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Why Congressional Reforms Fail

Reelection and the House Committee SystemBy University of Chicago Press

University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2002 University of Chicago Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0226007553
Chapter 1 - Introduction: Why Is Congressional Structure So Sticky?

The election of a GOP majority in 1994 offered the promise of a Republican revolution that would lead to dramatic changes in the House and Senate. The American people will see more reform in 24 hours on the very ?rst day . . . than theyve seen in decades, promised House Republican Conference Chair-elect John Boehner of Ohio, the day before the opening of the 104th Congress. Speaker-elect Newt Gingrich (GA) shared this view of the rules and structural changes his new majority party was preparing to impose on the House of Representatives and called the planned implementation of new chamber organization and procedures a historical [sic] occasion (Associated Press 1995). Thus, not only had the Republican leadership pledged profound legislative changes as part of their Contract with America, but they also vowed historic institutional alterations to bring about those policy changes. Among the most striking proposals was the elimination of one in every three House committees. Soon after the election, the Contract became the focus of the national political agenda. The pledge to profoundly alter the business of Congress was nearly unanimous among Republican legislators and would-be legislatorsit was signed by 367 GOP candidates for House seats, and signers subsequently composed 97 percent of the Republican House majority.

The Contract was not the ?rst sign that the new Republican leadership supported structural changes in congressional operations. During the previous term, Gingrich had repeatedly expressed wishes for substantial change in Congresss committee arrangements. For example, in a 1993 bipartisan meeting of chamber leaders to consider reform proposals to be offered by the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, Minority Whip Gingrich said he was disappointed that the reform panel had done little on the jurisdictional cleanup issue. He advocated bringing to the House ?oor a bill that would recommend alterations to existing jurisdictional arrangements, and he wanted to leave this bill open to amendment by any member of the House. Despite Gingrichs past attempts to score points with Republican faithful through political bomb-throwing, we can infer some sincerity in his desire for congressional reforms from the private forum in which it was expressed. There were few obvious political gains for Gingrich from advocating jurisdictional restructuring among such a small group of chamber leaders.

Yet the changes ultimately made in the House committee system at the start of the 104th Congress were less than revolutionary and fell far short of the elimination of one-third of the House standing committees that had been promised in the Contract. Even though a number of panels were placed on the chopping block, Republicans dissolved only three standing committees (14 percent of the existing committees) and redistributed their jurisdictions to other related panels. Among the remaining nineteen committees, only a small fraction of policy domains were reshuf?ed, most visibly by reallocating portions of the Energy and Commerce Committees jurisdiction. Although it was frequently declared that this change affected 20 percent of the panels jurisdictiona statement that originated with the Republicans chief for the committee restructuring effort, David Dreier (R-CA; see Victor 1995; Drew 1996) a study of committee hearings reveals that the change actually affected less than 5 percent of the panels policy domain (King 1997, 74). Among other changes to the chambers committee system were caps on the number of subcommittees within full committees, abolition of proxy voting in committees, term limits on committee chairs, and elimination of independent subcommittee staffs.

The relative failure of the loudly trumpeted GOP proposals to modify the system of House committee jurisdictions should be no surprise. The unful?lled promise of profound organizational change is part of modern congressional history. Since the mid-1940s, numerous reform advocates have repeatedly attempted to effect meaningful and permanent change in a system of legislative committees that is often claimed to be inef?cient, outmoded, unaccountable, and even corrupt. Usually their efforts result in little if any change, as members of Congress who are generally satis?ed with existing arrangements obstruct what can be fairly seen as relatively innocuous committee reforms.

Why do attempts at congressional committee restructuring so often fall short of the objectives of reformers? Rather than seek historically speci?c explanations for why representatives oppose committee reform movements at a particular moment, I set out to test one theory of legislative organization that can plausibly explain the recurring failure of initiatives at committee reorganization. The perspective I offer on legislators opposition to rearrangement of committee powers and jurisdictions is based on their reelection imperative and the legislative structures they create in order to ful?ll that ambition. First I analyze the composition and outputs of House committees since the mid-1940s and seek to establish the boundaries of this reelection theory of congressional organization. Then, using reform implications derived from this perspective on congressional structure and development, I analyze the outcome of the three efforts considered by scholars to be the most important attempts at House committee reorganization in the modern era.

Why Study Committees and Jurisdictional Change?

Political scientists continually document the importance of committees to the duties of the U.S. Congress, particularly its House of Representatives. In the academic literature on American politics, graduate student Woodrow Wilson perhaps obtained more mileage from his statement Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition, whilst Congress in its committee-rooms is Congress at work (Wilson [1885] 1981) than did President Woodrow Wilson from any speech he delivered or document he penned during his term of of?ce. The prominence and importance given committees is not unwarranted. In many ways congressional committees are the essential machinery that propels the legislative process. The House rules stipulate that the Speaker must refer each bill, resolution, or other measure to a committee in accordance with the subject matter of the act and the jurisdictions of chamber panels (House Rule XII, Section 2). Almost no bill is passed by the House that is not ?rst acted upon by at least one committee, if not multiple panels. Though the proportion varies by congressional term, usually 9095 percent of non-commemorative enactments are addressed in some way by either a House or a Senate committee.

Moreover, standing committees are often seen as implicitly setting the legislatures policy agenda by reporting out bills in whatever form they prefer and not reporting out those proposals that they wish to prevent from further consideration. Hence, it is not the personalities or individual policy agendas of committee members that distinguish one panel from the next; it is the jurisdictional boundaries of committees that really de?ne their importance in the legislative process. Almost every landmark legislative battle fought in Congress over the last ?fty years has at one...