(Note: these learning modules encompass the
actual class lectures, and are designed for those students who have to miss
class through no fault of their own, and also as a refresher for all students.
Bold print in the notes are what the professor writes on the board.)
How the leadership
of Congress and its institutions is selected. There is legally a new Congress every two
years, because all of the U.S. House members and one-third of the Senators are
elected in November of even numbered years. So in January, the party members of
each chamber meet in what they call their party caucus (Democrats) or
conference (Republicans). So there are four of these bodies, one for each of
the two parties in each of the two chambers. Each of these four bodies ratifies
(or changes slightly) the decisions regarding who will be the committee chairs
and the members of the committees made by a small group of their members (a
special committee, usually consisting of the most powerful and senior party
members). Congress members make their requests to this special committee of
what substantive committee they’d like to serve on. The party caucus/conference
also selects the party leaders of that chamber. These decisions are then voted
on by the entire chamber (entire House or Senate), and a party-line vote means
that the majority party wins all of the leadership positions (every committee
chair, plus the House Speaker position and the Senate Majority Leader
position). This obviously creates a very partisan and divisive situation in
Congress. Mississippi is one of the few state legislatures that avoids such
extreme partisanship, since the minority party does have a few committee
chairmanships (which include Black Caucus Democrats in the
Republican-controlled state legislature). One positive outcome in Mississippi is
that there are sometimes battles between the Mississippi governor and the state
legislature, such as over who would control the spending of the Covid-19
federal money, and the legislature often unites despite party and supports the
state legislative position (in this case, they ended up agreeing on how the
money would be spent, and it was legally appropriated by the legislature).
Other examples were the bipartisan 1987 Highway Bill, and the 1992 tax increase
for education at all levels, which were passed over gubernatorial vetoes.
The
top leadership
positions in
the House are Speaker of the House, who is Republican Mike Johnson from
Louisiana. The number two position is the Majority Leader. The third top
position is the Majority Whip, who counts the votes (asks members how they plan
to vote on bills important to the majority party, so he can decide when they
will be voted on by the floor). The minority party in the House today is the
Democratic Party, so their top position is called the Minority Leader, who
today is Hakeem Jeffries, an African American from New York state. The current
Minority Whip is a woman from Massachusetts. Democrats a few years ago created
an Assistant Democratic Leader position, which is held by an African American
man from Colorado. It was previously held by James Clyburn, an African American
from South Carolina, who made the critical decision to endorse Joe Biden right
before the critical South Carolina presidential primary (Biden easily won that
primary, reversing his early defeats in other states and soon locking up the
nomination). On the Senate side, there are two ceremonial positions- the Vice
President under the constitution is President of the Senate, but he (J.D.
Vance) votes only if there is a tie, which seldom happened until the recent
years of a closely divided Senate in partisanship, so he usually doesn’t show
up; the President Pro Tempore of the Senate is the senator of the majority
party with the longest service; this position under federal law becomes
President right after the House Speaker, but again it doesn’t do much and that
senator is more important as a Chair of an important committee; the current
President Pro Tempore is 92-year-old Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who chairs the
Senate Judiciary Committee, and who jogs 5 miles a day. The top Senate
leadership position in real power is the Senate Majority Leader, who is
Republican John Thune of South Dakota; the next position is the Majority Whip.
The minority party Democrats have the Democratic Minority Leader, who is Chuck
Schumer of New York; below him is the Democratic Minority Whip. The voting
records of these leaders are pretty ideologically consistent, pretty liberal
for Democrats and pretty conservative for Republicans.
Committees.
Committees have historically been the real work horses of Congress.
Historically, those committee members have been experts on the subjects falling
under the jurisdiction of those committees, and they have worked across party
lines to solve important social issues. Therefore, such landmark legislation as
the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Medicare and Medicaid had overwhelming and
bipartisan political support. There are usually about 20 committees in each
chamber. Some of the top committees are the Appropriations Committees in each
chamber (since they spend the money), the House Ways and Means and the Senate
Finance Committees (taxation committees), the House Rules Committee (dominated
by the majority party by a 2-1 margin, it recommends when each House bill will
be voted on and which amendments to it may be offered from the floor), and the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee (the Senate has special constitutional power
over confirmation of ambassadors and ratification of treaties). Mississippi’s
Senators (both Republicans) Roger Wicker is Chairman of the Armed Services
Committee, Chairman of the Helsinki Commission on Security and Cooperation in
Europe, and a senior member of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Committee, and Cindy Hyde-Smith is on Appropriations and Agriculture (by
assuming her seat after Senator Cochran retired early, her party conference let
her just keep his seats). Both Senators have conservative voting records, and
are also known for non-divisive constituency service efforts. Mississippi has 4
U.S. House members, 3 white conservative Republicans from white majority
districts and 1 liberal African American Democrat (Bennie Thompson). Thompson
represents the Mississippi Delta district plus Jackson, was a civil rights
pioneer in the 1960s, and is only the second African American elected to
Congress from Mississippi since Reconstruction (the first was Mike Espy).
Thompson is the ranking minority member (and former Chair) of the Homeland
Security Committee, and Chaired the January 6 Special Committee to Investigate
the Attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Now we come to an
important subject that you should know well for the next test.
How
a Bill Becomes a Law.
1) Introduction to chamber. A congress
member of that chamber writes up a bill on an issue he or she cares about, which
is often important to their district or state. Their staff (personal and
committee staff) typically helps out a lot (staff positions are important, and a
member’s Chief of Staff typically makes only one thousand dollars less than the
Congress member’s salary of $174,000; I’ve had two students serve as chiefs of
staff). The congress member asks other members of that chamber to co-sponsor
the bill, so popular bills will have many co-sponsors. The presiding
officer of the chamber will refer the bill to the committee that has
jurisdiction over it (it may even be referred to more than one committee, if
its subject laps over into multiple committees). Note that the President is from the other
branch of government, so he cannot introduce a bill, and he has to have a
congressional ally of his do so.
2) Each committee has
subcommittees, as it divides itself into even more specialized subjects, and
these subcommittees have only a subset of the committee’s members. The
committee chair sends the bill to the appropriate subcommittee, and the subcommittee
will have hearings on the bill, where they have experts testify on it
(relevant executive branch officials, interest groups, even the congressman who
wrote the bill), and will then have a markup session where they rewrite
the bill. Most bills die in subcommittee, as they are too ideologically extreme
or too poorly written to begin with; figures on 90% of bills dying in committee
are misleading, however, since you may have 5 bills on the same subject, which
the subcommittee combines into one inclusive bill. Bills that survive the
subcommittee are reported to the full committee.
3) You then have the full
committee meetings. They may have their own hearings on the bill and their
own markup session, especially if it is an important and controversial bill. Or
they might just ratify what the subcommittee has done. Typically, a full
committee hearing is like the Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearing and
the Trump impeachment hearings that occurred in Trump’s first term. Members sit
by party on either leg of a horseshoe shaped desk, all Democrats on one side,
all Republicans on the other, and they sit by seniority (new members are at the
end, highest seniority based on years serving on that committee are at the head
of the table). The most senior members ask questions and make statements first,
and they alternate from majority to minority party members. This is where
amendments (changes) to the bill are also considered, majority votes are
required, and amendments that fail often are reconsidered by the full chamber.
Bills can die at this stage also.
4) Scheduling for floor debate and votes.
Scheduling is done in the House by the House Rules Committee, and in the
Senate by the Senate Majority Leader. Obviously, they push their own
party’s issues and bills. Historically, they have also worked with the minority
party leaders, which produced more bipartisanship. The House Rules Committee
exists because the House is such a large body (435 members) that they cannot
permit unlimited debate on the floor, so committee chairs will often testify
before the Rules Committee about how many hours of debate they desire and which
amendments should be offered from the floor (typically, those that failed in
committee but had significant support); typically, you might get 4 hours of
floor debate, 2 hours for each party. This is an important stage, since this
stage may simply decide to kill a bill, and not schedule it for a vote. (In the
1950s the House Rules Committee was chaired by a segregationist Democrat from
Virginia who killed civil rights legislation by refusing to even vote on the
bills.) The majority party has twice as many members on this committee as the
minority party does, and majority votes are needed to pass a bill to the floor.
5) Floor action on the bill. The House of
Representatives will debate the bill, debate amendments, vote on each
amendment, and then vote on the bill as amended (vote on the bill after it has
been changed by amendments). The Senate has a similar process (remember that each
chamber deals only with bills introduced by members of that chamber, so you
will have two separate bills on any given issue considered at the same
time), but with only 100 members it also has the tradition of unlimited debate
(filibuster). That is where less than a majority of members can try to talk a
bill to death, if they feel strongly about the bill and they do not have a
majority of votes to kill it. Why does this happen? The Senate historically has
prided itself on being the greatest debating body in the world, and one person
can indeed sometimes make the difference by getting others to notice an
important problem. The classic movie, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, shows a
courageous amateur Senator going against a corrupt political machine by staging
a one-man filibuster, he finally physically collapses, his colleagues feel bad,
and he wins! Ah, idealism. Unfortunately, this filibuster power is
sometimes abused. The second longest filibuster was held by South Carolina
Senator Strom Thurmond (he had been the presidential candidate of the States’
Rights or Dixiecrat Party in 1948) who tried to kill the 1957 Civil Rights Act
by talking for 24 hours and 18 minutes (they dehydrate themselves beforehand).
Just last year, liberal African American Democrat Cory Booker, set a new record
of 25 hours and 5 minutes, passionately protesting Trump administration
policies (Booker had failed to win the 2020 Democratic presidential
nomination). The Senate at first
required a two-thirds vote of members to kill a filibuster, but today the vote
required is only 60 members.
6) Conference Committee. Let’s say those bills
have finally been passed the House and the Senate; but remember, they
were independently and separately written up, debated, and then passed by each
chamber, so you really have two different bills on the same subject. As such,
there is usually a conference committee, which consists of both House and Senate
members, typically the most knowledgeable and powerful members of the
committees that wrote up that bill. They take the two bills, compromise, and
come up with one bill; obviously, that bill should be supported by a majority
of the House members of that conference committee, and a majority of the Senate
members of that conference committee. Why? Well, a bill has to pass both the
House and Senate before it is sent to the President, and you now in actuality
have a new bill! Complicated, long-drawn out process? No wonder there are so
many congressional staff positions to help our congress members! This
conference committee may also have a bill vetoed by the President sent back to
them, and the committee can look at the President’s concerns and maybe rewrite
the bill so that it is more acceptable to him. (The only way that a conference
committee can be avoided is if one chamber votes to merely accept the other
chamber’s version of the bill, which happened with Trump’s Big Beautiful budget
Bill.)
7) Well, here we go, back
to the House and the Senate, where this new conference committee bill is
voted on by each chamber, separately. One change is that amendments cannot
be offered or voted on. Each chamber will just vote on this final conference
committee bill. However, once again the Senate can try to kill the bill through
the filibuster. So this is a very important step, and the conference committee
does have to work hard to make sure that it has the votes. (To avoid a possible
Senate filibuster, the House accepted the Senate version of the 1964 Civil
Rights Act.)
8) Presidential Action. Hopefully, Congress
has done such a great job that the President just signs the bill. Again,
historically, this is why hard work in committees and much bipartisanship is so
important. Despite the media focus on people yelling and screaming about
politics, and some congress members always running to the cameras, there are
many bills that are bipartisan, deal with important problems, and are enacted
into law. The trillions of federal dollars spent in 2020 on relief from the
Covid-19 virus is one example. Another example is when Trump advisor and
son-in-law Jared Kushner took the lead on the First Step, Criminal Justice
Reform bill (his father was a white-collar felon, so he had empathy for
convicts), which got over 90% support in each chamber. Ivanka Trump got paid
leave for most federal employees enacted into law. However, the President can veto
the bill, and send his objections to it back to Congress. If the President
takes no action, then the bill becomes law without his signature after ten days
(excluding Sundays); recently, President Trump let the affordable housing bill
become law without his signature, as he protested Congress’ failure to pass a
voter ID-citizenship requirement for voting.
9) Congressional Override
of Presidential Veto, requires a two-thirds vote in the House, and a two-thirds
vote in the Senate, with each chamber voting separately of course. Vetoes are
seldom overridden, as it is hard to get a two-thirds vote, so Congress
typically will carefully consider any concerns that the President has about a
bill, even early in this bill-passing process.
Trump vetoed 10 bills in his first term and 2 so far in his second term.
All of his vetoes except one were
sustained (upheld) by the Republican-controlled House or Senate, and most
involved Congressional attempts to limit U.S. support for Mideast allies with
questionable human rights records. Biden vetoed 13 bills, and all of his vetoes
were upheld. But as the Mississippi case shows, a legislature can work together
in a bipartisan fashion on an important issue and override an executive’s. The
latest vetoes overriden at the federal level were: in Obama’s last year, as he
vetoed a bill permitting the families of the 9-11 terrorist attack to sue the
government of Saudi Arabia (like Trump, he saw this as interfering with his
foreign policy freedom); Trump’s last Defense Authorization Act, which he
vetoed because it permitted the renaming of military bases with politically
incorrect names and restrained his ability to withdraw troops from foreign
nations.
10)
Even after all of this work, you’re not out of the woods yet!
Opponents of your bill might try to defund it, that is, appropriate zero money
for it. The U.S. has an annual appropriations process, so each agency
has an appropriation bill each year (this enforces the Congress’ constitutional
appropriations power, its “power of the purse”). Each Appropriations Committee
subcommittee is entrusted with one or more federal agencies, and itemizes how
the money is spent. So, if you have a new program that passed the previous 9
stages (called the authorization process), you still have to ensure that the
program is funded through the appropriations stage. Appropriations have to go
through a similar process, but the only committee handling it is the
Appropriations Committee. Plus, these bills are typically huge, so you should just
work with the subcommittee members to make sure that your bill is funded
through the proper agency and line item. Presidents might veto appropriations
bills for larger reasons than the money on one new program, however. When
Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994, they tried to cut domestic
program spending, and Clinton vetoed their appropriations bills; they didn’t
have the votes to override, so Congress had to pass appropriations bills with
higher spending levels.
Congressional norms are the rules of behavior- how
you as a Congress person should behave if you wish to be successful in
Congress. There are 7 norms:
1) Be a Workhorse, not a Showhorse. Don’t
spend a lot of time talking into the cameras, running for President, or making
speeches about every possible subject on the floor. Instead, learn the ropes
and the rules. Study the issues and problems of your constituency, and become
an expert on them. There is no short-cut for hard work and study. Senators were
pleasantly surprised when newly-elected Senator from New York, Hillary Clinton
in 2001, was quiet, did her homework, and studied the issues of her state, even
though she had been First Lady of the United States. They shouldn’t have been
too surprised that she was a Workhorse, though, since she did the same thing as
First Lady of Arkansas, when she chaired an education reform committee,
testified before the state legislature, and prompted one Republican legislator
to compliment her (“I think we may have voted for the wrong Clinton as
governor!”). Being a workhorse is important in any institution. (Several of my
alumni outworked their Harvard colleagues in a top law school and in a
governmental lobbying firm; one was so successful that our department’s main
office is named after her, while another had a law firm job lined up a year
before he graduated paying twice what we pay our professors.)
2) Specialize. Don’t be a know it all, trying to learn about every issue, and
talking about every issue on the floor. Specialize, become an expert on some
(often obscure) issue that is important to your district or state. There are so
many issues that Congress must deal with that other Congress members will then
turn to you for your specialized knowledge. Former Mississippi Senator John
Stennis became the expert on the Tenn-Tom Waterway, so that’s how that federal
waterway (dams/locks) got created. Senator Roger Wicker is a respected expert
on national defense and security policy.
3) Interpersonal Courtesy. Members should always show courtesy to one
another, which is just common sense, but it also reduces the intensity of
bitter political debates. Remember, you may need your colleague’s support on a
different bill in the future. Courtesy also shows that you are not
self-centered or arrogant, and that you have humility. One person who has
violated this norm is Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. The guy is brilliant, was
Solicitor General of Texas, so he defended conservative viewpoints in arguing
before the U.S. Supreme Court. But he really wants to have his own way. One
time, he literally called the Senate Republican Leader a liar on the floor, and
two of his senior party colleagues basically called him out. Some members have
been so exasperated with him that when the 2016 GOP presidential nomination
came down to Trump or Cruz, Senator Lindsey Graham likened it to a choice
between “being shot or poisoned.” Poor Cruz then got booed at the GOP national
convention when he failed to endorse Trump by name and just talked about the
conservative principles of the party.
4) Reciprocity. Help out your colleagues. If a colleague sponsored a bill that
is referred to your subcommittee, let her know when the bill is being
considered, give them the chance to testify on its behalf, and then let her
know why specifically the bill was voted down. If a colleague makes an
impassioned plea for a bill that you don’t care about either way, maybe defer
to their concerns and vote for it.
5) Apprenticeship. Learn the ropes, and learn the rules of your chamber and
committee. Don’t talk a lot at first, but listen to more experienced members.
Lyndon Johnson did this, he sought out a mentor to learn from, and he ended up
becoming the Senate Majority Leader in the 1950s. Trent Lott of Mississippi did
this also, and he became a leader in both chambers.
6) Institutional Patriotism. Historically, the House has bragged about its
large size, that it has 435 subject matter experts, so it really does the work
of writing up valuable legislation. The Senate brags about its smaller size
(only 100 members), so each Senator is individually important, and they can
talk as long as they want on the floor, as they are a great debating society.
Historically, both chambers have been suspicious of the other branches,
particularly of the President, so they worked to ensure that they would indeed
pass the laws and perform their constitutional duties. The House Judiciary
Committee in 1974 took their impeachment power very seriously, the Democratic
chair of that committee worked with Republicans as well as Democrats on the
process used and witnesses called in their impeachment hearings, and that
Committee did get bipartisan support for recommending impeaching President
Nixon. With the rise of partisanship over the past thirty years, we have
instead witnessed partisan impeachments, of Clinton and of Trump. What do you
think, and where do we go from here??
7) Re-Election. This is a new norm- members are expected to
strongly want to get re-elected, so Congress is set up to help them get
re-elected. Committee and floor business typically takes place only in the
three middle days of the week, so members can fly home and talk to their
constituents (and campaign). They spend so much time in their home districts
meeting with voters that they may be in session in Washington only half of the
time. This failure to be full-time lawmakers living in Washington D.C. has
meant that congress members do not socialize with each other as much as they
used to; they often don’t live in Washington, they’re not in neighborhoods
having members of the other party, and their kids don’t play with those
congress members’ kids. No wonder there is some hostility between members of
different parties! A win at all costs mentality often exists. The older
generation of congress members were different. When Mississippi Senator John
Stennis in his last re-election in 1982 was lectured to by a young campaign
consultant about what he had to do to win, to win, the distinguished elderly
statesman looked him in the eye and said, “Young man, you know, we don’t HAVE
to win.” Stennis’ campaign theme had always been to “plow a straight furrow to
the end of the line.”