent to be used against them when they want to filibuster. The Senate may consider a few bills with significant budgetary implications, such as the 2017 tax cuts, under a process called reconciliation. Senators cannot filibuster such legislation, making it easier to pass.

At its core, the filibuster raises profound questions about American democracy because it is used by a minority, sometimes a minority of one, to defeat a majority. While Southern senators like Strom Thurmond once used filibusters to try to prevent the passage of civil rights legislation,59 more recently, senators have used filibusters to oppose all types of legislation. Since the 1990s, filibusters have become the weapon of first resort for even the most trivial matters. In addition, the tactical uses of the filibus-ter have expanded. A senator may threaten to filibuster an unrelated measure in order to gain concessions on a bill he or she opposes. Why has a majority not changed the rules to prevent filibusters? In 2013 it did:

frustrated by how often the Republican minority filibustered or threatened to filibus-ter presidential nominations to the executive branch and the judiciary, the majority Senate Democrats reduced the number of votes required to end debate on those types of nominations from two-thirds of the Senate to a simple majority. They made one exception, nominations to the Supreme Court. In 2017, the Republican majority ended the potential to filibuster Supreme Court nominations.

Every senator knows that he or she might be in the minority on an issue. The filibuster gives such senators a powerful weapon for defending their, or their con-stituents’, interests. It is not surprising that the change in the rules on filibustering presidential nominations did not affect the basic rules on filibustering proposed legislation. Senators have decided that they are more concerned with allowing their colleagues to block legislation they oppose than with expediting the passage of legis-lation a majority favors.

Unorthodox Lawmaking Congress is typically a cumbersome decision-making body. Rules are piled on rules and procedures on procedures.60 Moreover, legislating has been made more difficult by the polarized political climate that has prevailed since the 1980s. Party leaders have sought to cope with these problems in various ways, includ-ing some already mentioned. What Barbara Sinclair has termed unorthodox lawmak-ing has become common in the congressional process, especially for the most sig-nificant legislation.61 On major legislation, party leaders in both chambers involve themselves in the legislative process much earlier and more deeply than they used to, using a variety of special procedures. For example, leaders in the House often refer bills to several committees at the same time, bringing more interests to bear on an issue but at the same time complicating the process of passing the legislation. Since committee leaders cannot always negotiate compromises among committees, party leaders have accepted this responsibility; often they negotiate compromises and make adjustments to bills after a committee or committees report legislation. Sometimes for high-priority legislation, party leaders simply bypass committees. In the House, special rules from the Rules Committee have become powerful tools for controlling floor consideration of bills and sometimes for shaping the outcomes of votes. Often party leaders from the two chambers negotiate among themselves instead of creating conference committees. Party leaders also use omnibus legislation that addresses numerous and sometimes unrelated subjects, issues, and programs to create winning coalitions, forcing members to support an entire bill in order to obtain passage of individual parts of it. The new procedures are generally under the control of party leaders in the House, but in the Senate, leaders have less leverage. Individual senators have substantial op-portunities for influence, such as using the filibuster. As a result, it is often more dif-ficult to pass legislation in the Senate.

Presidents and Congress: Partners and Protagonists

Political scientists sometimes call the president the chief legislator, a phrase that might have appalled the Framers of the Constitution, with their insistence on the separation of powers. Presidents do, however, help create the congressional agenda. They are also their own best lobbyists. Presidents have their own legislative agendas, based in part on their party’s plat-form and their electoral coalition. They must persuade Congress that their proposals should be on the congressional agenda. Usually they succeed, as Congress will usu-ally at least give their proposals a hearing.62 Presidents have many resources with which to influence Congress. They may try to influence members directly—by calling wavering members and telling them that the country’s future hinges on their votes, for example—but they do not do this often. If a president were to pick just one key bill and spend 10 minutes on the telephone with each of the 535 members of Congress, he would spend 89 hours chatting with them. Instead, presidents wisely leave most White House lobbying to staff members and administration officials and work closely with the party’s leaders in the House and Senate.

It seems a wonder that presidents, even with all their power and prestige, can push and wheedle anything through the labyrinthine congressional process. The pres-ident must usually win at every stage shown in Figure 11.2—in other words, at least 11 times—to achieve policy change. As one scholar put it, presidential leadership of Congress is at the margins.63 In general, successful presidential leadership of Congress has not been the result of the dominant chief executive of political folklore who re-shapes the contours of the political landscape to pave the way for change. Rather than creating the conditions for major shifts in public policy, the effective American leader has been the less-heroic facilitator who works at the margins of coalition building to recognize and exploit opportunities presented by a favorable configuration of politi-cal forces. Of course, presidents can exercise the power of their veto to stop legislation they oppose. Sometimes the threat of a veto can help shape legislation more to the president’s liking. Popular presidents and presidents with a large majority of their party in each house of Congress have a good chance of getting their way. Yet such conditions are not typical, and presidents often lose. Ronald Reagan was considered a strong chief executive, and budgeting was one of his principal tools for affecting public

Why did this change happen? At the core of the increased ideological distance between the parties have been increasingly divergent electoral coalitions. The partisan makeup of House districts, sometimes aided by boundary drawing by state legisla-tures, became more one-sided. Because their own districts have a clearly Republican or Democratic majority, typical members of the House no longer have to worry about pleasing those at the center of their electorates. Instead, they have to please the cen-ter of their party. One result has been that members of Congress, especially in the House, hold more extreme political views than their constituents as a group.68 In addition, liberal and conservative voters have sorted themselves into the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively. There are many fewer liberal Republicans or conservative Democrats than there were a generation ago. Thus, conservatives have been more likely to support the more conservative party and liberals the more liberal party. As supporters of each party have linked their partisan and ideological views, they have made the differences between the parties more distinctive. Moreover, party loyalty among voters in congressional elections has also increased, so the relationship between ideology and voting has become notably stronger. In short, what has happened is the following: changes in the preferences, behavior, and distribution of congressional voters gave the congressional parties constituencies that are more internally homogeneous, more divergent from one another, and thus more polarized. These constituencies in turn have elected more ideologically polarized repre-sentatives to Congress. The new members of Congress have adopted a polarized style that pays little heed to compromise.69 Moderates are less likely to run for Congress and more likely to retire if they are serving in the legislature.70 Thus it is not surprising that Congress has a difficult time agreeing, for example, on taxation or spending. The ideological differences between the parties have increased the incentives for each

to win congressional seats and oppose the other party. Thus, members of Congress are more likely to support a president of their party and oppose one of the opposition party than in the past, and they are more likely to support efforts to discredit the opposition on grounds of its incompetence and lack of integrity. Similarly, there are more partisan battles over procedural issues that can affect the agenda on the floor of a chamber, and there are more efforts to steer the congressional agenda toward issues that allow a party to differentiate itself from the opposition and thus to promote itself as a party.71 The competition for political advantage also inhibits bipartisanship. Since 1980,

there has been heavy competition to control each house of Congress. Parties with a president or majority have to focus on legislating while minority parties can focus on political messaging. Representatives and senators believe it is necessary to define and dramatize party differences to energize supporters and persuade undecided voters to support them. To do this, the minority forces roll calls that yield party-line divisions, publicize partisan controversies, raise more campaign money, and make the case for their party to take control. Even when they lose the vote, they may feel they have won politically because they are better positioned for the next election.72 CONSTITUENCY OPINION VERSUS MEMBER IDEOLOGY Members of Congress are representatives; their constituents expect them to represent their interests in Washington. In 1714, Anthony Henry, a member of the British Parliament, received a letter from some of his constituents asking him to vote against an excise tax. He is reputed to have replied in part, Gentlemen: I have received your letter about the excise, and I am surprised at your insolence in writing to me at all . . . may God’s curse light upon you all, and may it make your homes as open and as free to the excise officers as your wives and daugh-ters have always been to me while I have represented your rascally constituency.73

Needless to say, notions of representation have changed since Henry’s time. Sometimes representation requires a balancing act. If some representatives favor

more defense spending but suspect that their constituents do not, what are they to do? The English politician and philosopher Edmund Burke advocated the concept of legislators as trustees, using their best judgment to make policy in the interests of the people. Others prefer the concept of representatives as instructed delegates, mirror-ing the preferences of their constituents. Actually, members of Congress are politicos, adopting both trustee and instructed delegate roles as they strive to be both represen-tatives and policymakers.74

The best way constituents can influence congressional voting is also the most

simple: elect a representative or senator who agrees with their views. Congressional candidates tend to take policy positions different from their opponents’. Moreover, the winners generally vote on roll calls as they said they would during their campaigns.75 If voters use their good sense to elect candidates who share their policy positions, then constituents can influence congressional policy. If voters elect someone out of step with their thinking, it may be difficult to influence that person’s votes. It is a challenge for even well-intentioned legislators to know what people want. Some legislators pay careful attention to their mail, but the mail is a notoriously unreliable indi-cator of people’s thinking; individuals with extreme opinions on an issue are more likely to write than those with moderate views. Some members send questionnaires to constitu-ents, but the answers they receive are unreliable because few people respond. Some try public opinion polling, but it is expensive if professionally done and unreliable if not. On some controversial issues, legislators ignore constituent opinion at great peril. For years, Southern members of Congress would not have dared to vote for a civil rights law. In recent decades, representatives and senators have been concerned about the many new single-issue groups. Such groups care little about a member’s overall record; to them, a vote on one issue—gun control, abortion, gay marriage—is all that counts. Ready to pounce on one “wrong” vote and pour money into an opponent’s campaign, these new forces in constituency politics make every legislator nervous. When issues are visible and salient to voters and easy for them to understand, their representatives are likely to be quite responsive to constituency opinion.

Nevertheless, many issues are complex, obscure, and not salient to voters. On such issues legislators can safely ignore constituency opinion. Typically, ideology is the prime determinant of a congressional member’s vote—and it is virtually the only determinant on issues where ideological divisions between the parties are sharp and constituency preferences and knowledge are likely to be weak, such as defense and foreign policy.77 However, the stronger constituency preferences are on issues and the weaker partisan ideology is, the more likely members are to deviate from their own positions and adopt those of their constituencies.78 In short, when they have differ-ences of opinion with their constituencies, members of Congress consider constitu-ency preferences; however, they are not controlled by them.79

Lobbyists and Interest Groups

The nation’s capital is crawling with lawyers, lobbyists, registered foreign agents, public relations consultants, and others—there are more than 11,000 registered lobbyists repre-senting 12,000 organizations—all seeking to influence Congress. In 2017, lobbyists spent more than $2.5 billion on lobbying federal officials—plus millions more in campaign contributions and attempts to try to persuade members’ constituents to send messages to Washington.80 Tax legislation was prominent in 2017, and 6,243 lobbyists worked on tax issues that year.81 Many former members of Congress and staff members become lobby-ists—at much higher pay.82 For example, more than 150 former lawmakers and congres-sional aides were working for financial firms as Congress considered new regulations in response to the financial crisis that hit in 2008. These lobbyists included two former Senate majority leaders, two former House majority leaders, and a former Speaker of the House.83 Lobbyists, some of them former members of Congress, work closely with their legislative allies, especially at the committee level.84 They can provide legislators with crucial policy information, political intelligence, and, often, assurances of financial aid in the next campaign—making those legislators with whom they agree more effective in the legislative process.85 (In the debate regarding health care reform in 2009, state-ments by more than a dozen members of the House were ghostwritten by lobbyists.)86 Lobbyists also often coordinate their efforts at influencing members with party leaders who share their views. Grass-roots lobbying—such as computerized mailings to encourage citizens to pressure their representatives on particular issues—is a com-mon activity. These days, interest groups coordinate their messages across multiple platforms, including television, Web sites, YouTube videos, and social media. Interest groups also distribute scorecards that show how members of Congress have voted on issues that are important to the groups, and they threaten members with electoral retaliation if they do not support the groups’ stands. There is some evidence that lobbying pays off,87 but efforts to change policy usu-ally meet with resistance (lobbying against change is more successful than lobbying for it),88 and most efforts to change the status quo fail. Groups with the most money do not necessarily win.89 Lobbyists usually make little headway with their opponents, so, for example, the lobbyist for General Motors who argues against automobile pollution controls will not have much influence with a legislator concerned about air pollution. Concerned about lobbyists having inappropriate influence, Congress passed a law

in 1995 requiring anyone hired to lobby members of Congress, congressional staff mem-bers, White House officials, and federal agencies to report what issues they were seeking to influence, how much they were spending on the effort, and the identities of their cli-ents. Congress also placed severe restrictions on the gifts, meals, and expense-paid travel that public officials may accept from lobbyists. In theory, these reporting requirements and restrictions would not only prevent shady deals between lobbyists and members of Congress but also curb the influence of special interests. Nevertheless, slippage has oc-curred. In 2005 and 2006, for example, the country saw some congresspersons caught up in bribery scandals that involved lobbyists. Among those lobbyists was Jack Abramoff, who had been paid more than $80 million by six Native American tribes for his lobbying Congress on their behalf. He went to jail for corrupt practices that included extraordinary contributions to and expenditures on some representatives and senators. In response to the scandals, in 2007 Congress passed a new law and the House revised its ethics rules. Together, these measures strengthened public disclosure requirements concerning lob-bying activity and funding, placed more restrictions on gifts and travel for members of Congress and their staff, provided for mandatory disclosure of earmarks in expenditure bills, and slowed the revolving door between Congress and the lobbying world. There are many forces that affect senators and representatives as they decide how to vote on a bill. After his exhaustive study of influences on congressional decision making, John Kingdon concluded that none was important enough to suggest that members of Congress vote as they do because of one influence.90 The process is as complex for individual legislators as it is for those who want to influence their votes.

UNDERSTANDING CONGRESS

Congress is a complex institution. Its members want to make sound national policy, but they also want to return to Washington after the next election. How do these sometimes conflicting desires affect American democracy and the scope of American government?

Congress and Democracy

In a large nation, the success of democratic government depends on the quality of representation. Americans can hardly hold a national referendum on every policy issue on the government agenda; instead, they delegate decision-making power to representatives. For Congress to be a successful democratic institution, it must be a successful representative institution. Certainly, some aspects of Congress make it very unrepresentative. Its members

are an American elite. Its leadership is chosen by its own members, not by any vote of the American people. Voters have little direct influence over the individuals who chair key committees or lead congressional parties. In addition, the Senate is apportioned to represent states, not population, a distribution of power that accords citizens in less populated states a greater say in key decisions. As you can see in Figure 11.4, malap-portionment is high in the U.S. Senate. Nevertheless, the evidence demonstrates that Congress does try to listen to the American people. Whom voters elect makes a difference in how congressional votes turn out; which party is in power affects policies. Perhaps Congress could do a better job at representation than it does, but there are many obstacles to improved represen-tation. Legislators find it difficult to know what constituents want. Groups may keep important issues off the legislative agenda. Members may spend so much time serving their constituents as individuals that they have little time left to represent their collec-tive interests in the policymaking process. Members of Congress are responsive to the people if the people make clear what they want. For example, in response to popular demand, Congress established a program in 1988 to shield the elderly against the catastrophic costs associated with acute illness. In 1989, in response to complaints from the elderly that the program had led to increased Medicare premiums, Congress reversed itself and abolished most of what it had just created the previous year.

REPRESENTATIVENESS VERSUS EFFECTIVENESS

The central legislative dilemma for Congress is how to faithfully represent constituents while at the same time making effective public policy. Supporters see Congress as a forum in which many interests compete for a spot on the policy agenda and over the form of a particular policy—just as the Framers intended. Critics charge that Congress is too representative—so representative that it is inca-pable of taking decisive action to deal with difficult problems. The agricultural commit-tees busily tend to the interests of farmers, while committees that focus on foreign trade worry about cutting agricultural subsidies. One committee wrestles with domestic un-employment, while another makes tax policy that encourages businesses to open new plants outside of the country. One reason why government spends too much, critics say, is that Congress is protecting the interests of too many people. As long as each interest tries to preserve the status quo, Congress cannot enact bold reforms. On the other hand, defenders of Congress point out that, thanks to its being de-centralized, there is no oligarchy in control to prevent the legislature from taking com-prehensive action. In fact, Congress has enacted historic legislation such as the huge tax cuts of 1981 and 2001, the comprehensive (and complicated) tax reforms of 1986 and 2017, and various bills structuring the budgetary process designed to balance the budget.91 In recent years, Congress has also passed health care reform, important trade bills, a prescription drug addition to Medicare, and a major program for elemen-tary and secondary education. Nevertheless, Congress is hindered by the increasing partisan polarization of the public. People whose party is out of power have almost no trust in a government run by the other party, making it difficult to achieve bipartisan support for legislation and thus deadlocking Congress.92 There is no simple solution to Congress’s dilemma. It tries to be both a representative and an objective policymaking institution. As long as this is true, it is unlikely that Congress will please all its critics.

Congress and the Scope of Government

Congress is responsive to a multitude of interests, many of which desire government policies. Does this responsiveness predispose the legislature to increase the size of

government in order to please the public? Does providing constituents with pork barrel spending and casework services create too much of an incentive for members of Congress to expand government programs? One can argue that big government helps members of Congress get reelected and gives them good reason to support making it bigger. Members of Congress vigorously protect the interests of their constituents. At the same time, there are many members who agree with the conservative argument that government is not the answer to problems but rather is the problem. These individuals make careers out of fighting against government programs, although these same senators and representatives typically support programs aimed at aiding their constituents. In recent years, the Tea Party movement has helped elect many members of Congress who vigorously support scaling back the role of the federal government.

Americans have contradictory preferences regarding public policy. As we note in various chapters, they want to balance the budget and pay low taxes, but majorities also support most government programs. Congress does not impose programs on a reluctant public; instead, it responds to the public’s demands for them