Congress of the United States

B

The Committee System

Congress conducts most of its work through two major types of committees. The most common are standing committees, which are usually permanent. Each standing committee takes responsibility for a particular subject area. Congress creates temporary committees, usually called select or special committees, to write bills on a particular topic or to conduct investigations. Both chambers, for example, have select committees to authorize and oversee the nation’s intelligence-gathering operations, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency.

Most standing committees have the power only to authorize government action and cannot commit funding to implement the policy. Before most laws can be carried out, they must receive an appropriation of funding, processed and brought to the floor by the House and Senate appropriations committees. This occurs during Congress’s annual budget process. The amount of money in the budget depends on the level of taxes and other revenues brought in by law processed by the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee.

Much of a committee’s work is handled by a sizable number of professional staff assistants. In 1999 there were nearly 1,300 House committee aides and more than 900 Senate committee aides. Some of the staff are experts in technical areas, such as military weapons, farming, and international finance. They guide lawmakers—especially those who are new or inexperienced—through the web of issues handled by the committee.

After a bill is introduced, the presiding officer—the Speaker of the House or the president pro tem of the Senate—refers it to a specialized committee to review the measure. Most bills die at this stage when committee members simply ignore them or vote to take no action or to table (kill) the proposals. Most committees conduct much of their business through subcommittees, in which the subject matter of the committee is further broken down. Complex bills receive attention from several committees and subcommittees. A farm trade bill, for example, might be considered by the House’s agriculture, commerce, and small business committees.

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Committee review of a bill may involve hearings, staff research, revision, amendments, and then a final recommendation to approve or reject the measure. Hearings sometimes highlight support for a measure, but they can also point out flaws and spark conflicts within Congress and the country at large. Hearings usually affect the committee’s main decision, whether to report (recommend) the bill to the full chamber or to reject it entirely. Very few bills are sent to the full chamber without changes.

C

Final Action on Bills

Once a committee reports a bill or resolution, it must be placed on the Senate or House agenda before the chamber can vote on the measure. Treaties and presidential nominations for federal offices reported by Senate committees must also be put on the agenda for a vote. The Senate has a simple scheduling system, with two calendars (lists of measures ready for floor consideration). The main Senate calendar, called the Calendar of General Orders, includes all public and private bills. The other Senate calendar, the Executive Calendar, is set aside for treaties and nominations proposed by the president. The House and Senate pass many routine bills with the agreement of all members, using a procedure called unanimous consent.

Senate leaders especially seek consensus among senators concerning the arrangements of debate for controversial bills. Without a unanimous consent agreement, the Senate must debate and vote on a bill under rules that permit all senators virtually unlimited debating time. Even a small number of senators can use this rule to filibuster—to block a measure by speaking on the Senate floor for hours or even days on end. Filibusters can be halted by invoking cloture (closure), which requires a petition signed by 16 senators followed by a three-fifths vote of all senators. Because of the flexibility of the Senate’s debating rules, a bill’s sponsors usually try to postpone a vote until they have secured a unanimous consent agreement, which is sometimes called a time agreement because it limits the time for debate. Failing that, a bill’s sponsors will try to ensure that an overwhelming number of their colleagues want the bill to be considered by the chamber.

The House deliberates much faster. Nearly two-thirds of all House measures are approved through two mechanisms: unanimous consent and suspension of the rules, a procedure that passes bills quickly but requires approval of two-thirds of the chamber. Controversial bills (about one in every ten) are considered under a special rule granted by the House Rules Committee. Approved by the full chamber, these rules govern floor debate—setting time limits, limiting amendments, and sometimes barring objections to portions of the bills. Dominated by the leaders of the majority, the Rules Committee tries to arrange debate that favors the majority view of the legislation.

The bill’s managers—its sponsors or senior committee supporters—control House floor debate. These managers allocate debating time to strong supporters of the measure and other allies who ask to address the House. Leading opponents of a measure allocate the opposition’s speaking time. Debates change few minds and are usually directed at the news media and outside observers. In exchanges called colloquies, members question one another to place their views on the public record.

Finally, members vote on amendments and final passage of the bill. The Senate has about 300 recorded votes in every Congress, and the House of Representatives has 500 or more. Voting may be by voice, by division (standing to indicate support or opposition), or by individually recorded votes. Most important votes are recorded individually.

When a bill is approved on the floor of one chamber of Congress, it passes over to the second chamber for consideration. The bill again faces introduction, committee referral, committee action, placement on the calendar, floor debate, and floor vote. If the bill passes the second chamber in original form, it is sent to the president for signature or veto. If the president vetoes a measure, Congress can override the veto only through a two-thirds vote of both chambers. See President of the United States: Legislative and Judicial Responsibilities.

If the second chamber modifies the bill in any way, it must then be sent back to the first chamber. Sometimes sending the bill back and forth results in an agreement by both chambers. Or the chambers will create a conference committee, which brings together members of both chambers. The conference committee tries to agree on a compromise bill that is acceptable to both the House and the Senate. The bill produced by the conference committee must then be approved by both chambers, and then sent to the president.

IX

Influences on the Legislative Process

Power is widely scattered in the U.S. political system. Four main sources of influence on Congress are political parties, the president, interest groups, and public opinion. Of all the branches of government, Congress is the most open to pressures of all kinds.

A

Political Parties

Most lawmakers have long-term attachments to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. It is possible to run for Congress as an independent, but few independent candidates have been elected. In recent decades, only two true independents, Bernard Sanders of Vermont and Virgil H. Goode, Jr., of Virginia, have won election to Congress.

Congress is organized and led by its political parties: the Republicans and the Democrats. Even before newly elected members arrive on Capitol Hill, they are likely to have received their party’s help in running and financing their campaigns. In both chambers, parties award committee assignments to their members. The majority party provides chairpersons for all the committees and subcommittees. In the House, the majority party draws up the rules and specifies the party balance of committees. These powers to organize House business give the parties power over individual members. In the Senate, the majority and minority party leaders negotiate with each other on the size and party balance of committees, although the majority party controls a larger portion of the committee staffs and budgets.

Members tend to cast legislative votes along party lines. In the 106th Congress (1999-2001), for example, roughly half of the floor votes in the House and Senate were party-line votes in which a majority of Democrats opposed a majority of Republicans. The average Republican lawmaker followed his or her party on nine out of ten of these floor votes; the average Democrat, on eight out of ten.

B

The President

Beginning with George Washington, virtually all presidents have tried to influence lawmaking on Capitol Hill. Presidents shape the legislative agenda, and they try to persuade members of Congress to support particular bills. Presidents prevail on about three-fourths of the House and Senate votes on which they take a position. Some presidents—for example, Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s and John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s—enjoy extraordinary success in steering their proposals through Congress.

Presidents do better with members of their own party than with opposition party members. As a result, the best predictor of a president’s success on Capitol Hill is the numerical strength of the president’s party in Congress. Shifts of party control on Capitol Hill can dramatically change a president’s fortunes. For example, President Bill Clinton’s legislative success rate with the 103rd Congress (1993-1994), when his fellow Democrats controlled both chambers, was the best in nearly 30 years. After the Republicans captured Congress in 1994, Clinton’s success rate fell to a modern-day low.

A president’s skill at dealing with members of Congress can determine the fate of bills whose legislative support is unclear. Some presidents, such as Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson, work closely with members of Congress. Others, such as Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, seem ill at ease and ineffective in contacting lawmakers.

Presidents can also veto (reject) legislation that has been passed by Congress. When both houses approve a bill or resolution and send it to the president’s desk, the president has ten days to sign it into law or return it to Congress. If the president fails to either sign or return the measure within ten days, it becomes law anyway—unless Congress is out of session. If the president opts not to act on a bill for ten days after Congress has finished its session, it is automatically vetoed. This is known as a pocket veto.

On average, presidents veto about 5 percent of the measures sent to the White House, but this varies with different presidential administrations. The veto’s most potent use is as a threat. As a bill wends its way through the House and Senate, its sponsors want to know whether or not the president is likely to sign it. Congress can override a presidential veto only through a vote of two-thirds of both chambers. This high threshold makes overrides quite rare—only about 4 percent of presidential vetoes are successfully overcome by Congress. Because of the difficulty in overriding a veto, a bill’s sponsors try to secure the president’s support before Congress votes on the measure.

The veto is a blunt tool because presidents must either accept or reject the entire contents of a bill, which may include hundreds or even thousands of provisions. This is especially true of federal spending bills, which are usually made up of thousands of line items (entries for individual programs) and their corresponding funding limits. In 1996 Congress passed the Line-Item Veto Act, which gave the president the power to veto individual items in funding or tax bills. In 1998, however, the Supreme Court ruled that the act was unconstitutional.

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