Congress: Domestic Representation and Lawmaking
(Chapter 9)

Origins and Powers of the Congress
A. The origins of Congress rest in the Founders experience in colonial legislatures and the presence of Parliament in colony life.
1.  Parliament began in the twelfth century to approve the conditions for royal taxes. Parliament later gained power to press grievances against the king. John Locke supported Parliament by articulating popular sovereignty and legislative supremacy. These greatly influenced the Founders.
2.  Colonial experience conveyed the practice of standing up to governors. The Founders were also distrustful of political power being held by a few.
B.    The Continental Congress
The Congress first met on September 5, 1774. It was rather weak and could only recommend action to the colonies. The Articles of Confederation, created in 1777, gave Congress powers over war and foreign affairs. Again, the states retained most of the sovereign power.
C.    Congress and the Constitution
The federal Constitution of 1789 increased the power of Congress. Article I vested all legislative power in Congress. Article 1, section 8, gives power over commerce, taxation, the establishment of currency and post offices, and borrowing money.
1.  Congress can establish federal courts below the Supreme Court. Congress can declare war, raise and train an army. Congress shall also make 'AU laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution7 these powers.
2.  Within Congress, there are two houses with different rules. All bills of revenue originate in the House of Representatives. The Senate has responsibility for trying impeachments, approving appointments and nominations, and advising and consenting on treaties.

Membership and Service in the Congress
There are only a few constitutional requirements for members.
A.   Requirements
In the House, a member must be twenty-five years old, an US. citizen for seven years, and be a district resident. In the Senate, a member must be thirty years old, an U.S. citizen for nine years, and be a state resident.
B.   How members act in office has changed considerably. Early members spent more time at home, and Congress was not in session very long. Current members have a fidl-time commitment.
C.   Member Characteristics
The makeup of the first Congress and the current one are basically the same. Both consisted of white, wealthy, Protestant, well-educated males in their fifties. Over half were lawyers.
1.  Members are prohibited from making over 15 percent of their congressional pay from outside sources.
2.  Women make up about 10 percent of Congress. There are thirty-seven black and seventeen Hispanic members in the House.
3.  Most House members have extensive prior political experience. Many people move up the
political ladder from local politics to federal office.
D.   Tenure and Turnover
Emphasis on a political career is new. Most people settled for local or state office. As a result, turnover was high in the early Congresses. The percentage of new members in the 1800s was between 40-50 percent. Between 1946 and 1992, 92 percent of House incumbents were reelected. Seventy seven percent of Senate incumbents were reelected.
 

How Congress Has Organized to Do Its Work
A.    The first Congress had sixty-five House members and twenty-six Senators. As the population increased, the House grew larger than the Senate. 'I'his influenced the adoption of rules and procedures for conducting business.
B.    The Role of Political Parties
Parties are a vehicle for policy programs. Leaders in the parties are to organize members so party policy can be implemented.
1.  Party leaders: Responsibilities and powers
Party leaders have institutional roles in dealing with the presidency, interest groups, the press and the public. Within the party and institution, leaders distribute information, organize the party, and persuade party members to support issues.
2.  Leaders have both formal and informal powers. Formal power arises from the rules of each house. For instance, leaders have influence over comniittee memberships and resources. Informal rules originate from the centrality and necessity of leadership. Leaders possess information needed by members.
C. House of Representatives
The Speaker of the House is the presiding officer of the House. He is third in line for succession to the presidency. He is elected by a vote of all the House members.
1. The speaker's post became dominant role from 1890-1910 with Speakers Reed and Cannon. In 1910, several rules made comn-iittee chairs more influential. By 1975, more reforms gave the speaker more power.
 

2.  The speaker has many formal and informal powers such as determining if a bin win reach the floor. He is influential in determining committee assignment.
3.  The speaker's deputy is the majority leader. This leader aides the speaker by conveying in- formation to committees, other leaders, and members. In the minority party, the minority leader organizes minority support.
4.  Both parties maintain a system of assistant leaders called whips. These whips seek to maintain support among members and try to mobilize support.
5.  To assist the whips, major legislation is assigned to a leadership task force. This is made up of committee members, whips, and other leaders to centralize Speaker control over information and support.
The Senate
The Senate has an informal, collegial, and egalitarian political environment. Senators have the right to filibuster. Day-to-day operation is run by unanimous consent. This allows a single senator to disrupt business.
1. Leadership in the Senate is not as strong as compared to the House.
a. The vice-president presides over the Senate in case of a tie. The Constitution provides the position ofpresidentpro tempore to preside when the vice-president is absent.
h. Both the majority and minority leaders work together to set the agenda and broker agreements.
The Development of the Committee System
1. Early committees were temporary. Members feared committees would prevent decision- making by floor members.
a.   As the workload increased, Congress adopted permanent or standing committees by 1820. Small committees now controlled the flow of bills to the floor. By the 1880s, congressional politics was largely committee government led by powerful committee chairs.
b.   By the 1970, several reforms reduced the chair power and increased the power of sub- committees. While committees are still very important, the party leadership and subcom- mittees have a bigger influence over committee business in the 1980s-1990s.
2.  Division of labor
Committees permit the division of legislative labor to subject matter experts. Committee mem- bers are constrained by norms and expectation if they seek to be influential.
a.   Each standing committee has a fixed jurisdiction over a subject area.
b.   Specialization is a norm. Each member is expected to specialize in a subject area and serve on the appropriate committee.
c.   Seniority is a norm that rewards committee chairmanship to those who have served the longest. There have been a few exceptions in 1975 and in 1995.
3.  Types of committees
a.   Standing committees are fixed jurisdictional permanent committees. These are most important.
h.   Select committees are temporary committees that are formed to report on a specific topic. c.   Conference committees are composed of members of both houses. They resolve differences
in bills from the different houses.
d.   joint committees are composed of members of both houses. They convene to oversee a particular area of importance.
 

c.   Standing committees consist of authorizing and appropriations committees. These exist in both houses.
i.  Authorizing committees produce legislation, policy, and programs.
ii. Appropriations committees set taxing and spending levels, and fund programs.
iii. Three specific appropriations committees, Ways and Means, Appropriations, and the Rides Committees, are considered the 'power committees."
iv. Membership on a committee is very important. According in political scientist Richard Fenno, members seek three goals on committees: reelection, influence within the house, and making good public policy.
a. The priority of each goal affects which committee a member seeks appointment to. h. In the Senate, senators must serve on more committees. They pick more issues to
meet their goals.
4.  Committee and subcommittee chairs
Political influence has swung back and forth between committee and subcommittee chairs. Be- tween the 1940s and the 1960s, committee chairs were very powerful. Seniority kept members in their posts and they controlled information and agendas.
a.   The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 placed limits upon the committee chairs. The 1973 Subcommittee Bill of Rights established more subcommittees and provided them with budgets and staff.
h.   The House Republicans in 1995 repealed some of these rights. Committee chairs have powers such as appointing subcommittee chairs, controlling the subcommittee budget, and approving the majority party subcommittee staff
c.   However, the comniittee chairs have a term limit of six years, and the speaker can appoint
and remove chairs.
5. The staff structure
a.   Each member has a small staff (average 20) that assists the representative. Every House member receives an allowance to hire staff and outfit an office. Allowances are around $900,000.
b.   Senators have larger staffs and also receive an allowance. Their allowances range from $1.5 to $2.5 million depending upon the size of the state.
c.   Staff roles range from handling office correspondence and advising members to drafting legislation. Staff size was reduced after the 1994 Republican takeover. Legislative service organizations were also cut.
d.   Individual committees have their own staff.
e.   Congress created the Congressional Research Service (CRS) to supply research support for committees and members. The General Accounting Office (GAO) analyzes and investi- gates, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analyzes budget concerns.

The Legislative Process
Introduction and Assignment
Bills can only originate from a member. Bills are then assigned to a committee. House rules permit several types of biU/committee referrals. Senate rules assign a bill to one committee.
1. Single referral assigns one bill to one committee.
2. Multiple referral sends a bill to more than one committee.
3. These referrals weaken committee power over a bill. The speaker does find his power increased.
 

Committee and Subcommittee Deliberation
Committees subject a bill to public hearings, markup, and report.
1.  Public hearings allow interested parties to testify on the issues at hand.
2.  Committee members then rewrite the bill in the markup process.
3.  If the markup is approved, the committee staff report the intent, provisions of the bill, and the cost of implementation.
4.  The report and bill are then sent to the floor for debate and vote.
Agenda Setting and the Legislative Calendar
All bills reported out of committee are assigned to a calendar. Calendars are lists of bills awaiting action. They are listed chronologically.
1.  In the Senate, both the majority and minority leaders negotiate when the bills will reach the floor and how they will be discussed.
2.  In the House, the Rules Committee determines when a bill is debated and voted upon. The committee sets debate conditions and the possibility of amendments.
3.  The Rules Committee sets any of three rules: open, closed, or modified. Either can hurt or help the majority party. The rules can be suspended to allow debate on noncontroversial matters.
Floor Debate and Amendment
Floor debate follows specially structured rules. Debate starts with the adoption of the particular rule for the bill. The House the adopts parliamentary procedure as the Committee of the Whole. In the committee, rules are less restrictive. The quorum required is 100. Debate can be limited, and amendments are considered under a 'five minute' rule.
1. Floor consideration follows four stages: general debate, amending, voting, and final passage.
a.   General debate usually lasts between two to ten hours. Members are able to speak to arguments and inform any uninformed members.
b.   After the general debate, the bill is read by section. Any member can then offer an amendment on the section. Debate can resurface for argument.
c.   House Republicans adopted time-structured rules that allow consideration of amendments within a certain amount of time.
d.   In the Senate, floor debate moves by unanimous consent. Any senator can hold up debate. Thus, the Senate moves slowly and negotiates.
House/Senate Conference Committees
1. Bills have to be passed in identical versions by the House and Senate before the president can view the bill.
2. To achieve this, a conference committee of Senate and House members hammers out a finished bill.

Congressional Decision Maldng
A.   Roles
Congressmen have many competing forces upon their decision making. Representational styles center on three roles.
1. The trustee listens to constituents but uses his best judgment of the public interest.
2. The politico balances constituent concerns with his best judgment.
3. The delegate listens closely to constituent concerns and tries to follow them. This role is the one most followed.
 

Constituents
Most important to the representative are the ones who vote him or her in or out of office. Districts contain roughly 570,000 members. Within this diversity, political scientist Richard Fenno posits that there are really four levels of constituents:
1.  Personal advisors
2.  Primary true believers
3.  Those who voted for the candidate last election
4.  The geographic constituency, which is a broad overview of the entire district
5.  Public opinion, which is fluid and uninformed. Congresspersons have more leeway on issues less important to their constituents. However, in a reelection campaign, a previously benign issue may become a major problem, so Congresspersons do pay attention to opinion.
6.  Congresspersons serve constituents by overseeing the bureaucracy if constituents have problems with an agency.
Staff and Colleagues
In making decisions, representatives often turn to their staff experts and to other leaders. Partisan- ship and party leaders have always had a strong influence upon decision making.
Interest Groups and Lobbyists
Interest groups and lobbyists have vast amounts of information to supply. If a member does not have strong feelings on a bill or issue, he may trade support or opposition.
The President and the Bureaucracy
The President is required to give a "State of the Uniod'address to Congress. Based upon this, he or she submits a series of bills. The president has participated more in the budget process in recent years. Since the president has power to veto a bill, Congress must bargain with the president when making law.
 

Public Disaffection and Congressional Reforin
Congress has reformed how it does business during the twentieth century.
A.   In 1910-11, the Speaker of the House was weakened and committees gained in power. After World War 11, the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 reduced the number of standing committees and provided them with permanent staff.
B.   The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 increased public scrutiny and decision-making capabil- ity in management and budgeting.
C.   House Republicans in 1995 passed the Congressional Accountability Act. This act made committee voting records public, extended labor and workplace safety laws to Congress, and opened public committee meetings to the media.