Balancing the Legislative Agenda: Scheduling in the United States House of Representatives

BALANCING THE LEGISLATIVE AGENDA: SCHEDULING IN THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Edward Brooke Hasecke, M.A.

*****

The Ohio State University 2002

Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor John Wright, Adviser

Professor Herbert Weisberg ______Adviser Professor Jan Box-Steffensmeier Department of Political Science

ABSTRACT

The Speaker of the House has tremendous procedural authority over the legislative schedule. He is able to define which bills will be considered and when they will be considered. This gives him an effective veto over the schedule and allows him to define the legislative agenda. The concentration of agenda control in the hands of the

Speaker and the increased partisanship in the House has led scholars to argue that the

Speaker uses his scheduling authority to create a legislative agenda that is biased towards the majority party’s interests. In this dissertation, I challenge this portrait of the Speaker.

I argue that the Speaker is an agent of the chamber and the majority party and to satisfy these competing principals, he must balance the chamber’s institutional demand for fairness and the majority party’s demand for partisan benefits.

The partisan theory of scheduling and my balancing theory lead to different expectations about scheduling, which are the basis for the empirical analysis. First, partisan theories argue that the Speaker will frequently change the regular order of business to optimize a bill’s partisan benefits. I expect, however, that the Speaker will rarely deviate from the calendar order. Using data from the 100th and 105th Congresses, I compare the actual schedule for each legislative day to the calendar schedule. I find that the Speaker rarely deviates from the regular order of business.

Second, partisan theories argue that committees will anticipate the Speaker’s partisan preferences and show a strong partisan bias when reporting bills. I, on the other hand, argue that committees are designed to provide different benefits and that partisan benefits will not always be dominant. Using original data on all bills and resolutions sent to committee, I find that in the 100th Congress committees were biased towards securing gains-from-exchange. In the 105th Congress, committees were biased towards partisan benefits.

Third, partisan theories argue that the Speaker will use his scheduling authority to advance partisan goals. I argue that the Speaker will first facilitate the committee agenda

(whatever the legislative bias) and second schedule unreported bills that provide benefits undersupplied by the committee system so as to balance the schedule and satisfy institutional and partisan demands. I find that Speaker Wright in the 100th Congress showed the same gains-from-exchange bias of the committee system when scheduling reported bills and brought balance to the agenda by scheduling partisan bills that were not reported. In the 105th Congress, Speaker Gingrich facilitated the partisan bias of the committee system when scheduling reported bills, but balanced the schedule by providing gains-from-exchange benefits in the unreported bills he scheduled.

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TO CATHY AND EMILY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Over the course of this project, I have benefited from the intellectual support,

encouragement, and constructive criticism of many people. Yet no single person has pushed me more than my advisor, Jack Wright. I am indebted to his investment of time, his stylistic and scientific advice, and his willingness to ask the “tough” questions. He has challenged my thinking in ways that have both benefited this project and helped me

grow as a scholar.

I would like to thank Herb Weisberg for taking me under his wing early in my

graduate career. He has frequently asked questions that challenge my assumptions and

push me to think out of the box. He also has provided emotional support during the ups

and downs of graduate life.

I am grateful to Jan Box-Steffensmeier for her substantive and methodological help. She read the first paper I wrote on agenda setting procedures and helped me see the larger picture. In addition, her methodological help crystallized my way of thinking about scheduling and informs both my current and future work in this area.

I am indebted to Jim Ludwig for writing the computer program that turned thousands of HTML pages from THOMAS into text data that I could use. He saved me hundreds of hours of work. I also want to thank Paul Beck, Dean Lacy, Rich Timpone,

and participants in the Research in American Politics group at Ohio State for their comments and suggestions.

Financial support for this research came from The Ohio State University through the Presidential Fellowship and from the Department of Political Science through the

PEGS Dissertation Grant.

This project would not be where it is without the consistent friendship of my graduate colleagues Scott Meinke, William Anderson, and J. Tobin Grant. They not only read numerous drafts, but also consumed more coffee than is healthy as we discussed politics, research questions, statistical models, and life in general. I will always be grateful to them for making graduate school fun and challenging.

Finally, my greatest debt is to my wife Cathy. The importance of her love and support cannot be expressed in words. She has listened endlessly to my struggles and helped me work through the conceptual and organizational work of writing. No one gives me greater confidence and provides a safer place to fall than she. This project would not have been possible without her constant love and reassuring words.

VITA

November 25, 1974 ...... Born – Pittsburgh, PA

1997 ...... B.A. – Political Science, Wittenberg University.

1997 - 2000 ...... Graduate Teaching Assistant and Research Assistant, The Ohio State University

2000 ...... M.A. – Political Science, The Ohio State University

2000 - present...... Graduate Teaching, The Ohio State University

PUBLICATIONS

1. Meinke, Scott R. and Edward B. Hasecke. “Professionalization, Term Limits, and Partisan Control in U.S. State Legislatures.” Journal of Politics, forthcoming.

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: Political Science Concentration: American Politics Political Economy

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………. ii

Dedication …………………………………………………………………………. iv

Acknowledgments ………………………………………………………………… v

Vita ………………………………………………………………………………... vii

List of Figures …………………………………………………………………….. x

Chapters:

1. Introduction ………………………………………………………………… 1

1.1 The Scheduling Decision and Agenda Control …………………..... 3 1.2 Data ………………………………………………………………… 9 1.3 Outline of Dissertation …………………………………………….. 12

2. The Scheduling Decision ………………………………………………….. 16 2.1 The Partisan Speaker ………………………………………………. 17 2.2 An Alternative View: The Balancing Speaker …………………….. 26 2.2.1 Competing Principals …………………………………….... 27 2.2.2 Agenda-Setting ……………………………………………. 32 2.2.3 Influencing the Committee Agenda ……………………….. 36 2.3 Empirical Predictions ……………………………………………… 38 2.4 Conclusion ………………………………………………………… 41

3. Following the Calendar…………………………………………………….. 42 3.1 The Scheduling Process: Rules and Procedures …………………… 43 3.1.1 Circumventing the Regular Order of Business ……………. 49 3.2 Comparing the Actual Schedule and Calendar Order ……………... 53 3.2.1 Data ………………………………………………………… 57 viii

3.3 Results ……………………………………………………………… 59 3.4 Scheduling with Bypass Procedures ……………………………….. 61 3.5 Conclusion …………………………………………………………. 66

4. The Committee Agenda ………………………………………….………... 68 4.1 Delivering Legislative Benefits: Theoretical Predictions .………… 70 4.1.1 Gains from Exchange ……………………………………... 70 4.1.2 Information ………………………………………………… 73 4.1.3 Party Organization…………………………………………. 76 4.2 The Committee Agenda …………………………………………… 79 4.2.1 Independent Variables …………………………………….. 81 4.2.2 Results ……………………………………………………… 87 4.3 Implications ………………………………………………………... 100 4.4 Conclusion ………………………………………………………….. 104

5. Balancing the Legislative Agenda …………………………………………. 106 5.1 Information Variables ……………………………………………… 108 5.2 Scheduling Reported Bills …………………………………………. 117 5.2.1 Results ……………………………………………………… 118 5.3 Scheduling Unreported Bills ……………………………………….. 127 5.3.1 Results ……………………………………………………… 130 5.4 Conclusion …………………………………………………………. 139

6. Conclusion …………………………………………………………………. 141 6.1 Summary of Argument …………………………………………….. 142 6.2 Implications ………………………………………………………... 145

Appendices:

A. Data Collection ……………………………………………………………. 150

B. Alternative Models for Analysis in Chapter 5 ……………………...... 153

Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………….. 162

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

3.1 Scheduling Paths to the Floor of the House of Representatives ………… 45

3.2 Identifying Bills that are “Skipped” ……………………………………… 54

3.3 Actual Method Used to Count Skipped Bills …………………………….. 55

3.4 Percentage of Legislative Days Where the Actual Schedule Follows the Calendar Order Exactly ……………………………………… 59

3.5 Legislative Day Where Non-controversial Bills are Scheduled in Order But Skip Controversial Bills (June 3, 1997) …………..………… 63

3.6 Percentage of Days Where Calendar Order is Followed Exactly Controlling for Type of Bill ……………………………………… 65

4.1 Summary Statistics for Theoretically Derived Variables …………………. 82

4.2 Logistic Regression Predicting Which Bills are Reported from Committee in the 100th Congress ……………………………………. 90

4.3 Logistic Regression Predicting Which Bills are Reported from Committee in the 105th Congress ……………………………………. 92

4.4 Net Effects of Theoretically Important Variables on a Bill’s Probability of Being Reported …………………………………………….. 96

4.5 Change in the Odds of a Bill Being Reported for a Standard Deviation Increase in Theoretically Derived Variables …….…………….. 98

4.6 Net Effects of Legislative Benefits on a Bill’s Probability of Being Reported …………………………………………………………. 100 x

5.1 Committee Composition and Informational Efficiency …………………… 112

5.2 The Party Contingent Median for Each Committee ……………………….. 113

5.3 Relationship between Committee Party Medians and the Full Committee Standard Deviation ……………………………………………. 114

5.4 Relationship between Committee Party Medians and Full Committee Median ………………………………………………………... 116

5.5 Logistic Regression Predicting Which Reported Bills are Scheduled in the 100th Congress ………………………………………….. 120

5.6 Logistic Regression Predicting Which Reported Bills are Scheduled in the 105th Congress ………………………………………….. 122

5.7 Predicted Probability of Being Scheduled By Committee Party Medians……………………………………………………………… 126

5.8 Logistic Regression Predicting Which Unreported Bills are Scheduled in the 100th Congress ………………………………………….. 131

5.9 Logistic Regression Predicting Which Unreported Bills are Scheduled in the 105th Congress …………………………………………… 133

5.10 Predicted Probability of Being Scheduled By Committee Party Medians ……………………………………………………………… 136

B.1 Logistic Regression Predicting Which Reported Bills are Scheduled in the 100th Congress ………………………………………….. 154

B.2 Logistic Regression Predicting Which Reported Bills are Scheduled in the 105th Congress ………………………………………….. 156

B.3 Logistic Regression Predicting Which Unreported Bills are Scheduled in the 100th Congress ………………………………………….. 158

B.4 Logistic Regression Predicting Which Unreported Bills are Scheduled in the 105th Congress …………………………………………… 160

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Political scientists have come to accept a portrait of the modern-day Speaker as a leader of the majority party who uses his procedural rights to advance the party agenda.

The dominance of the Speaker over the agenda is a relatively recent phenomenon, growing out of the reforms of the 1970s that changed both chamber and party rules. The reforms led to a “remarkable resurgence of partisanship” (Rhode 1991, 14) in the House which shifted the balance of power away from committee chairs and placed control over the agenda in the hands of majority party leaders (Dodd and Oppenheimer 1977; Sinclair

1983; Smith 1989). The Speaker, in particular, was given greater control over the referral of bills, committee assignments, and most importantly the power to appoint the majority party members of the rules committee (Sinclair 2000). The increased authority of the

Speaker has led some scholars to claim that the Speaker today has been “granted powers greater than those granted at any time since early in the twentieth century” (Aldrich and

Rohde 2001, 269).

The Speaker’s ability to define the agenda is based on his control over the scheduling decision. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich once said that “when you are

Speaker you get to set the agenda . . . you get to decide what legislation is up.”

Anecdotal evidence abounds illustrating the ways that past Speakers have used scheduling to advance partisan goals (see Sinclair 1983). Davidson and Oleszek (2002) argue that scheduling gives the majority party the ability to “mold policy.” Sinclair

(1983, 1995, 2000) argues that scheduling decisions are made according to a host of policy and political considerations, which makes scheduling “one of the most significant powers of the majority leadership” (Sinclair 1983, 42).

The partisan view of the Speaker has created a fundamental shift in the understanding of leadership in the House. Leaders were once assumed to be inconsequential in shaping the agenda; committees were the dominant force in the House and “the term ‘House leadership’ was considered by many as an oxymoron” (Davidson

1995, 159). Today, leaders are often characterized as more important than committees in deciding which bills will be considered and when. In textbooks, it has become uncontroversial to assert that the Speaker freely changes the order in which bills are scheduled and routinely disregards the priorities set by committees in favor of strategic considerations (see Davidson and Oleszek 2002, 238-46). In fact, one theory posits that the absolute control of the Speaker over the legislative schedule causes committees to adjust their agenda so that the bills they report match the preferences of the Speaker (Cox and McCubbins 1993). In short, the conventional wisdom is that the Speaker is a powerful figure in the House who uses his scheduling authority to advance a partisan agenda.

In this dissertation, I call into question the conventional portrait of a strong, partisan Speaker. In contrast, I suggest that agenda-setting in the House is still primarily the role of the committee system. Instead of using scheduling to change the priorities of the committee system, I argue that the Speaker generally follows the committee agenda.

This is not to say that the Speaker does not adjust the schedule. The Speaker uses his authority to schedule bills that have not been reported. But instead of using his authority to pursue a partisan agenda, the Speaker uses his authority to balance the agenda set by committees.

Scholars have identified different benefits that legislators hope to obtain through institutional arrangements – gains-from-exchange, informational, and partisan (Weingast and Marshall 1988; Krehbiel 1991; Cox and McCubbins 1993). Committees can be designed to provide these benefits, but there is a “fundamental tradeoff” – producing one benefit comes at the cost of producing another (Gilligan and Krehbiel 1989, 483).

Because committees are imperfect instruments, the House must turn to different methods for capturing all three benefits. Giving the Speaker scheduling authority to dip into committee agendas allows the House to secure an agenda that provides all three benefits.

1.1: The Scheduling Decision and Agenda Control

My thesis is that the Speaker defers to the agenda set by the committee system and uses his scheduling authority, not to change the committee agenda, but rather to bring additional bills to the floor that provide benefits under-produced by the committee system. Before developing this further, it is important to clarify what I mean by

“agenda” and “scheduling.” These are terms that are widely used in the literature, but are

taken to mean different things. The Speaker’s scheduling decision can be widely construed. Setting the legislative schedule

involves advance planning of annual recesses and adjournments, coordinating committee and floor action, providing a steady and predictable weekly agenda of business, anticipating legislative priorities during the end-game rush to adjourn, regulating the flow of bills to the floor during slack or peak periods, and devising a workload that takes into account members’ family needs…”(Oleszek 2001, 109).

While all aspects of the scheduling decision are interesting, I take a narrower view of scheduling. Cox and McCubbins (1993, 235) suggest that the scheduling decision is best

“encapsulated in the question, What next?” This is the basic definition adopted here.

Over the course of a Congress, the Speaker must decide which bills to consider and when to schedule them. The scheduling decision, then, is simply the decision over which bills to consider and when.

The scheduling decision defines the legislative agenda. Roughly ten percent of the bills introduced in Congress are scheduled and considered on the floor. Agenda- setting is the ability to decide which bills receive consideration. Kingdon (1995, 3) defines agenda-setting generically as a process that “narrows this set of conceivable subjects to the set that actually becomes the focus of attention.” In this way, the scheduling decision narrows the set of all introduced bills into the set of bills that actually receive consideration on the floor.1 The set of scheduled bills is the House’s agenda.

1 This definition of agenda control can be extended to committees. Committees narrow down the list of bills in their jurisdiction that they want to consider. The bills that receive committee attention are part of the committee agenda.

Control over the agenda through scheduling is based on the Speaker’s control over the three bypass procedures, which circumvent the House’s regular order of business. The regular order of business is defined by the calendar system, which is a first-in/first-out schedule determined by the order in which committees report bills to the full House. To overcome the rigidities of the regular order of business, three bypass procedures have evolved–unanimous consent, suspension of the rules, and special rules

(Bach 1990). Each of these procedures is controlled by the Speaker and can be used to schedule any bill, even if it has not been reported from committee.2 The Speaker can change the agenda, then, in two basic ways – he can change the regular order of business or he can schedule bills that have not been reported. The conventional portrait of the

Speaker and my alternative picture have different expectations for both methods of agenda control.

It is important to note that while the Speaker has the authority to set the schedule, decisions are made by the House leadership. The Speaker works with the Majority

Leader and Majority Whip along with the Rules committee and other House leaders when setting the schedule. In fact, the Speaker generally delegates the scheduling decision to the Majority Leader (Sinclair 1983, 1995). In addition, since special rules are created by the Rules committee, the Speaker is not directly involved in every rules decision. The schedule, then, is the product of the leadership. However, the Speaker is recognized as the leader of the party and he ultimately holds the procedural authority to implement the

2 Unanimous consent and suspension of the rules are controlled by the Speaker’s right of recognition. Special rules are indirectly controlled by the Speaker’s ability to appoint majority party members to the Rules committee. More details can be found in Chapter 3.

leadership’s scheduling decisions. Therefore, it makes sense to simplify the exposition

and subsume the decisions by the Rules committee, the Majority Leader, and the full leadership under the Speaker’s scheduling decision.

The partisan theory of scheduling expects the Speaker to actively change the regular order of business. The regular order is the product of a decentralized process.

Each committee has jurisdiction over a policy area and there is not necessarily coordination between committee chairs over which bills to report and when. Even if committees report the bills that are the most preferred by the Speaker (see Cox and

McCubbins 1993), it is improbable that they will be in an order that gives the majority party the most benefits. Therefore, the partisan view expects the Speaker to use bypass procedures and rearrange the regular order to optimize the party’s advantage.

In contrast, I argue that agenda control remains with the committee system. Over a century ago, Wilson characterized the House as “government by the chairmen of the standing committees of Congress” ([1885] 1956, 102). While the reforms of the 1970s increased the Speaker’s ability to set the legislative agenda, all we have is anecdotal and indirect evidence that the Speaker uses his authority to change the agenda set by the committee system.3 Krehbiel and Rivers (1990) remind us that “institutional possibilities

are one thing while incentives to exploit them are quite another” (554). It is possible,

3 For anecdotal evidence of agenda control see Sinclair 1983 and 1995, Rohde 1991, and Pitney and Connelly 1995. Indirect evidence is given by the dominance of bypass procedures in scheduling legislation. Generally, scholars emphasize the partisan advantages that can be gained by using bypass procedures (Bach 1990; Bach and Smith 1988). However, there is no evidence that bypass procedures are used to change the agenda set by committees. As I show in Chapter 3, bypass procedures rarely change the regular order of business.

then, that the Speaker follows the committee agenda despite his ability to change it. The

Speaker is an elected leader of the House and has institutional, as well as partisan,

responsibilities (Peters 1995a). Since the committee agenda reflects the priorities of

members within individual jurisdictions, tampering with the committee agenda can have

political costs for the Speaker – members may view the Speaker’s decision as violating

their institutional demand for fairness. Perhaps the best strategy for the Speaker is to

follow the agenda set by the committees.

I argue that the Speaker follows the regular order of business set by the committee

system. Further, I suggest that this is independent of the types of benefits produced by committees. Cox and McCubbins (1993) suggest differently. They argue that committees can anticipate the Speaker’s partisan preferences and so there may not be a need for “active” control of the agenda. Their argument has two implications. First,

committees must show a preference for partisan benefits over other benefits. Second, the

Speaker will only follow the agenda when committees produce partisan benefits

(“automatic pilot”) and will change the agenda if committees produce different benefits

(“active control”). My claim is that the Speaker will follow the committee agenda

regardless of whether or not committees show a partisan preference.

Following the committee agenda, however, does not preclude the Speaker from

affecting the final agenda. Bypass procedures can be used to schedule bills that have not

been reported from committee. In fact, roughly half of the bills scheduled in the House

are not reported.4 Since the Speaker is responsible for bringing these bills to the floor,

the Speaker is responsible for defining a large part of the agenda. The difference between

the partisan picture of the Speaker and my thesis lies in the types of bills the Speaker

adds to the agenda.

The literature is virtually silent on how bypass procedures are used to circumvent

committees. When textbooks discuss bypassing a committee they outline the discharge

procedure, which requires a majority of members to sign a petition that extracts a bill

from committee.5 Empirical studies and theoretical models almost unanimously assume

that bills are reported from committee. The datasets either exclusively include bills that

are reported or the models assume that the traditional textbook process is followed.6

However, despite no explicit claims about scheduling unreported bills, the spirit of the argument implies that the Speaker will use his authority to supplement the agenda with partisan gains.

In contrast, I argue that the Speaker’s role is not to advance a party agenda, but rather to create a legislative agenda that provides gains-from-exchange, informational, and partisan benefits. The literature on legislative organization has emphasized the

4 This estimate comes from the data I collected on the 100th and 105th Congresses. See Chapter 3, Figure 1 for details.

5 It is a little more complex than this. See Chapter 3 for more details.

6 Datasets typically include a subset of the bills scheduled. Sinclair (1994) analyzes bills on Congressional Quarterly’s list of important legislation and key votes. Krehbiel (1991) analyzes all bills where a special order was requested or granted. Cox and McCubbins (1993) exclude bills considered under suspension and assume that bills follow the textbook path of report, special rule, floor consideration.

tradeoff between securing these benefits (see Sinclair 1994). Committees can be

designed to produce particular benefits, but it often comes at the expense of other

benefits. Recognizing that committees will not fully supply all three benefits, committee members are willing to give up some jurisdictional control so that the Speaker can balance the agenda. I expect, then, that the Speaker will use his authority to schedule unreported bills that complement the set of bills in the regular order of business.

My theory of scheduling paints a dramatically different picture of legislative politics than the partisan view. The Speaker is not a strong leader who uses his authority to advance partisan goals. Rather, the Speaker is restrained. While the conventional wisdom is that the Speaker has used his post-reform scheduling power to usurp the agenda setting power of the House, I argue that committees remain the driving force of the agenda in the House. Instead, the Speaker uses his scheduling power to balance the final agenda so that the set of bills considered provide gains-from-exchange, informational, and partisan benefits.

1.2: Data

My theory of scheduling is general in the sense that it is intended to explain scheduling decisions over all bills. This approach differs from other studies of Congress in two important, although related, ways. First, I do not make a theoretical distinction between controversial and non-controversial bills. Generally, research on Congress excludes non-controversial bills because they are considered “trivial” and of little importance or interest. However, non-controversial bills make up the majority of legislation passed in the House. If these bills are truly of little importance, then why does

the House bother with them? The reason is that they are important to individual

members. A bill that renames a post office may not be important in terms of the national

agenda, but it is important for the member who is able to unveil the new name in a public

ceremony and “claim credit” for honoring a local or national hero (Mayhew 1974). If the

Speaker’s scheduling decision is a function of the interests of the members of the House, then it is important to include in the analysis all bills that matter to individual members.

Second, I do not limit the analysis to House bills (H.R.). Instead, I include all

bills that have the potential to be scheduled in the House. This means all types of House

bills and resolutions (House, Joint, and Concurrent). As well as Senate bills and

resolutions (Joint and Concurrent) that have passed the Senate.7 I include these for the

same reason I include non-controversial bills. Resolutions deal with a different type of

legislation, but they are no less important for members. Concurrent Resolutions that

“express the sense of Congress” are political statements that have real-world

implications. Joint Resolutions that propose constitutional amendments or commemorate

certain individuals mean something to the members that introduce them. Including these

bills in the analysis is essential for understanding the scheduling decision.

To test my scheduling theory, I have collected original data from the 100th and

105th Congresses. The dataset includes every bill and resolution proposed in the House

and every bill and resolution (joint and concurrent) that passed the Senate. This creates

an original dataset with over 19,500 bills. The 100th and 105th Congresses provide a

7 This excludes Senate Resolutions. House and Senate Resolutions only apply to the chamber that passed them. They are not law; rather they are used to deal with internal matters. As a result, they are not brought up in the other chamber for consideration.

stringent test of my theory because these two congresses were led by notoriously strong

and partisan Speakers. Jim Wright (D-TX) became Speaker at the beginning of the 100th

Congress (1987-88). He was known for making “minority status more painful” by using

the authority of his office to partisan advantage. He increased the use of restrictive rules

and made controversial rulings, even adjourning the House and declaring a new

legislative day to pass a Democratic welfare reform package (Pitney and Connelly 1995).

Wright’s use of power led Minority Leader Michel to exclaim “You’re getting right on

the rim where the Speaker himself is getting mighty damned autocratic” (quoted in Pitney

and Connelly 1995, 73). In an effort to stop Wright’s consolidation of power,

Representative Gingrich raised ethical charges the 101st Congress that led to Wright

leaving the House in June 1989 (Davidson and Oleszek 2002, 164).

In the 105th Congress (1997-98), it was Gingrich who was Speaker. Gingrich had transformed the speakership during the 104th Congress implementing the Contract with

America and taking a publicly confrontational strategy with the White House. The 105th

Congress was more subdued after Gingrich was formally disciplined by the House for

ethical wrongdoing. However, he pushed an agenda of “hot-button” issues and in the last

few days of the Congress the House impeached President Clinton (Davidson and Oleszek

2002, 166). After a poor showing by the GOP in the 1998 election, Gingrich withdrew

from the race for Speaker and resigned from the House.

These two Speakers are considered by scholars to be the most partisan of the

modern House (Peters 1995a, 1995b). They are notorious for exploiting their power to

advance partisan goals. If scheduling is used as a partisan tool to change committee

incentives, alter the agenda for partisan gain, and provide partisan benefits, then these two Speakers should be extreme examples. However, I demonstrate that both of these

Speakers follow the committee agenda and use their authority to schedule bills that balance the committee agenda. Instead of being pure partisans, both Speakers produce an agenda that provides gains-from-exchange, informational, and partisan benefits.

1.3: Outline of the Dissertation

The objective of this dissertation is largely empirical. I intend to show that the strong, partisan portrait of the Speaker does not fit even the most partisan Speakers in the post-reform House. However, before laying out empirical analysis, it is necessary to develop in greater detail the expectations surrounding both the partisan view of the

Speaker and my balancing perspective. I begin Chapter 2 by summarizing the partisan literature on the Speaker and drawing empirical expectations about how the Speaker will use his scheduling authority. I then develop my balancing theory. I present a principal agent perspective of the Speaker and argue that it is in the interest of the Speaker to facilitate the committee agenda and balance the final agenda by scheduling unreported bills. The empirical predictions from my theory pose alternative hypotheses that can be tested.

The first step in testing my theory is to examine the extent to which the Speaker follows the committee agenda. The House rules define the order in which bills will be considered according to the calendar system. In Chapter 3, I outline these rules and compare the regular order of business to the actual schedule set by the Speaker. Because different rules apply on different days, I examine the percentage of legislative days where

the Speaker scheduled bills in their “regular” order. I find that in the strictest test the

Speaker follows the calendar order on some days, but is more likely to change the order

than follow it.

Upon further analysis, however, I find that there is a general distinction between

scheduling controversial and noncontroversial bills. Controversial bills are reserved for

the later half of the week and noncontroversial bills are considered at the beginning.

Once this basic organization of the work week is controlled for, I find that the Speaker

frequently follows the calendar. Thus, controversial bills are taken in their calendar order

and non-controversial bills are scheduled in their calendar order. This implies a further

rationale for using bypass procedures as the primary method for bringing bills to the floor

– bypass procedures allow the Speaker to organize the work week. Thus, even though

bypass procedures are the primary method for bringing bills to the floor, the committee

agenda is preserved.

While the calendar order is generally followed, it is also the case that the Speaker

exercises discretion over the schedule. The theoretical expectations of how the Speaker uses his scheduling authority are based on the nature of the committee agenda. The partisan theory predicts that if committees favor partisan benefits, then the Speaker will generally follow the agenda. However, if committees do not favor partisan benefits, then the Speaker will change the agenda to match partisan preferences. My theory predicts that the Speaker facilitates the committee agenda and thus will reinforce the priorities of the committee system. For example, if committees have a distributive bias, then the

Speaker will schedule bills with the highest distributive content. In Chapter 4, I examine

the nature of the committee bias in each Congress. Using multivariate logit models, I

find that committees in the 100th Congress favored distributive benefits over partisan benefits; and, in the 105th Congress committees favored partisan over distributive benefits. The shift in committee tendencies is important because it suggests that the bias in committees is the result of changes in the structure of the committee system (which happened during the 104th Congress) rather than committees conforming to the Speaker’s partisan expectations.

In Chapter 5, I examine how the Speaker uses his scheduling discretion. The variation in committee bias between the 100th and 105th Congresses provides a rich test of the two theories. In both Congresses, I find that the Speaker reinforces the committee bias when scheduling reported bills. Speaker Wright reinforced the gains-from-exchange bias in the 100th Congress and Speaker Gingrich reinforced the partisan bias in the 105th.

The scheduling behavior of the Speaker raises questions about the partisan view of the

Speaker. Instead of changing the committee agenda to ensure that it supplied partisan benefits, both Speakers followed the priorities of the committees, regardless of the benefits provided. In addition, I find support for the balancing thesis. In the 100th

Congress, Speaker Wright displayed a partisan bias when scheduling unreported bills.

This balanced the distributive tendency of the committees. In the 105th Congress,

Speaker Gingrich showed a distributive bias that balanced the partisan tendency of the committees.

Taken together, the empirical evidence supports a fundamentally different view of the Speaker than the conventional notion of a strong, partisan leader. Specifically, it

supports my thesis that the Speaker facilitates the committee agenda and uses his

scheduling authority, not to change committee incentives, but rather to balance the

committee agenda by scheduling unreported bills. This has important consequences for

our understanding of the House and the legislative reforms of the mid-1970s. The post- reform Speaker has greater authority to control the schedule than any Speaker since

Cannon. However, this authority does not have the absolute partisan implications that most scholars draw. Instead of using this authority to usurp the power of committees, the

Speaker leaves agenda-setting primarily in the hands of the committee system. The

Speaker, then, is not the dominant agenda-setting force assumed by partisan theories.

Rather, the Speaker is a constrained leader whose top priorities are to facilitate the committee agenda and balance the final agenda.

CHAPTER 2

THE SCHEDULING DECISION

At the beginning of the 20th century, Speaker Cannon had more scheduling authority than at any other time in the House’s history. The Speaker’s right of recognition extended direct control over the two most common methods for bypassing the regular order of business and bringing legislation to the floor – suspension of the rules and unanimous consent. In addition, the Speaker was the chair of the Rules committee.

This gave him control over the newest procedure to bypass the regular order of business –

special rules. Cannon has reached legendary status among congressional scholars for his

dominance over the House agenda and his dramatic partisan bias.

In 1910, the House revolted against “Cannonism” and stripped the speakership of

many agenda-setting rights. What followed was a period of decentralized agenda control

where committee chairs dictated the agendas in their individual policy domains. By the

end of the 20th century, however, the Speaker’s office had regained much of the authority

it had lost. Reforms in the 1970s caused dramatic changes in the Speaker’s authority

giving the Speaker control over the agenda that has not been seen since the days of

“Czar” Cannon. Like Cannon, the modern Speaker has control over suspension of the

rules and unanimous consent through his power of recognition (Oleszek 2002). And,

while no longer a member of the Rules committee, the Speaker controls the use of special

rules by appointing loyal majority party members to the Rules committee (Oppenheimer

1977; Rohde 1991).

The increased authority of the Speaker over the schedule, combined with an

increase in partisanship over the past twenty years, has led many scholars to accept a

partisan portrait of the modern Speaker and a “top-down” understanding of agenda- setting the House. In this chapter, I summarize the rationale and data used to support this approach. I also present an alternative portrait that presents the Speaker’s scheduling decision as a balancing act. I argue that scheduling is not used to bias the agenda towards the majority party; rather, it is used to create an agenda that provides multiple legislative benefits. Further, agenda-setting is a “bottom-up” process that flows from committees.

The contrasting expectations that arise between the partisan view and my balancing portrait are the basis for the empirical analysis in this dissertation.

2.1: The Partisan Speaker

After the revolt against Cannon, agenda control in the House shifted from the

Speaker to the committees. The Speaker was removed from the Rules committee and lost control over committee assignments. Over the next few decades, committee chairs became less responsive to the policy interests of the majority party. This was especially the case in the Rules committee where the “conservative coalition” – Republicans and southern Democrats – effectively controlled legislative outcomes (Manley 1973; Brady and Bullock 1980, 1981; Robinson 1963; Bolling 1966; Jones 1968). By the 1960s, the

party was virtually inconsequential. “The majority party leadership was not without resources, but it generally lacked the institutional tools, the numerical support, and the personal inclination to confront and defeat the committee leadership” (Rohde 1991, 7).

During the 1960s, the House experienced an influx of liberal northern Democrats.

The control exercised over the agenda by the “conservative coalition” frustrated the

junior members of the party who felt their policies were supported by a majority. In the

1970s a series of reforms were implemented that restricted the power of committee chairs

and enhanced the power of the Speaker and the party leadership. The general view is that

through these reforms, “the liberals sought to reduce the power of committee chairmen,

to strengthen the party leadership, and to guarantee that the will of the majority of

Democrats was not overridden” (Rohde 1991, 14).

At first, the strengthened leadership did not achieve partisan goals. In fact, the

initial reactions by scholars suggested that on the whole the reforms weakened the control

of parties. In addition to increasing the Speaker’s authority, subcommittees were given

greater autonomy that Davidson (1981) argued shifted the House from “committee

government” to “subcommittee government.” The power given to the leadership was not

significant enough to counterbalance “the trend toward fragmentation and dispersal of

power” (Collie and Brady 1985, 275).

The weakness of the party, however, did not last long. Rohde (1991, 14) argues

that by the end of the 1970s and through the 1980s there was a “remarkable resurgence of

partisanship in the House, in floor voting and other areas.” The initial weakness of the

party was due to a divided Democratic party. However, as new issues emerged the

parties became more homogenous and the Democratic leadership began to exercise greater control over the agenda. “The combined effects of increased Democratic consensus, new institutional powers for the party leadership, and a greater willingness by leaders to use the tools at their disposal reached their maximum when Jim Wright became

Speaker in the One Hundredth Congress” (Rohde 1991, 105). Wright proposed a legislative agenda and used his authority to push it through the House.

While his successor, Thomas Foley, was less disposed to such partisanship, the

Republican takeover in 1994 built on the concentration of power in the hands of the

Speaker and the general trend towards greater partisan control. The Republicans reorganized the committee system reducing the power of subcommittees and giving greater authority back to committee chairs (Aldrich and Rohde 2001). At the same time they enhanced the Speaker’s control over the committee chairs. Given that the Speaker’s authority was initially expanded to advance a liberal Democratic agenda, “it is ironic that the pinnacle in party leadership power was achieved by a Republican – Speaker Newt

Gingrich in 1995” (Beck 1997, 311).

The Speaker’s control over the schedule is based on three key changes in

Speaker’s authority.8 First, in 1973, and again in 1977, the number of days available for the use of suspension of the rules was increased. Bills considered under suspension are

8 The three changes outlined here are not the only changes that impact agenda control. The Speaker was given greater authority over the referral process. He could refer bills to multiple committees. Joint referrals were used to send a bill to different committees simultaneously. Sequential referrals sent bills to one committee and then to another. In 1977 the Speaker was given the authority to set time limits on the first committee in a sequential referral. Multiple referral has increased the Speaker’s ability to control the agenda. However, the control does not derive from the scheduling decision, which is the focus of this study. The three changes outlined here apply to the scheduling decision.

not allowed amendments and must pass with a two-thirds vote. While this generally

restricts the use of suspension to non-controversial bills, the procedure has been controlled by the Speaker since the turn of the century (Bach 1990). Thus, it is an important “instrument by which the majority party leadership could arrange the House’s

legislative agenda” (Bach 1990, 58). The expansion in the number of days from the first

and third Monday of each month to every Monday and Tuesday created a greater

opportunity for the Speaker to rearrange the schedule. In addition, it opened the door for

using suspension to consider more controversial bills (Bach 1990; Rohde 1991).

Suspension has become a dominant part of the scheduling process. Sinclair

(1994) reports that 38 percent of the bills passed in the 95th Congress were considered

under suspension. This increased to 52 percent in the 102nd Congress. The data I have

collected show that 42 percent and 49 percent of the bills considered in the 100th and

105th Congresses, respectively, were considered under suspension. The percentage is

higher if restricted to the bills that actually passed. In addition, the use of suspension is

more controversial. Rohde (1991) shows that suspension (at least through the 100th

Congress) was increasingly used to schedule bills that received divided party line votes.

Anecdotally, suspension continues to be used for more controversial and significant bills.

For example, the 1994 Telecommunications Reform Bill was passed in the House under

suspension. Thus, the increase in the number of bills considered under suspension and

the use of suspension for more controversial bills has made the Speaker’s control over

suspension an important part of the party’s ability to dominate the agenda.

Second, in 1975 the Speaker was given the power to appoint the majority party

members of the Rules committees. This gave the Speaker control over the use of special

rules. Special rules are resolutions reported from the Rules committee that set the terms

of debate for a bill. Because special rules only require a majority vote to pass, most

controversial legislation require a special rule to bypass the regular order of business.

Control of the Rules committee gave the “conservative coalition” tremendous control

over the agenda during the 1960s. After the reforms, the Speaker’s ability to appoint

members to the committee ensured that only members loyal to the Speaker and

supportive of the leadership’s agenda would be given Rules assignments. If effect, the

Rules committee became an “arm of the leadership” (Oppenheimer 1977, 114). Rubin

(1993, 3050) goes so far as to say that “the role of Rules is to exert the power of the

Democratic House leadership on legislation to ensure that . . . the final product is a bill

reflecting the leadership’s agenda”.

Special rules have changed in nature since the 1970s reforms. Originally, special rules were open rules that did not restrict amendments. These rules had advantages over suspension because they only required a majority to pass and could be used anytime

(Bach 1990). However, this changed after the reforms. Special rules today are often restrictive, limiting the number of amendments that can be offered on the floor. Control over the Rules committee has given the party control over how debate is structured and which amendments are in order. These decisions are “crucial to the bill’s success” and give the party the ability to affect outcomes (Sinclair 2000, 22). For this reason, control

over the Rules committee was the “most important expansion of the Democratic

leadership’s power over the agenda” (Rohde 1991, 98).

The third change which solidified the Speaker’s control did not come directly from the reforms. Unanimous consent is the oldest procedure for bypassing the regular order of business (Bach 1990). Any member can rise at almost any time and ask unanimous consent that a bill be considered or passed. In 1984, however, the Speaker established control over unanimous consent by invoking his right of recognition. “The

Speaker’s power of recognition . . . is an unchallengeable prerogative of the chair”

(Oleszek 1996, 127). Requiring members to be recognized for a unanimous consent

request brought the procedure under the Speaker’s control. In effect, the Speaker decides

who is allowed to ask unanimous consent and who is denied.

Taken together, the three bypass procedures give the Speaker almost absolute

control over the scheduling process. Because bypass procedures can be used to change

the regular order of business, the Speaker can use these procedures to set his own

schedule. In the post-reform House, over ninety percent of the unprivileged bills

scheduled come to the floor through bypass procedures.9 This means that “scheduling floor activities in the House is fundamentally the prerogative of the Speaker and the majority party leadership” (Oleszek 1996, 125). In effect, control over the schedule gives

9 Privileged bills automatically have access to the floor and do not need bypass procedures to be scheduled out of order. See Chapter 3 for more details. The percentage is based on the data I collected for the 100th and 105th Congresses. See Chapter 3, Figure 1 for a complete breakdown of the various routes to the floor. The ninety percent referred to in the text is the percentage of bills that are scheduled with bypass procedures out of the bills scheduled through bypass and the regular order of business.

the Speaker a final veto over the bills that are considered. He makes the final “go/no go”

decision over whether a bill will be part of the agenda or not (Sinclair 1995).

The resurgence of partisanship in the House has motivated scholars to theorize

about the role that scheduling plays in structuring the agenda and influencing the political

dynamics of the House. Many have argued that the modern Speaker is a partisan leader

who uses his scheduling authority to advance a party agenda and bias outcomes in favor

of the majority party (Rohde 1991; Aldrich 1995; Sinclair 1983, 1995). The partisan

approach to understanding scheduling is exemplified by the “party cartel” theory

developed by Cox and McCubbins (1993). They argue that the majority party acts like a

“species of legislative cartel” that “usurp[s] the rule-making power of the House in order to endow [its] members with differential power. . . . Most of the cartel’s efforts are

centered on securing control of the legislative agenda for its members” (1993, 278). The

Speaker’s scheduling authority is an essential component for securing control of the

agenda.

The partisan view of the Speaker is based on the assumption that members are

motivated by their desire for reelection and that, at least in part, their success depends on

their “party label” (Rohde 1991) or “party record” (Cox and McCubbins 1993). Since

lawmaking involves a host of collective action and coordination issues (Sinclair 1995),

leaders can be understood as agents, hired to overcome these problems (Alchian and

Demsetz 1972; Frohlich and Oppenheimer 1978; Kiewiet and McCubbins 1991;

Salisbury 1969). Specifically, the Speaker is hired by the majority party to use his

scheduling authority to maximize the benefits for the majority party. Cox and

McCubbins (1993, 128) describe the speaker as “faced with a mixture of three

motivations: increasing their personal probability of reelection; increasing the probability

that their party secures a majority; and increasing the probability that they are reelected as

leader of their party.” In short, for his own electoral security, the Speaker uses his

authority to advantage the majority party.

In setting the schedule, the Speaker must choose which bills on the calendar

advantage the majority party members the most. This requires significant changes in the

regular order of business. “Considering legislation in the order it is listed on the calendar

would make little sense, since optimal floor scheduling dictates attention to a host of policy and political factors” (Sinclair 1995, 20). Therefore, the Speaker must use his control over bypass procedures to redefine the schedule. According to Cox and

McCubbins (1993, 236) he will not schedule bills that “worsen the status quo” for the

majority party and will “schedule first those that will take less time, effect a bigger

improvement over the status quo if passed, and have a better chance of passing.” In

short, the Speaker will rearrange the schedule to advance partisan interests.

Perhaps the most important effect of controlling the schedule is not the Speaker’s

active manipulation of the schedule, but rather the effect this control has over the

incentives of the committee system. Cox and McCubbins argue that the Speaker’s control over the scheduling decision fundamentally changes the incentives that committees face when reporting bills. Controlling the three bypass procedures gives the

Speaker a “unilateral and unchallengeable power to choose which bills reported from

committee will be slated for consideration on the floor” (Cox and McCubbins 1993, 243).

The Speaker’s scheduling veto gives committees an incentive to report bills that benefit

the Speaker the most. Since time on the floor is scarce, the Speaker has a “credible (if

typically implicit) threat” to only schedule his most preferred bills. If committees want to

have their bills reported, they must compete in producing bills that are most preferred by

the Speaker. This competition among committees biases the set of bills reported towards the Speaker’s preferences. And, since the Speaker’s preferences are based on being reelected by the majority party, the set of bills reported by the committee system will reflect the partisan bias of the Speaker.

In this view, the Speaker’s control over the schedule creates a fundamental shift in the political dynamics of the House. Before the reforms, committees controlled the agenda and “the term ‘House leadership’ was considered by many as an oxymoron”

(Davidson 1995, 159). After the reforms, the Speaker’s control over the schedule not only gave the Speaker a veto over the bills reported from committee but fundamentally changed the committee system into an agent of the leadership. This creates a type of

“automatic pilot” control in the House. The Speaker and other party leaders determine the House’s agenda and committees follow this direction. The “party cartel” portrait of legislative politics implies a “top-down” model of agenda-setting. This is a complete reversal of the “committee government” model that dominated the pre-reform literature.

Today, the term “committee government” is considered by many as an oxymoron.

Scholars contend that this period of party government is “conditional.” Party government can only occur if the parties are homogenous and distinct. Even Cox and

McCubbins (2002) argue that “positive agenda control” is “conditional,” while “negative

agenda control” is “unconditional.” Yet while this era of party government may be

“conditional,” the conditions that support party government are expected to continue.

“The homogeneity and divergence that the parties have exhibited for the last two decades should continue, and in turn so should the willingness of members to empower their party leaders in order to advance their party’s policy agenda” (Aldrich and Rohde 2001, 289).

In sum, the post-reform Speaker is understood as an agent of the majority party and, given the party’s homogeneity, has used his authority to push a partisan agenda. The

Speaker’s increased scheduling authority has allowed the majority party to usurp the agenda setting power of the committee system and, like a leviathan, take control of the

House to serve its own ends. The result is a fundamental shift from “committee government” to “party government.” The agenda is dictated by the leadership from the top-down. The House at the end of the century is much like the House at the beginning – the Speaker has strong partisan goals, he controls the schedule, and the political dynamics of the House bias the agenda towards the majority party.

2.2: An Alternative View: The Balancing Speaker

The portrait of a strong and partisan Speaker is attractive, especially since post- reform speakers have become more visible and outspoken about legislative priorities

(Davidson and Oleszek 2002). However, in this section I outline an alternative picture of the Speaker and of agenda-setting in the House. My picture differs from the “cartel” model in three ways. First, I argue that the Speaker has more than partisan considerations. In fact, the goal of the Speaker is not to implement a partisan agenda, rather to ensure that the final agenda balances partisan and institutional goals. Second,

the enhanced scheduling authority of the Speaker has not usurped the committees’

agenda-setting power. Instead, the Speaker follows the committee agenda. To ensure a

balanced agenda, the Speaker uses his authority to schedule bills that have not been

reported. In this way, the Speaker reacts to the agenda set by the committees instead of

dictating the agenda. Third, any changes in the partisan bias of the committee agenda are

a result of structural changes in the committee system, rather than changed expectations

about the Speaker’s partisan priorities.

2.2.1: Competing Principals

The Speaker of the House of Representatives is a unique office because it has

both institutional and partisan responsibilities. “As a constitutionally defined presiding

officer of the House, the Speaker has the obligation to ensure the fairness and efficiency

of the House’s deliberative process. As the leader of the House’s majority party, the

Speaker has the obligation to . . . [enact] party legislation” (Peters 1995a, 1-2). This

tension between judge and advocate is the primary struggle each Speaker faces. The institutional position of the Speaker creates a sense of responsibility to protect the institution of the House. Speaker Albert (1995, 201) writes that the speakership

demands fairness before the members. It demands flexibility in the face of circumstances. It demands steadfastness to the Constitution. It demands love for the House and respect for its ways. It demanded that of forty-five people before me. It will demand that of all who ever succeed me.

At the same time, the Speaker is the leader of the majority party. To be reelected as

Speaker, he must maintain the support of his party and make sure they remain in the

majority (Cox and McCubbins 1993). Striking the right balance between partisan and

institutional demands is important because leaning too far in one direction or the other

can have electoral consequences for the Speaker.

Most commonly, Speaker’s face consequences for pursuing extreme partisan

agendas. One example is the revolt against “Cannonism” at the turn of the century. After

the Civil War, Speakers gradually moved towards advancing partisan agendas at the

expense of the institution. Party solidarity, relatively weak presidents, and the

personality of many of the speakers of this time supported this shift which culminated

under Speaker Cannon (R-IL) and his absolute control over the agenda (Peters 1995a, 4).

“Cannonism,” and the partisan trend it represented, was rejected in 1910 when the House

revolted against Cannon and stripped the Speaker of many procedural rights.

More recently, Speakers Wright (D-TX) and Gingrich (R-GA) have been accused of being too partisan. Wright’s use of his procedural authority caused great concern among the Republican minority and some members of his party (Davidson 1995, 170).

Republicans, led by Gingrich, raised ethical charges against Wright, which led to his resignation in 1989. Almost ten years later, Gingrich found himself charged with ethical violations and after public political losses against the President and a poor Republican showing in the 1998 elections, Gingrich withdrew himself from the race for Speaker and resigned from the House (Davidson and Oleszek 2002).

The fall of Cannon, Wright, and Gingrich all illustrate the danger of downplaying the need for institutional fairness. Peters (1990, 279) writes, “Members of the House will always prefer a fair speaker to a powerful one and the speaker who forgets this places himself in harm’s way.” Pushing entirely partisan goals threatens more than the minority

party. Partisan goals come at the expense of institutional fairness, which can anger

members of both parties. Majority party members recognize that a strong partisan

leadership can be at odds with their personal goals and, while they may benefit from the

party agenda passed, they are also hurt by having to sacrifice individual goals. For this

reason, the leadership must take care to maintain institutional equality so that members

can achieve individual goals.

At the same time, ignoring partisan goals can erode support within the party.

Speaker Longworth (R-OH), who used to commute each morning with Minority Leader

John Nance Garner (D-TX), was accused of being too fair to the Democrats (Pitney and

Connelly 1995). Even Gingrich, who was responsible for the Republican takeover of the

House, faced a coup attempt in the summer of 1997 by top leaders and other junior

conservatives who believed he was compromising too much with the Democrats

(Davidson and Oleszek 2002).

The decisions of the Speaker, then, cannot be understood in purely partisan terms.

The Speaker is held to both an institutional and a partisan standard. One way to characterize the speakership is as an agent serving two different principals – the party and the chamber. Scheduling is a delicate task because the final agenda must balance the demands of two different principals. “Speakers are expected to strike an appropriate balance between these conflicting demands,” Peters (1995a, 9) writes. Leaning too far in one direction or the other can have consequences for the Speaker. “Speakers may find themselves humiliated by junior members of the minority party, as were O’Neill and

Wright; defeated for reelection, as was Foley; or crippled by junior members of the

majority party, as was Gingrich” (Dodd and Oppenheimer 2002, 54). The need for balance is even echoed by one of the most partisan speakers in the post-reform House.

Speaker Wright (1995, 223) argues that “the Speaker must protect the minority from intolerance or abuse by the majority while protecting the majority from the obstructive actions of a minority.”

My thesis is that the primary goal of the Speaker, in setting the schedule, is to ensure that there is an appropriate balance between the interests of the chamber and the interests of the majority party. This is not to say that the balance between these principals is constant. The appropriate balance can vary over time due to “contextual factors that are unique to each speakership” (Peters 1995a, 9). Understanding these factors is beyond the scope of this dissertation. The simple point is that the Speaker is not driven solely by partisan motivations. Rather, the Speaker is driven by the need to balance partisan and institutional goals. While these two principals are often in conflict with each other, the agenda that the leadership sets does not have to serve one principal at the exclusion of the other.

What are the institutional benefits that the Speaker must provide in addition to partisan benefits? The literature on institutional organization has focused on different types of benefits that members of congress seek to achieve. The general argument is that institutions are designed to provide a particular benefit. Three theories have become dominant. Party theory, as outlined above, poses one such institutional arrangement. In this view, members prefer policies that enhance the party image and improve the reelection chances of members in the majority party. Gains-from-exchange (or

distributive) theory posits a different rationale for institutions; members are most interested in securing benefits for their constituents. Information theory presents a third option arguing that members demand credible information about the consequences of legislative proposals so that they can make educated policy decisions. Distributive and information theories are both institutional benefits because all members enjoy the benefits provided – members receive benefits for their districts and members enjoy credible information to make informed choices.

My thesis implies that the Speaker is motivated to create a final agenda that provides distributive, informational, and partisan benefits. This is in line with an increasing number of scholars who argue that “congress is a multifaceted organization, one that is unlikely to be understood in terms of a single principle” (Shepsle and

Weingast 1995, 23). Maltzman (1998, 2), for example, argues that committees “attempt to please all their potentially competing principals.” He finds that the responsiveness of committees to their various principals varies over time with changes in the political context. Hurwitz et al. (2001) argue that competing principals can be satisfied within the context of a single bill. Examining the 1996 farm bill and the two agriculture appropriations bills in the 104th Congress, they find institutional and partisan dimensions within each individual bill. When it comes to serving principals, the decision over scheduling is no different than the decisions that affect committee composition or the content of legislation – the schedule can serve multiple principals.

2.2.2: Agenda-Setting

Woodrow Wilson ([1885] 1956, 69), writing over a century ago, observed that

“Congress in its committee-rooms is Congress at work.” Little has changed since then.

Committees are an indispensable part of the legislative process in the House of

Representatives. They are the workhorses of congress that serve as “little legislatures”

(Wilson [1885] 1956, 79) prioritizing bills, researching proposals, drafting and refining

legislation, and setting “the stage for legislating on the House or Senate floors”

(Groseclose and King 1998, 135).

The committee system serves “two broad purposes: individual and institutional”

(Davidson and Oleszek 2002, 199). On the one hand, committees give members of

congress the ability to serve their constituents. Sitting on a committee with jurisdiction

over policies that have direct implications for their district gives members an opportunity

to influence policy and deliver benefits to their constituents. This has electoral benefits.

Members improve their chances of reelection by “claiming credit” for obtaining

“particularized benefits” thus fulfilling the “traditional role of supplier of goods to the

home district” (Mayhew 1974, 52-55).

On the other hand, committees serve institutional functions through policy making and federal oversight. The committee system allows for a division of labor that is able to capture “gains from specialization” (Krehbiel 1991, 5). Committees allow the

House to work on multiple proposals at once, increasing the number of bills they can consider while enhancing the amount of information they can use to make decisions.

Without this specialization, the House could not process the thousands of bills and

nominations that come before it. “Committees are the means by which Congress sifts

through an otherwise impossible jumble of bills, proposals, and issues” (Davidson and

Oleszek 2002, 199).

The bills reported from committee create an agenda for the House that is executed by following the regular order of business. Procedures have been developed over the history of the House to bypass the regular order of business. The reforms of the 1970s concentrated the control over these bypass procedures in the hands of the Speaker. The standard interpretation has been that the Speaker has used this control to usurp the agenda-setting power of the committees to advance partisan goals. The reforms were motivated by frustrated liberals in the Democratic Party who felt the “conservative coalition,” which controlled the Rules committee, kept the majority party from achieving its legislative goals. Over time, the Speaker’s control of the schedule changed the incentives of the committee system so that the committee agenda itself reflected the partisan bias of the Speaker.

My intention is not to call into question the reason behind the reforms, although see Wright (2000) for an alternative to the party explanation; rather, I pose a different picture of how the Speaker uses his scheduling authority. My thesis is that the Speaker uses his authority to balance partisan and institutional demands. The tension between institutional and partisan interests is consistent with the motivation for reforming the agenda process in the House – the agenda did not supply the benefits that the majority party demanded. In response, the majority party gave the Speaker greater control over the agenda to ensure that its demands were met. This does not mean, however, that the

Speaker abandoned his institutional responsibilities. It simply means that he was given the authority to make sure that partisan interests were included.

Through the use of bypass procedures, the Speaker is able to change the schedule in two basic ways. First, he can change the order in which bills reported from committee are considered. The regular order of business defines a schedule set by the committee agenda and bypass procedures can be used to adjust that schedule. Second, he can schedule bills that have not been reported from committee. By bringing unreported bills to the floor, the Speaker supplements the committee agenda with additional bills. This second method for scheduling bills is often overlooked. Cox and McCubbins (1993,

235n), for example, restrict their scheduling model to bills “that go through the textbook sequence of report, calendar, special rule, and floor consideration.” However, it raises the possibility that the Speaker can balance the schedule without changing the committee agenda. He simply balances the committee agenda by adding additional bills to the schedule.

In my view, the agenda is still set by the committee system. Committees provide individual members with benefits that are essential to reelection. Mayhew (1974, 81-2) once commented that “the organization of Congress meets remarkably well the electoral needs of its members. . . if a group of planners sat down and tried to design a pair of

American national assemblies with the goals of serving members’ electoral needs year in and year out, they would be hard pressed to improve on what exists.” Individual members benefit from serving on committees and having control over policies in their jurisdiction. Further, committees enhance legislative productivity. Usurping the agenda-

setting power of committees does not serve the institution or the individual members well.

However, committees cannot do everything. Achieving gains-from-exchange, informational, and partisan benefits requires that committees be designed in mutually exclusive ways. For example, informational efficiency is improved by creating committees that are heterogeneous and non-outlying. However, distributive efficiency requires committees to be homogenous outliers. In designing committees, there are

“fundamental tradeoffs” between the three primary legislative benefits (Gilligan and

Krehbiel 1989, 483). If the House, acting through the Speaker, demands a balance between partisan, informational, and distributive benefits, then the committee system will always fail. The reforms of the 1970s gave scheduling authority to the Speaker to overcome the failure of the committee system to produce partisan benefits.

The Speaker’s use of his scheduling authority, however, has not been used to change committee incentives or bias the agenda towards majority party interests, as party theories claim. Instead, the Speaker uses his authority to balance the agenda produced by the committee system. In the context of the reforms, the Speaker provided partisan benefits by circumventing committees. Committees continue to set the agenda in their respective jurisdictions and in the process provide a mix of distributive, informational, and partisan benefits. To ensure that the final agenda reflects a balance between these benefits, the Speaker uses his authority to schedule unreported bills. Thus, in contrast to the top-down partisan model of agenda setting, the agenda is set from the bottom-up and the Speaker reacts to the committee agenda.

2.2.3: Influencing the Committee Agenda

I have argued that the Speaker’s control over the schedule does not induce committees to provide partisan benefits. The committee system is a massive institution where each committee is influenced by a large set of environmental factors. Committees face competing interest groups that are passionate about policies the committee controls.

Further, ideological differences create conflict and controversy. Committees are a part of iron triangles, or sloppy hexagons, that bring federal departments, committees, and pressure groups together. In addition, committees are notoriously protective of their jurisdiction and resist challenges to their agenda-setting rights. Wilson ([1885] 1956,

102) characterized the legislature as “government by the chairmen of the standing committees in Congress.” While committees do not have final say over the agenda in the

House, I agree that committees set their own agendas according to the internal dynamics of the committee.

This does not mean, however, that the majority party is unable to influence the committee agenda. At the beginning of each Congress the House defines the committee system by setting the number of committees, defining their jurisdiction, setting the ratio of majority to minority party members, and assigning members to each committee.

Through this process, the committee system can be set up to produce different types of benefits. In particular, the committee system can be biased towards partisan goals.

Members that are ideologically in line with the party leadership can be given committee chairs, important committees can have a greater proportion of majority party members, and party contingents on each committee can be assigned to reflect the median party

member (Kiewiet and McCubbins 1991; Cox and McCubbins 1993). In this way, the majority party can “stack the deck” in its favor through structural reforms.

The agenda-setting picture that I present here does not conflict with partisan deck- stacking. My argument, however, is that once the committee system is set up, the

Speaker does not influence its output through the use of scheduling. The committee system can be designed to favor gains-from-exchange, informational, or partisan benefits.

The nature of the committee system likely varies with contextual factors. Maltzman

(1998) argues that committees vary in their design according to the salience of the issues in a committee’s jurisdiction and the relative strength of the majority party over time. I expect variation to occur in the types of benefits produced by committees. Yet the

Speaker will not change the committee agenda to advance partisan benefits. Rather, the

Speaker will use his authority to supplement the committee agenda and balance the benefits delivered in the final agenda.

In sum, the portrait of a balancing Speaker is neither strong nor partisan. The agenda-setting power in the House still resides with committees. The Speaker, as an agent of the chamber, has incentives to maintain fairness by facilitating the committee agenda. The committee agenda, however, is necessarily limited. Committees cannot be designed to provide all benefits fully because there are fundamental structural tradeoffs between the three benefits. To create an agenda that provides each benefit, the Speaker supplements the schedule with unreported bills. In short, the Speaker is a relatively weak agenda-setter who encourages the legislative agenda to be defined from the “bottom-up”

and reacts to the committee agenda so as to fulfill both partisan and institutional responsibilities.

2.3: Empirical Predictions

The scheduling decision involves three different, yet interrelated choices. First, the Speaker must decide whether or not to follow the regular order of business. If there are cases where he does not follow the calendar order, he must decide second which types of bills to schedule out of order. Finally, he must decide which unreported bills to bring to the floor. In each of these decisions, the partisan theory of scheduling and my balancing theory have different expectations. These differences are the basis for the empirical analysis in the remaining chapters.

The regular order of business is defined by the committee agenda. The Speaker’s control over bypass procedures gives him the authority to change this order. The widespread belief (even from critics of the party cartel model) is that the regular order of business does not influence the actual schedule followed in the House (Bach and Smith

1988). The consensus is that, “the ‘regular order’ is irregularly used due to its inflexibility or for other reasons currently not fully understood” (Krehbiel 1991, 153n).

In contrast, I argue that the Speaker generally follows the regular order of business.

Committees produce an agenda that is valuable to the individual members and the

Speaker facilitates this agenda.

On the face, this prediction may seem untenable. After all, over 90 percent of the legislation scheduled in the House is considered under a bypass procedure. However, as many have pointed out, bypass procedures serve many different functions. Special rules

can reduce uncertainty (Bach and Smith 1988), enhance informational efficiency

(Krehbiel 1991), and protect committee logrolls (Weingast and Marshall 1988). Bypass

procedures, then, may not be used to change the regular order of business, but rather to

secure other advantages.10 Thus it remains an open question whether or not the Speaker alters the committee agenda.

This is not to say that the Speaker always follows the calendar. Not all the bills reported from committee are scheduled by the end of the session and this fact alone suggests that the Speaker deviates from the committee agenda. Party theories predict that the Speaker uses his authority to advance partisan interests. Thus, if the committee system produces bills that do not advantage the party, these bills will be vetoed. Even with committees stacked in favor of parties, there are times when committees pursue agendas of their own. Cox and McCubbins (1993, 259) write that “if there is uncertainty about what can be got away with, then probings of the boundaries of acceptable behavior can be expected, with consequent sanctions.” The sanction, in terms of scheduling, is denying access to the floor.

The balancing theory, on the other hand, does not imply that scheduling is solely used to advance the party agenda. In regards to the regular order of business, the Speaker works to facilitate the committee agenda, whatever its bias. Some bills will be skipped,

10 Here it is important to stress that my definition of agenda control is different from that defined in formal theory models. In these models, agenda setting is defined as structuring the order of alternatives so that the final outcome is the agenda-setter’s most preferred outcome (see Riker 1982, 1986). Restrictive rules are important instruments under this definition of agenda setting because they can define which amendments are available and the order in which they will be voted on. This type of agenda setting is outside the parameters of this study. I am only interested in which bills are considered and when, not the method used to consider the bill.

but the bills that are skipped will be those that are out of sync with the larger bias of the

committee system. Thus, if the committees were designed to generate distributive

benefits, the Speaker would schedule bills high in distributive content. If bills had to be

skipped, he would skip bills with little distributive benefit. In this way, the Speaker uses his scheduling authority to advance the benefits provided by committees.

Control over bypass procedures also gives the Speaker the ability to schedule bills

that have not been reported from committee. While this method of scheduling is

excluded from scheduling models and rarely referenced in the literature, there are no

explicit predictions in other work about how the Speaker uses this authority. However,

the spirit of the partisan approach and certainly the notion that the party is a “legislative leviathan” implies that the Speaker will use this scheduling approach to flood the agenda with partisan benefits. By bringing unreported partisan bills to the floor the Speaker

builds on the bias created by the committee system to further bias the agenda towards

partisan ends.

My balancing thesis suggests something much different. The Speaker schedules

unreported bills to balance the final agenda. Thus, the types of bills brought to the floor

depend on the bills reported from committee. If the committee agenda has a partisan bias

and under-produces distributive benefits, then he will see a need to add distributive bills

to the final agenda. If committees do not provide partisan benefits, the Speaker will use

his authority to bring partisan bills to the floor.

2.4: Conclusion

Scholars have come to accept a portrait of the modern Speaker as a strong partisan

that uses his scheduling authority to advance a partisan agenda. Further, the Speaker’s

control over the schedule has shifted the agenda-setting authority of the House from the committee system to the Speaker and the party leadership. I present a different picture of the Speaker. The Speaker is a unique leader in that he has institutional and partisan responsibilities. History has shown that failing to balance these two demands has electoral consequences. The Speaker’s scheduling goal, then, is not to bias the agenda toward partisan interests, but rather to balance the institutional demands for distributive and informational benefits and the majority party demands for partisan benefits.

Creating a balanced schedule does not mean that the Speaker usurps the agenda-

setting power of the committee system. Instead, the Speaker facilitates the agenda set by

committees and supplements the committee agenda with unreported bills so as to provide

a balanced final agenda. The partisan and balancing theories of scheduling have different

empirical expectations about the Speaker’s scheduling decision. In the next chapter, I

begin my empirical analysis by comparing the schedule defined by the regular order of

business to the actual schedule followed in the House in order to determine the extent to

which the Speaker follows the committee agenda.

CHAPTER 3

FOLLOWING THE CALENDAR

Congressional scholars are virtually unanimous in stating that the central power of the House leadership is the ability to schedule legislation (Bach and Smith 1988; Cox and

McCubbins 1993; Davidson and Oleszek 2000; Rhode 1991). By determining what is considered on the House floor, the Speaker is able to set the agenda for the Congress. He decides “when (if at all), what, how, and in which order measures are brought to the floor” (Oleszek 1996, 125). The Speaker’s control over the schedule has led most scholars to conclude that the regular order of business, defined by the calendar system, is no longer relevant to defining the legislative schedule (Bach and Smith 1988; Krehbiel

1991). The strength of this conclusion rests on two facts. First, the Speaker controls the three basic procedures in the House for bypassing the regular order of business – unanimous consent, suspension of the rules, and special rules. Second, virtually all legislation that is scheduled is considered using one of these procedures.

The Speaker’s advantage in setting the schedule is most often understood to be the ability to achieve partisan goals. Sinclair (1995, 210) argues that “the leaders’ aim is to schedule major legislation for floor consideration when they have the requisite votes

and when the political benefits of passage are at their height.” While the bypass

procedures are not inherently partisan,11 the party has increased its control over their use.

In the post-reform House, unanimous consent and suspension are controlled through the

Speaker’s right of recognition. Special rules are controlled because the Speaker has the

authority to appoint all the majority party members on the Rules committee. The partisan

theory of scheduling, then, assumes that the Speaker freely sets the schedule. In this

view, the Speaker will rarely follow the regular order of business. This states a null

hypothesis that can be tested.

In contrast, I argued in Chapter 2 that the Speaker has an incentive to follow the

calendar. The regular order is defined by the committee agenda and individual members

have a stake in seeing bills from their committee scheduled. The Speaker’s institutional

role as an impartial leader of the House gives him an incentive to facilitate the committee agenda. Past Speakers have been punished for pursuing personal or partisan agendas that deviate too much from the preferences of the members. Thus, I expect that the Speaker will follow the regular order of business. Testing this hypothesis against the null is the

goal of this chapter.

3.1: The Scheduling Process: Rules and Procedures

The House of Representatives has a complex set of rules that define the regular

order of business. When a bill is introduced in the House it is sent to a committee.

11 At their creation, unanimous consent and suspension were not partisan tools (Bach 1990). Special rules were created to be partisan tools. The Speaker was the chairman of the Rules committee and under Cannon special rules were created for partisan reasons. After the revolt against Cannon, party control over the committee was not automatic. The classic case is the Howard Smith who, as Chairman of the Rules committee, often frustrated the wishes of the majority (Oleszek 2001).

Committees gather information, debate various proposals, and choose the bills they want

to report for consideration by the full House. When a committee reports a bill it is placed

on a legislative calendar. A calendar is nothing more than a chronological listing of bills in the order in which they were reported. According to the rules, bills are scheduled for consideration in order, as they are listed on the calendar. 12

The only exception to this is bills that are privileged. Privileged bills are “matters

of special import to the House as an institution or to the federal government” (Oleszek

2002, 118). Five standing committees (Appropriations, Budget, House Administration,

Rules, and Standard of Official Conduct) have privileged access to the floor for specific

types of bills. Privileged bills are in order at any time, as long as there is no pending

business. Privileged bills, then, do not have to wait in their calendar order. However,

they must wait for at least three days for members to be able to read the reports. There

are exceptions to this. For example, special rules only have to wait one day before they

can be considered. Further, the House can vote to dispense with the waiting time.

The regular order of business is defined by two classes of legislation (see Figure

3.1). The first are bills that are privileged and can be called up at any time (bottom path).

The second are bills that enter the calendar system; they are reported from committee,

12 The rules are not completely clear about whether bills will be considered in the order on the calendar. For example, bills on the House calendar can be considered through the call of the standing committees. There is no way to tell which bill each committee would call and thus the order that bills on the House calendar will be considered is unclear. Davidson and Oleszek (2000, 237) state, however, that “the House rules require bills to be taken up in the chronological order listed on the calendars.” In addition, Stewart (2001, 345) refers to the calendar as “the most basic queuing device for legislation.” This implies that the order on the calendars is important. In addition, following the order on the calendars was standard practice in the early nineteenth century (Oleszek 2001, 120). Because of this historical precedent, I adopt this as the proper interpretation of the calendar order.

100th: 54% Bypass Procedures 100th: 88% 105th: 42% - Special Rules 105th: 75% - Unanimous Consent - Suspension of the Rules

100th: 34% 105th: 33% Calendar - Union - House Committee - Private Schedule - Discharge 100th: 43% 100th: 7% - Consent/ 105th: 51% 105th: 2% Corrections

100th: 2% 105th: 16% Privileged - Appropriations - Budget - House Administration - Rules th th 100 : 5% 100 : 3% - Standards of Official th th 105 : 23% 105 : 7% Conduct

Note: Percentages are calculated as the percent of all bills that are scheduled that pass through each path.

Figure 3.1: Scheduling Paths to the Floor of the House of Representatives.

placed on a calendar, and wait in the cue for their time on the floor (center path). The regular order of business, then, is basically a “first in, first out” system of scheduling that prioritizes bills based on the agenda set by the committee system.

While a calendar is a simple chronological ordering of bills, the calendar system is more complex. The calendar system is made up of five legislative calendars. When a bill is reported from committee it is placed either on the Union, House, or Private calendar. Each calendar is used for specific types of legislation. The clerk of the House automatically assigns bills to the appropriate calendar based on the language of the bill.

The Union calendar is for bills that involve raising or spending money. The House calendar is for non-money bills. The Private calendar is for bills of a private nature.

These are bills that are only applicable to an individual or specific entity.

The two other calendars are different than the first three because the clerk does not automatically place bills reported from committee on them. The Discharge Calendar is the list of bills that have been successfully discharged from committee. If a committee does not act on a bill, members of the House can sign a discharge petition to bring it out of committee. The petition requires 218 signatures. At this point, the bill is placed on the discharge calendar.

The Corrections Calendar was created in 1995 to replace the Consent Calendar.

Both calendars are for non-controversial legislation. A bill on the House or Union calendar can be placed on the Consent Calendar at the request of any member of the

House. The Corrections Calendar is a little different. The Speaker has the power to assign bills to the Corrections Calendar from either the House or Union Calendar.

Speaker Gingrich explained that this calendar was created to repeal “the dumbest things the federal government is currently doing” (quoted from Oleszek 2001, 112). Like the

Consent Calendar before it, the Corrections Calendar is rarely used.

These five calendars form the basis for the calendar schedule. The House and

Union calendars are the primary calendars that are in order each day. By Rule XIV, the

House Calendar is considered before the Union Calendar. Rule XIV establishes the order of business for the House. After unfinished business, the “morning hour for the consideration of bills called up by committees” is in order. At this time, standing committees are called in order and have the option to consider bills on the House calendar. This continues until a motion is offered that the House resolve into the

Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union. At this point, bills on the

Union calendar are in order. While the House Calendar is considered before the Union

Calendar, it is not the case that all bills on the House Calendar must be considered before moving on. If the House votes to resolve into the Committee of the Whole, then the

Union Calendar is in order.

Unlike the House and Union calendars, the other calendars are not in order each legislative day. The Private Calendar is in order on the first Tuesday of each month. The

Speaker is required to consider the Private Calendar on the first Tuesday unless the

House agrees to waive consideration of the calendar by a two-thirds vote. The Private calendar is also in order on the third Tuesday of the month. Consideration of the calendar on this day, however, is solely at the discretion of the Speaker.

Petitions on the Discharge Calendar are in order on the second and fourth

Mondays of each month. On these days, any member who has signed the discharge petition may motion to discharge the bill. The motion is then debated for twenty minutes.

If the motion passes, the bill may be brought up for immediate consideration or placed on the appropriate calendar. If the motion fails, the bill is not eligible to be discharged for the rest of the session.

The Consent Calendar was in order on the first and third Mondays of the month.

Bills considered under the consent calendar were passed without amendment. If one member objected to passage, the bill was postponed until the next time the consent calendar is considered. If, at this time, three or more members object to passing the bill, it is removed from the calendar and may not be placed on the calendar again during the same session of Congress.

The Corrections Calendar is in order on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month. The corrections calendar is completely under the control of the Speaker. He can decide which bills are placed on the corrections calendar, if the calendar is in order on the days it is available, and which bills on the calendar will be considered. When bills are considered under the corrections calendar, the time for debate is limited to one hour, there are restrictions on which amendments can be offered, and it takes three-fifths of those voting to pass.

On days when these calendars are in order, they have privilege over the House and Union calendars. This means that they are considered first. In addition, two other days give privilege to bills over the House and Union calendars. On Wednesday, the

Speaker is to call the roll of the standing committees in alphabetical order. The committee, when called, can bring a bill that they have reported for consideration.

Today, the House generally votes to dispense with Calendar Wednesday. District of

Columbia legislation is the other set of bills that are given privilege on specific days. On the second and fourth Mondays of each month, bills reported from the Government

Reform Committee pertaining to the District are in order.

The “regular order of business,” then, is determined by privileged bills and the calendar system. The calendar system is structured so that bills on the three special calendars are considered first, followed by the House Calendar which is then followed by the Union Calendar. Other rules of privilege can intervene on certain days (Calendar

Wednesday and District of Columbia bills), but these rules are often dispensed with. The result is a complex schedule that is largely defined by the order in which bills are reported from committee.

3.1.1: Circumventing the Regular Order of Business

While the regular order of business is clearly laid out in the House rules, the actual schedule does not have to follow this order. Over the years, the House has found it in its interest to create procedures that circumvent the regular order of business (see

Figure 3.1, top path). Today, the three bypass procedures – unanimous consent, suspension of the rules, and special rules – are controlled by the House leadership through the procedural prerogatives of the Speaker.

Unanimous consent is one of the oldest procedures in the House. It was the first procedure used to bypass the regular order of the day (Bach 1990). Members may ask for

unanimous consent to pass or consider legislation at almost any time the House is in

session; however, the Speaker must recognize a member for this purpose. In 1984, the

Speaker established a policy to confer recognition for unanimous consent to members

after establishing that key members do not object (Oleszek 2001). The power of

recognition gives the Speaker control over whether bills will be considered under this

procedure. Since unanimous consent requires the entire House to agree to the bill, it is

only useful for considering non-controversial measures. In fact, the restrictiveness of

unanimity as a requirement led the House to develop a less restrictive procedure –

suspension of the rules (Bach 1990).

Suspension of the Rules requires the support of two-thirds of the House to pass.

This protected the regular order from being changed by a mere majority, but also prevented one member from obstructing the wishes of the House (Bach 1990, 51). A motion to suspend the rules is simultaneously a motion to pass the bill. On each Monday and Tuesday, and the last six days of the session, members can motion to suspend the rules and pass a bill. Debate is limited to 40 minutes and amendments not mentioned in the motion are not allowed. As with unanimous consent, the Speaker has control over suspension through his power of recognition. This power was established by Speaker

Randall at the end of the 19th century and continues today. Generally, committees or individual members petition the Speaker in advance for consideration of a bill under suspension. The Speaker can decide which motions will be recognized.

Suspension has limits in the bills that it can be used for. There is no restriction on the substantive content of the bills; however, under the current GOP Conference rules,

the Speaker “shall not schedule any bill or resolution for consideration under suspension of the Rules which fails to include a cost estimate, has not been cleared by the minority, was opposed by more than one-third of the committee members [who] reported the bill, and exceeds $100,000,000” (Oleszek 1996, 32). Furthermore, the limits on debate, restrictions on amendments, and supermajority requirement for passage make suspension, in general, useful for “non-controversial” bills only. For these types of bills, however, suspension is a fast and efficient way for bills to be considered.

In contrast to unanimous consent and suspension, special rules are not motions by individual members that must be recognized. Special rules are House Resolutions written by the Rules committee which are considered as privileged matters. This means that they can be called up at any time and debated for one hour without amendments. If the rule is passed, the bill it refers to is immediately considered. Since they are privileged, special rules can be used to change the regular order of business. They also set the length of debate for considering the bill and may limit the number of amendments that can be offered. They also dispense with time consuming practices like the first reading of the bill and the reading of amendments.

Since the Rules committee and not the Speaker write rules, the control of the leadership over this procedure depends on how cooperative the Rules committee is.

Originally, the Speaker served as the chair of the Rules committee. However, in the revolt against Cannon, the Speaker was removed and the Rules committee had more autonomy. In 1975, the Democratic Party caucus gave power to the Speaker (with

Democratic caucus approval) to appoint the majority party members of the committee.

The Republican Party did the same for its speaker when they took over control in 1994.

This gives the Speaker more control over the committee. By handpicking the committee

members, the Speaker is able to put members in place that are willing to follow his lead.

For this reason, the Rules committee today is seen as an extension of the leadership

(Kiewiet and McCubbins 1991; Oppenheimer 1977; Rhode 1991).

Bypass procedures are the dominant way that bills are brought to the floor for

consideration. To show how often bypass procedures are used, I collected data on all

bills and resolutions from both the House and Senate that were considered on the floor of

the House during the 100th and 105th Congress.13 Figure 1 shows the percentage of all

bills and resolutions that were scheduled at various stages in the legislative process by

each method.14 The first thing to note is that over 75 percent of the bills scheduled were brought to the floor under a bypass procedure. This percentage increases if we ignore

privileged bills. The Speaker does not have formal control over when privileged bills are

scheduled. While timing may be worked out between the committee chairs and the

Speaker, the Speaker cannot stop a committee chair from bringing a privileged bill to the floor. Of the non-privileged bills that the Speaker has more absolute control over, at least

92 percent are considered under bypass procedures.

The control of the Speaker over scheduling procedures and the frequency with

which they are used hints at support for the null hypothesis that the actual schedule will

13 This includes House Resolutions, House Joint Resolutions, House Concurrent Resolutions, House Bills, Senate Joint Resolutions, Senate Concurrent Resolutions, and Senate Bills. Senate Resolutions were not included because they are not considered in the House.

14 The method used to consider each bill was collected from THOMAS (http://thomas.loc.gov).

differ from the calendar schedule. However, the use of bypass procedures does not necessarily mean that the calendar order has been changed. It is possible that the procedures used to set the schedule still follow the calendar order. As outlined above, each of these procedures have rules regarding amendments and place limits on the time for debate. This can have advantages even if the order defined by the calendars is unchanged. For example, special rules vary in the degree to which they restrict amendments. The choice over rules can have an impact on committee incentives and the final outcome of the bill (Dion and Huber 1996; Krehbiel 1997). In addition, restrictive rules can reduce uncertainty (Bach and Smith 1988) and enforce logrolling agreements

(Weingast and Marshall 1988). To test the null hypothesis, the order in which bills are actually considered must be compared to the order in which they would be considered under the calendar.

3.2: Comparing the Actual Schedule and Calendar Order

The calendar order is in constant flux. Each day a different set of calendars is available, different rules of privilege are in order, and new bills are placed on the calendar. In short, each legislative day has a unique calendar order. To compare the actual schedule and the calendar schedule, then, requires a method that identifies, for each legislative day, whether or not the calendar order is followed. Determining the percentage of days in the session where the calendar order was followed will give insight into the extent to which the Speaker follows the regular order of business.

To compare the two schedules, I count the number of bills on the calendar schedule that were “skipped” by bills that were actually scheduled. If a bill is scheduled

when other bills higher in the calendar order are not, then those bills not scheduled are

skipped. If bills are skipped, then the calendar order is not followed. For example,

Figure 3.2 shows a hypothetical legislative day with six bills on the calendar schedule. If

the first three bills on the calendar are scheduled (as shown in the second column), then

the calendar order is followed. However, if Bills 2, 3, and 4 are the bills scheduled (as

shown in the third column) the calendar order is not followed because Bill 1 is “skipped.”

Calendar Schedule Actual Schedule

Bill 1* Follows Deviates from Bill 2* Calendar Calendar Bill 3* Bill 4* Bill 1 Bill 2 Bill 5* Bill 2 Bill 3 Bill 6* Bill 3 Bill 4

Figure 3.2: Identifying Bills that are “Skipped.”

While this method is very intuitive, it runs into a problem when we consider how bills are skipped in practice. Some bills are reported from committee and never scheduled. This means that they are skipped day after day. In the above example, if Bill

1 is never scheduled, then the calendar order can never be followed because Bill 1 will

always be skipped. This can give a distorted picture of how often the leadership deviates

from the calendar. Consider the example in Figure 3.3. The calendar order is the same as

before, but Bill 1 is never scheduled during the Congress. In this case, Bill 1 is always

skipped and the calendar order is never followed. However, it is possible, as in the

second column, that bills are scheduled in their calendar order after skipping Bill 1.

Since Bill 1 is skipped day after day, counting skipped bills can give a distorted picture of

how often the calendar is followed. To put this more concretely, in the 105th Congress the first reported bill which was not scheduled was reported on March 17, 1997. This was only the 23rd day of the session. Therefore, by this method the calendar schedule was automatically not followed for the other 228 days, regardless of the order in which the remaining bills were considered.

Calendar Schedule Actual Schedule

Bill 1* Follows Deviates from Calendar Calendar Bill 2* Bill 3* Bill 2 Bill 2 Bill 4* Bill 5* Bill 3 Bill 4 Bill 4 Bill 5 Bill 6*

Note: * Bill skipped on a previous day

Figure 3.3: Actual Method Used to Count Skipped Bills.

To alleviate this problem, I use a second method to compare the schedules. I only look at “new” bills, which are bills that have not been previously skipped. According to this measure, the calendar order would be followed if Bills 2, 3, and 4 were scheduled

(see column 2 in Figure 3.3) because Bill 1 was skipped on a previous day. However, the calendar order would not be followed if Bills 2, 4, and 5 were scheduled (see column 3 in

Figure 3.3) because Bill 3 was skipped for the first time. This measure, then, captures the discretion initially exercised over a bill without running into the problem that repeatedly skipped bills pose.

Two additional issues arise when counting the number of skipped bills. First, privileged bills pose a problem when trying to create the calendar order. According to the House Rules, privileged bills can be called up at any time. This poses a problem for identifying where privileged bills should be placed in the calendar order. If privileged bills are kept in their actual location on the calendar, then privileged bills appear to “skip” other bills when they are scheduled. However, privileged bills do not have to wait in their calendar order so they technically do not skip other bills when scheduled. If privileged bills are placed at the top of the calendar, it could appear that other bills “skip” the privileged bill if other bills are scheduled first. However, privileged bills do not have to be immediately considered even after they are reported. In short, privileged bills do not “skip” other bills and are not “skipped” themselves. Fortunately, this means that ignoring privileged bills when creating the calendar order will not impact the results. In this chapter, privileged bills are omitted from the analysis.

The second problem comes from bills that are scheduled before they are reported.

Roughly half of the bills that are scheduled in the House were not reported from

committee (see Figure 3.1). This poses a problem because while these bills will show up in the actual schedule, they are not listed on the calendar schedule. Are all bills that have been reported “skipped” if one unreported bill is scheduled? Returning to the examples

in Figure 3.3, suppose that there is a Bill 7 that has not been reported and Bills 2, 3, 4,

and 7 are scheduled. On the one hand, the calendar order is followed for bills that are on

the calendar. On the other hand, bills are not scheduled that by the regular order of

business should have been scheduled before Bill 7. For this analysis, if Bill 7 is

scheduled then the calendar order is not followed. While this might be seen as too strict

of a test (or biased towards the null hypothesis), this approach carries with it the benefit

that any support for the alternative hypothesis will be more meaningful.

3.2.1: Data

I collected data from the 100th and 105th Congress which includes every bill that

was either reported from a committee in the House, scheduled before it was reported, or

passed by the Senate and sent to the House. This includes all House and Senate bills

public and private. It includes House Resolutions, House and Senate Concurrent

Resolutions, and House and Senate Joint Resolutions. For each bill (100th: n=1411;

105th: n=1345), I collected the date it was reported, the date it was scheduled, the

calendar it was placed on and the calendar number. I also collected the procedure used to

bring the bill to the floor (special rule, unanimous consent, privileged, etc.).15 From this data, I created the calendar order for each day following the rules outlined above.

The 100th Congress had 298 legislative days and the 105th Congress had 251 legislative days.16 However, not all of these days are included in the analysis. There are two types of days where the actual schedule cannot be changed by the Speaker. First, there are legislative days when no legislation is considered (100th: n=64; 105th: n=42).

The House is in session only to receive messages from the President or Senate, to hear the State of the Union address, or to handle other business. Second, there are legislative days when only privileged legislation is considered (n= 13; n=19). This means that privileged bills took up the entire time available for considering bills that day. The

Speaker cannot change this because privileged bills are formally out of his control.

Including these days would be misleading because by definition these days do not have any “skipped” bills. However, the Speaker did not have the opportunity to skip bills.

Therefore, including these days would bias the results toward the alternative hypothesis.

This leaves 221 legislative days in the 100th Congress and 190 legislative days in the

105th Congress where the Speaker had the opportunity to change the schedule.

15 All bill data was collected from the Library of Congress’ THOMAS website (http://thomas.loc.gov).

16 The 100th Congress had 299 calendar days. October 29, 1987 contained two legislative days. Dec. 21 and 22, 1987 was one legislative day. October 21 and 22, 1988 was one legislative day. The 105th Congress had 253 calendar days. May 22 and 23, 1997 was one legislative day. Nov. 9 and 10, 1997 was one legislative day. Since the House Rules pertain to legislative days, the calendars were constructed according to legislative days instead of calendar days.

3.3: Results

Figure 3.4 reports the percentage of days in both Congresses where the calendar schedule was followed exactly. In the 100th Congress, the calendar order was followed on 81 (36.7 percent) legislative days. In the 105th Congress, the calendar was followed on 53 (27.9 percent) legislative days. This means that Speakers Wright and Gingrich both followed the calendar order about 30 percent of the time. On these days, the

Speaker did not find a compelling reason to change the order in which the bills were reported from committee.

100th Congress 105th Congress

36.7% 27.9% (81 days) (53 days)

Note: Percentages are of the total number of days where the Speaker had the opportunity to alter the schedule (see text for definition) – 221 days for the 100th Congress; 190 days for the 105th Congress

Figure 3.4: Percentage of Legislative Days Where the Actual Schedule Follows the

Calendar Order Exactly.

While 30 percent may not seem like a large number, it is hard to evaluate the

support for either hypothesis because there is nothing with which to compare the

percentage. It could be that 30 percent is a very low number. Suppose the Speaker

would follow the schedule 30 percent of the time simply by chance. In this case, finding

a Speaker that follows the schedule only 30 percent of the time would support the null

hypothesis. On the other hand, it could be that 30 percent is high, if the probability of

following the calendar is lower. In this case, while he does not follow the calendar order

exclusively, it clearly plays a role in defining the agenda (tentative support for the

alternative hypothesis).

To evaluate the significance of this percentage, I estimated how often the Speaker

would follow the calendar if he was scheduling bills randomly. In both the 100th and

105th Congresses, the average number of bills scheduled (on days when bills were actually scheduled) is 3. On average, there are 35 bills waiting on the calendar to be scheduled. I had STATA randomly select 3 bills without replacement from 35 available bills a total of 221 times (or the number of days in the 100th Congress). I added up the number of days where the first 3 bills on the calendar were selected and repeated this simulation 100 times. In 5 of the 100 simulations, the calendar order was followed only 1 day (0.45 percent). In the other 95 simulations, the calendar order was never followed.

This means that the probability of the Speaker following the calendar order 30 percent of the time by chance is essentially zero.

The upshot of this analysis is that the Speaker intends to follow the calendar order at least some of the time. The null hypothesis, in this sense, is clearly rejected. The

calendar plays an important role in defining the order in which bills will be considered and the Speaker is not completely redefining the agenda set by the committee system.

However, suggesting that this fully supports the alternative hypothesis would be overstating the case. The Speaker does change the order in which bills are considered

around 70 percent of the time. Therefore, while the calendar order is clearly relevant, it

is also not ubiquitous. The Speaker does exercise discretion over the schedule and

change the agenda.

3.4: Scheduling With Bypass Procedures

Analyzing the scheduling practices of Speakers Wright and Gingrich has created a general picture of scheduling in the modern House. Speakers clearly prefer to use bypass procedures to bring bills to the floor. This observation is not new (Bach and Smith 1988;

Rhode 1991; Sinclair 1983). However, contrary to the general perception in the literature, the use of bypass procedures does not necessarily mean that the calendar order has been changed. Rather, bypass procedures are used to structure the terms of debate and limit the amount of time bills are allotted for consideration. In the end, it is clear that

Speakers use bypass procedures to schedule legislation regardless of whether or not the calendar order is changed.

The importance of bypass procedures to the Speaker’s control over the terms of debate raises a question about the test used in the previous section. Bypass procedures are designed for different types of legislation. Unanimous Consent and Suspension of the

Rules are only suited to pass non-controversial bills. Both require substantial majorities to pass and limit members’ rights dramatically. Special Rules, however, only require a

majority and are more suited to the debate necessary when considering controversial bills. This distinction is important because it is a factor used to define the work week in the House. The setup of the average week in Congress is to consider non-controversial bills on Monday and Tuesday and controversial legislation at the end of the week. This is because members travel home for the weekend and do not return until late on Monday.

Considering non-controversial bills at the beginning of the week gives members the freedom to miss the floor debate. To further aid members, the House has a cluster voting rule where the “recorded votes on a group of bills considered under the suspension procedure will be postponed until later that day or until the next day” (Oleszek 2001,

113). Members are still able to vote on the suspension bills even if they are not there for the debate.

If the Speaker approaches the scheduling decision knowing that he will use bypass procedures, then the divided work week will lead the Speaker to skip controversial bills on non-controversial days and vice versa. The implication is that the test in the previous section will understate the number of days where the Speaker schedules bills in the order they are listed on the calendar. That is, on days where non- controversial bills are being considered, it is possible that controversial bills will be skipped while the non-controversial bills are considered in their calendar order. Figure

3.5 provides an example. On June 3, 1997, eight bills were on the House and Union calendars. Of these bills, seven were scheduled and one was skipped. June 3 was a

Tuesday and all the bills were scheduled under suspension of the rules. This is a typical case of a day where non-controversial legislation dominated the agenda. H.R. 437, the

bill that was skipped, was considered later on under a special rule, which suggests that it was a controversial bill. On this day, then, the calendar order was followed within the set of non-controversial bills.

Calendar Schedule Actual Schedule Scheduling Method

House Calendar House Calendar 1. H. J. Res. 75 1. H. J. Res. 75 suspension

Union Calendar Union Calendar 1. H.R. 908 1. H.R. 908 suspension 2. H.R. 437* 3. H.R. 1420 suspension 3. H.R. 1420 4. H.R. 79 suspension 4. H.R. 79 5. H.R. 1019 suspension 5. H.R. 1019 6. H.R.1020 suspension 6. H.R. 1020 7. H.R. 1439 suspension 7. H.R. 1439

Note: *Skipped bill. H.R. 437 was considered June 18, 1997 under a special rule.

Figure 3.5: Legislative Day Where Non-controversial Bills Are Scheduled in Order but

Skip Controversial Bills (June 3, 1997)

A more accurate test of the role that the calendar plays in setting the schedule is to look at controversial and non-controversial bills separately. How often are controversial bills considered in their calendar order and how often are non-controversial bills considered in their calendar order? To compare the schedules while controlling for controversy I divided the data into two separate datasets. The first contains all bills on the calendar that were considered under special rules. The second contains all bills on the calendar that were considered under suspension of the rules and unanimous consent.17

Substantively this is the same as saying that the Speaker, when scheduling, looks at each type of bill in isolation. For example, when the Speaker makes scheduling decisions over controversial bills, he makes this decision as if the only bills on the calendar are controversial bills.

Figure 3.6 shows the results.18 The percentage of days where the calendar order is followed increases dramatically from the previous test. In both Congresses, the calendar order is followed around 80 percent of the time for both controversial and non- controversial bills. The difference between this result and the past test means that

17 The datasets only include bills on the calendar that were scheduled under each method. There are other bills on the calendar that were never scheduled after they were reported. Since these were not scheduled it is impossible to determine the method that would have been used and thus whether they are controversial. However, I reran the analysis with these bills in each dataset. This makes the assumption that the bills that were never scheduled were either controversial or non-controversial (depending on which dataset is analyzed). Doing this did not change the substantive results. The maximum drop in the number of days where the calendar order was followed from the reported results was only 5 percent.

18 The number of legislative days is different for each method because there were days when bills were not considered under a given method; these days are excluded. The percentage of zero skip days for each method, then, is out of those days where the method was actually used. This is especially important for suspension of the rules. Suspension is a procedure that is not in order everyday. So, for days when it is not in order, the Speaker does not have the opportunity to use it to set the schedule. The other methods are available each day and so excluding the days when they were not used may be inappropriate. However, this approach creates a stronger test and makes it less likely to reject the null hypothesis for each method.

controversial bills frequently “skip” non-controversial bills, but rarely skip other

controversial bills. This pattern holds for non-controversial bills as well. This suggests

that when the Speaker “skips” other bills, he is not necessarily altering the agenda for

strategic reasons; rather, he is organizing the work week into controversial and non-

controversial days. After this basic organization is done, the Speaker adheres faithfully

to the agenda set by the committee system.

100th Congress 105th Congress

77.6% 88.7% Controversial (76 days) (94 days)

83.0% 80.5% Non-Controversial (127 days) (153 days)

Note: Percentages are of the total number of days where the Speaker had the opportunity to alter the schedule (see text for definition) and relevant bills were considered – for the 100th Congress: 98 controversial days, 153 non-controversial days; for the 105th Congress: 106 controversial days, 190 non-controversial days.

Figure 3.6: Percentage of Days Where Calendar Order is Followed Exactly Controlling for Type of Bill

This result is most surprising for controversial bills. Sinclair (1983) writes that

“on major controversial legislation, strategic considerations override all others.” It is the controversial bills where we would expect to see the most rearranging of the agenda.

These bills contain the leadership’s agenda and “timing” when (or if) bills are considered are ways for the leadership to achieve its policy goals. The general trend, though, is for the calendar order to dominate. This is not to say that strategic scheduling does not happen. After all, the calendar order is not followed around 20 percent of the days. The picture from this is that the Speaker is much less willing to change the calendar order than previously thought.

3.5: Conclusion

The partisan theory of scheduling assumes that the Speaker freely sets the schedule. However, the results suggest a different picture. The Speaker exactly follows the schedule around 30 percent of the time. And, when the Speaker changes the schedule, it is primarily to facilitate a work week that benefits all members. The discretion is non-partisan and is best thought of as institutional. This is further evidence that the Speaker faces institutional constraints when scheduling. He follows the calendar to allow individual members to achieve their goals and he rearranges it to best suit their representational needs.

This does not answer the question about what it means to follow the calendar in terms of legislative benefits. The bias of the committee agenda is a key factor in the theoretical predictions of the Speaker’s scheduling behavior. It is possible that the Cox and McCubbins cartel theory is consistent with this result. They argue that committees

rationally anticipate the Speaker’s partisan preferences and produce a partisan agenda.

Thus, following the regular order is equivalent to enacting the ideal party agenda. The nature of the committee agenda is the subject of the next chapter.

CHAPTER 4

THE COMMITTEE AGENDA

In general, the Speaker follows the regular order of business. But it is also the case that the Speaker exercises discretion over the schedule. Not all bills that are reported are scheduled and the Speaker schedules unreported bills as well. The partisan theory of the Speaker and my balancing theory have different expectations about how the

Speaker uses his scheduling authority. In Chapter 2, I argued that the Speaker uses his authority to facilitate the committee agenda but supplements the agenda with unreported bills that balance the committee bias. Party theory, in contrast, argues that the Speaker uses his authority to bias the agenda towards partisan ends. This means that the committee agenda is altered to advantage the party and unreported bills are scheduled to further provide partisan benefits. These theories provide contrasting expectations about how the Speaker exercises discretion.

Empirically, the nature of these competing claims depends on the bias in the committee agenda. If committees are biased towards partisan benefits, then the expected scheduling behavior of reported bills is the same for both theories. Party theory expects the Speaker to further the partisan bias of the agenda and the balancing theory expects the

Speaker to facilitate the committee agenda, which implies furthering the partisan bias. In this case, a difference arises in scheduling unreported bills. Party theory expects the

Speaker to schedule partisan bills and the balancing theory expects the Speaker to counter the partisan bias in the committee agenda by enhancing information and gains-from- exchange benefits. The opposite pattern is true if committees are biased towards other benefits. In this case, the partisan Speaker will have a partisan bias in both aspects of scheduling; the balancing Speaker will have a partisan bias in scheduling unreported bills

(to balance the committee bias), but will have non-partisan bias in scheduling reported bills to facilitate the committee agenda.

The implication of this analysis extends beyond a simple description of the committee agenda, which is necessary for further tests. It also provides an interesting test of the party theory. Party cartel theory argues that the Speaker’s control over the schedule influences the agenda decisions of committees. The Speaker’s scheduling

“veto” gives committees an incentive to anticipate the Speaker’s partisan preferences and produce a party-biased agenda. Since the Speaker possesses a strong veto in both of these Congresses and both Speakers are considered to be strong partisans, the committee agenda in both Congresses should be biased towards partisan benefits.

In this chapter, I lay the groundwork for testing the competing claims of the partisan and balancing theories of scheduling by examining the nature of the committee agenda. I explore the committees’ decision to report bills. Do committees report bills that are more partisan, distributive, or informationally efficient than all the bills introduced? In other words, what legislative benefits does the committee agenda

provide? The first step in examining the bias of the committee system is to expand on the types of bills that produce distributive, partisan, and informational benefits.

4.1: Delivering Legislative Benefits: Theoretical Predictions

In recent years the congressional literature on legislative organization has focused on “the core problem members of the legislature are attempting to solve through their choice of institutional arrangements” (Sinclair 1994, 477). These problems include collective action problems, securing gains from exchange, and improving information.

By overcoming these problems, members are able to secure different types of legislative benefits – distributive, informational efficiency, and partisan. Three theories have been developed around these problems and benefits. Each offers a “stylized model” of how an ideal legislature would produce distributive, informational, and partisan benefits. From these models, theoretical expectations have been developed about the types of bills that generally provide each legislative benefit. These expectations are the basis for the empirical analysis in this chapter.

4.1.1: Gains from Exchange

Theories of exchange start with the basic assumption that members have heterogeneous preferences. This heterogeneity comes in part from the district, in part from personal policy goals, and in part from a desire to gain institutional prestige (Fenno

1978). Heterogeneous preferences mean that members have different policy goals (or bills) that they would like to pass. The fundamental challenge for a legislator, then, is to secure his policy goals in a competitive environment where every other legislator is trying to secure her policy goals. In the extreme case, “a legislator is on the short end of

an n-1:1 vote (as, say, when she proposes to target some specific expenditure on her district at the expense of every other district)” (Shepsle and Weingast 1995, 10). Without some solution, each member will face a similar vote and everyone will be deprived of the benefits that they need.

What is needed is some kind of cooperation or exchange. If member A can promise to vote for member B’s bill and vice versa, then support can be built for passing a benefit. The difficulty is making sure that deals can be made and that once made, deals will stick. Making trades, however, are not easy because votes “are often not simultaneous (one cannot always package all the deals into one big omnibus bill), and the flow of benefits is not always contemporaneous (a project in one district may be in the early planning stages while a project in another district is ready for contracts to be put out to bid)” (Shepsle and Weingast 1995, 11).

Weingast and Marshall (1988) argue that, while trades on individual bills are difficult, it is possible to structure a system of trading influence more generally and that the committee system is designed to facilitate this type of trading. Committees are given jurisdiction over certain policy areas. This means that committees have control over the policies passed in their area of jurisdiction. Members choose to sit on the committees that serve their interests so that they can have control over the policies that affect them the most. In exchange for control over bills in their committee’s jurisdiction, members give up control over bills sent to other committees. This norm of reciprocity allows committees to build coalitions, logroll, and secure benefits for themselves. It allows members to pass the policies that mean the most to them.

Gains from exchange theories are based on a demand-side view of institutions.

Members have preferences over policies that they want passed and in this view

institutions are designed to increase the welfare of legislators by satisfying this demand.

The committee system is able to decrease transaction costs and act as “agents of

distribution,” giving policy success to all members in areas that matter the most to their

legislative goals. In this way, the committee system allows the legislature to capture the

gains from exchange available in the House.

Empirically, different types of bills can be seen as the product of cooperation or

exchange. Gains-from-exchange theories have their intellectual roots in the study of distributive legislation. “[A distributive bill] is generally understood to be policy that is subdivided into discrete parts so that 1) the benefits targeted for one population or area can be varied without affecting those going to others and 2) the costs are assumed by the general population” (Collie 1988, 427). The politics surrounding distributive policies clearly fit the problem conceptualized by gains-from-exchange theories. Each member

has a distributive policy that affects her district and must convince a majority to fund the

policy. The general solution to this problem is to bundle distributive policies into one bill

so that the fate of each distributive policy is tied to the fate of the others- members simultaneously vote to pass each others distributive policies. Distributive bills, then, are the result of solving this collective problem.

Gains-from-Exchange Characteristic 1: Gains-from-exchange benefits are produced by passing distributive bills.

While gains-from-exchange theories began with a focus on distributive policies,

Weingast and Marshall (1988) broadened the theory to encompass exchange over diverse 72

policies. This type of exchange results in legislation that is large in scope and size.

Omnibus bills, as they are called, are large bills that have tremendous diversity in

content. These mega-bills often increase the chances for less popular measures to be

enacted. They can bundle “popular programs with painful spending cuts” (Davidson and

Olsezek 2000, 193). They can contain “sweeteners” that help garner the necessary

support. They can also be used as legislative blackmail to force a “take it or leave it”

choice to the members. Regardless of their specific purpose, omnibus bills are the end

products of legislative deals; they embody gains from exchange.

Gains-from-Exchange Characteristic 2: Gains-from-exchange benefits are more generally produced by passing omnibus bills.

4.1.2: Information

Institutions do not have to solely benefit members from the demand-side of the equation. Institutions can be designed to facilitate the creation of legislation, increasing the welfare of legislators by “enhancing productive efficiency on the supply side”

(Shepsle and Weingast 1995, 13). This is the basis for informational approaches to institutional design.

The information rationale for institutions is based on two postulates. The first is that legislative choices are made by majorities. The point is not that bills require the support of a majority to pass, but rather that all choices – procedural and policy – are the

result of remote majoritarian decisions. Parliamentary law is based on the consent of the

majority and as a result, all decisions that govern procedure ultimately must have the

support of a majority. Krehbiel writes that “majorities determine policy choice and

procedural choice, and no choice of the latter can undermine the fundamental principle of 73

majoritarianism in democratic, collective choice institutions” (1991, 16). The basic point

is that institutions are endogenous to the actors that inhabit them and institutions are

designed in order to produce certain benefits (and changed if the byproducts of that

design are too costly to a majority).

The second postulate is that members have uncertainty about the real world effects of the policies they choose. “The quantity and quality of information available to legislators is such that legislators must choose policies whose consequences they cannot fully and perfectly anticipate” (Krehbiel 1991, 20). The implication of this postulate is that information can be collected in order to reduce the uncertainty that members have about the consequences of their policy choices. Reducing this uncertainty can change the policy choices that members make. The upshot is that an informed legislature will make different policy choices than a legislature without information.

Taking these two postulates together leads to the conclusion that legislators, through remote majoritarian choices, will create institutions that facilitate the collection and dissemination of information. Committees, for example, will be created and given incentives to specialize and become policy experts. In this way, the production (supply) of legislation is more efficient because the legislature is able to capture the gains from specialization that exist in the House (Gilligan and Krehbiel 1987, 1989, 1990; Krehbiel

1991).

Information Characteristic 1: Committees with greater expertise produce bills that provide more information.

Specialization, however, creates a principal-agent problem within the House. The committees have specialized information that is difficult for the House to check. 74

Committees can use this expertise to produce non-majoritarian outcomes. If this happens, the House bears a cost for specializing. The committee was trusted to gain expertise and act in the interests of the House; instead it shirked and acted in its own interest. In order for House members to be confident that the committee bill reflects the preferences of the House median, they must receive a “signal” that the bill has median interests in mind.

In a series of articles, Gilligan and Krehbiel identify two signals of a committee’s

informational efficiency. First, the committee must not be a preference outlier.

Preference outliers are committees where the median member on the committee is

extreme relative to the median member of the House. The more extreme the committee,

the more likely it is that the bill will be extreme. Second, heterogeneous committees are

more informative than homogenous committees. The more diverse the viewpoints of the

committee members, the more likely it is that the bill is median centered. To gain the

support of a diverse committee, the bill must take into account diverse preferences. The

greater the heterogeneity, then, the more likely it is that the bill is a “good policy.”

Information Characteristic 2: Outlying homogenous committees produce bills with less informational efficiency that median-centered heterogeneous committees.

A final prediction is that bills with a “confirmatory signal” are more informative.

Individual bills are more likely to be median-centered if it is supported by members of

both parties. The logic is simple. “Two informed opinions are better than one, especially

when the informants are natural adversaries” (Krehbiel 1991, 84). This is actually the

logic that underlies the heterogeneity signal as well. The more diverse the viewpoints

included in the coalition of support, the stronger the signal that the bill represents diverse viewpoints. In this case, the focus is specifically on the partisan divide in the House.

The most obvious “natural adversaries” in the House are members of competing parties.

The level of bipartisan support for a bill, then, is a signal of whether the bill is extreme or not.

Information Characteristic 3: Bills with a confirmatory signal are more likely to provide informational benefits.

4.1.3: Party Organization

Partisan rationales for legislative organization are based on the same types of collective problems as gains from exchange and informational rationales. The key difference is the focus on the role of the majority party in solving the problems. For example, party theories accept that there are gains to be realized through exchange. It is costly to have to build a new coalition for each bill to get legislation passed through the

House. Gains-from-exchange theory uses committees as the primary institution for overcoming this problem. Party theorists, however, argue that parties create long run voting coalitions that allow members within the party to achieve legislative success

(Aldrich 1995). Further, since parties create coalitions that are not unanimous, members of the majority party are able to extract more benefits at the expense of minority party members.

Unlike the other theories of legislative organization, party rationales explicitly incorporate legislative leaders into the process. Leadership positions are the party solution to problems of coordination and collective action. The primary role of leaders is to facilitate the party’s collective image (Cox and McCubbins 1993). The party image is 76

important because it plays a role in a member’s electoral success. When a member of

Congress runs for reelection, part of his success is based on his party affiliation. Party

labels provide a cue to voters and public sentiment towards the party can affect a

member’s chances of being elected. Each member has an interest in having a positive

party image to enhance his or her electoral chances. However, because the party image is

a public good, no individual member has an incentive to work at maintaining the party

image. The answer is to create party institutions and leadership positions. Party

institutions provide a means for party members to work out disputes over strategies to

enhance the party image. Leaders, induced to internalize the collective interests of the party, create a legislative agenda to enhance the party image and use their authority to monitor the behavior of members to prevent “free-riding” (Cox and McCubbins 1993).

This creates a series of empirical claims that can be tested.

First, the Speaker wants to schedule bills that advantage majority party members.

One way to do this is to schedule bills that are proposed by majority party members. This gives majority party members legislative success for which they can go home and claim credit (Mayhew 1974). Being able to claim credit helps each member realize his or her reelection goal, which in turn helps the Speaker obtain his reelection goal. While sponsorship is only a rough gauge of the partisan bias in the bill’s content, showing favor to majority party members’ bills can be used to “suggest the predominance of the majority party in the setting of the legislative agenda” (Cox and McCubbins 1993, 261).

Party Characteristic 1: Bills sponsored by majority party members provide majority party benefits.

The advantage of forming a party is that members of the majority party can secure greater individual benefits (Aldrich 1995). Further, the party can foster a party image that enhances the reelection prospects of the members (Cox and McCubbins 1993). The fact that being in the majority is better than being in the minority makes reelection a primary goal of the party. Cox and McCubbins (1993) argue that beyond advancing his own reelection, the Speaker’s primary goal is to keep the majority party in the majority.

Without this, the Speaker cannot remain Speaker. To increase the majority party’s chances of remaining the majority, the Speaker will focus attention on members who are particularly vulnerable in their quest for reelection. The Speaker will prioritize bills sponsored by members from marginal districts.

Party Characteristic 2: Passing bills sponsored by majority party members who are electorally vulnerable provided majority party benefits.

Delivering the collective benefits derived from a positive party image is not easy.

The Speaker faces a free-rider problem from the members of his party. There are times when the policies necessary to build the party image conflict with individual members’ constituency. This creates an incentive for the member to defect from voting in favor of the party policy. The member might further be tempted to defect because she reasons that as long as the other members of the party vote for the bill, she will still get the collective benefit of a positive party image and be able to vote with her constituency.

The problem for the Speaker is that if everyone uses this logic, the collective benefits will not be delivered. To solve this problem, the party members agree to give the Speaker the authority to sanction members who defect. Cox and McCubbins (1994) argue that the party must build a reputation for toughness, and this reputation will be maintained 78

through credible threats of punishment for defectors. The Speaker’s scheduling authority can be used to deny defectors consideration of their bills. In other words, the Speaker can refuse to schedule bills that are sponsored by members who vote against the party. Doing so might endanger the chances that the party will remain in the majority. However, the

Speaker must punish dissidents at all costs because the reputation for toughness is essential for delivering the collective benefits (Cox and McCubbins 1994). In short, the cost of making an example of one defector is less than the benefit of delivering the collective good to all.

Party Characteristic 3: Members who are loyal to the party will be rewarded by having their bills chosen; members who often defect will be punished by having their bills vetoed.

In sum, the three theories of legislative organization have predictions about the types of bills that reflect the achievement of legislative benefits. These predictions can be used to examine the committee agenda and determine the relative importance of providing these benefits.

4.2: The Committee Agenda

Before turning to the analysis, one important point must be made. The intention here is not to establish a complete model of the committee agenda-setting process. Thus,

I am not explaining why committees report various bills; I am simply establishing how the bills reported from committee differ from those not reported. This reflects the committee “bias,” or the legislative benefits produced by the committee system. In this way, the analysis in this section is largely descriptive.

I have collected data on every House bill and resolution introduced in the House

and every Senate bill and resolution (excluding simple Senate Resolutions) that passed

the Senate for the 100th and 105th Congresses. The data used in this chapter and the

remaining chapters also includes bills that are “privileged.”19 The sponsor, cosponsors,

House committee(s), and legislative progress for each bill was collected from THOMAS

(http://thomas.loc.gov), the Library of Congress’ website for bill-specific information.

For this analysis, only bills that were sent to a House committee are included. This

excludes bills that passed the Senate and were not referred to a committee. It also

excludes bills created by task forces and procedural bills that frequently bypass the committee system, like resolutions to designate membership on certain committees. The dataset, then, is the list of bills referred to House committees (N=13959).

The dependent variable is whether or not a bill is reported from committee. Ten

percent of the bills referred to a committee are reported (8 percent in the 100th Congress

and 12 percent in the 105th Congress). A bill is considered to be reported if all

committees have reported the bill. Thus, for bills referred to multiple committees, all

must report the bill for it to be coded as reported. This means that some bills have been

reported from a committee, but are not considered to be reported by the committee

system. This follows the rules that define when a bill is sent from the committee system to the calendar system for scheduling. Eighteen percent of the bills referred to a committee were multiply-referred in both the 100th and 105th Congresses.

19 See Chapter 3 for a discussion of privileged bills. Privileged bills were excluded from the analysis in Chapter 3, but are included in all analyses from this point forward.

4.2.1: Independent Variables

The different rationales for legislative organization produced eight different

characteristics of bills that reflect the provision of different benefits. Each characteristic

is measured using data about the bill’s sponsor or the content of the bill itself. Summary

statistics for each variable are presented in Figure 4.1. Gains-from-exchange theories argue that distributive and omnibus bills secure the benefits of exchanging support and influence.

Distributive: Distributive bills can be tricky to operationalize because almost every bill has some distributive content. As Kingdon (1995, 39) puts it, “a distributive element is generally added [to all policies].” This makes it difficult to define a bill as either distributive or not distributive. It makes more sense to think about bills as having varying degrees of distributive content. For every bill introduced, THOMAS lists subject terms assigned by the Congressional Research Service. The terms are collectively called the Legislative Indexing Vocabulary Thesaurus, or LIV. If a bill impacts a specific state, the state’s name is listed as part of the list of subjects. The measure of distributive content is the ratio of states listed to the total number of keywords plus the number of states. The larger is this ratio, the greater the proportion of distributive content in the bill.

This follows the distributive measure first used by Krehbiel (1991) using LEGISLATE keywords.

Omnibus: Omnibus bills are bills that cover a broad range of issue areas in one bill. I capture the omnibus nature of the bill in two ways. First, the LIV keywords listed in THOMAS identify the subjects covered by each bill. There are over 5500 LIV subject

Standard Mean Deviation Minimum Maximum

100th Congress Gains-from-Exchange Distributive Content 0.025 0.073 0 0.5

Scope (# of keywords) 8.515 18.953 1 547

Multiple Referral 0.135 0.342 0 1 Information Years in House 11.371 8.271 0 45

Outlier 0.287 0.172 0 0.926

Minority Party Cosponsors 6.096 15.102 0 169 Partisan Republican Sponsored 0.373 0.484 0 1

Vote % for Democratic Party in last Election 0.097 0.249 -0.5 0.5

Democratic Party Unity 63.963 34.141 0 98.5

105th Congress Gains-from-Exchange Distributive Content 0.008 0.022 0 0.269

Scope (# of keywords) 54.392 100.094 6 4130

Multiple Referral 0.122 0.327 0 1 Information Years in House 10.182 8.558 0 42

Outlier 0.531 0.308 0.003 1.381

Minority Party Cosponsors 6.943 18.248 0 204 Partisan Republican Sponsored 0.597 0.491 0 1

Vote % for Democratic Party in last Election -0.006 0.186 -0.5 0.5

Democratic Party Unity 41.830 50.759 0 398.5

Figure 4.1: Summary Statistics for Theoretically Derived Variables 82

terms. The total number of subject terms indicates the scope of the bill. The larger is the number, the more omnibus is the bill. Second, a bill that is referred to multiple committees touches on a variety of issue areas. In addition, the bill that results is likely the product of inter-committee logrolling. Bills that are multiply referred are more omnibus. Using THOMAS, I created a dummy variable for if a bill is referred to more than one committee.

Information theories present four characteristics of bills that are more informationally efficient. However, three of these characteristics have been developed in reference to the nature of the committees that draft the bills – bills reported from heterogeneous, non-outlying committees with more expertise provide the most information. Using committee characteristics is possible when examining the Speaker’s decisions because he chooses between bills reported from different committees. In this section, the choice is at the committee level so the characteristics that make different committees more informative must be translated to individual bills within each committee.

Expertise: Information is enhanced by the expertise of the members who draft the bill. In terms of committees, this refers to the collective expertise that the full committee brings to a bill. Within a committee, however, the expertise contained in a bill is reflected in the bill’s sponsor. To capture the sponsor’s expertise, I include a variable for

the Sponsor’s tenure – the number of years the sponsor has served in the House.20 While

this is not a perfect indicator of policy expertise, this measure combined with the other

informational measures will provide a general picture of whether or not informational

benefits are provided by committees.21

Outliers: The premise of information theory is that the House prefers to have

policies that are median-centered. To create policies that reflect the preferences of the

chamber, committees must not be outliers. The same logic applies to bill sponsors.

Assuming that members introduce bills that reflect their general ideological outlook, the

more extreme is a bill’s sponsor the less “median-centered” is the proposal. The degree

to which the sponsor is an outlier is measured by the absolute difference between the

sponsor’s W-NOMINATE score and the median of the chamber.22

20 Data for the 100th Congress came from David Lublin’s (1997) Congressional District Demographic and Political Data. The dataset covers the 87th through the 104th Congresses. For the 105th Congress, I determined tenure by comparing the members of the 105th Congress to the 104th Congress in Lublin’s data.

21 Drawing on the sponsor’s characteristics is not the only way to capture bill-specific expertise. Krehbiel (1991) used a bill specific measure of expertise by counting the number of laws cited in the bill. This measure works well when dealing with highly controversial bills that receive special rules. However, when including less controversial bills, previous legislative work is not necessary to create a bill that is well researched. Thus, the number of laws cited is not an accurate measure of the expertise brought to the bill, when controversial and non-controversial bills are included.

22 W-NOMINATE scores, developed by Poole and Rosenthal (1985), are a widely used measure of member’s ideology. There are a number of other possible ideology measures that can be used in the future to validate these results (see Groseclose et al. 1999). However, NOMINATE scores have become the standard by which other ideology measures are compared. In addition, they are easily available from Keith Poole’s website (http://voteview.uh.edu/default_nomdata.htm). There are different versions of NOMINATE scores including one that allows for cross-chamber comparisons. However, the common space coordinates require some undesirable assumptions. The W-NOMINATE scores can only be used within each chamber. So, the outlier variable for Senate bills is the absolute distance between a Senator and the median of the Senate chamber.

Confirmatory Signal: The validity of information is enhanced by having “natural

adversaries” support the bill. The logic behind confirmatory signaling and

heterogeneity23 is similar – diverse ideological or partisan support indicates a broader

more moderate policy. It also ensures that information relevant to liberals, conservatives,

Democrats, and Republicans is revealed. In partisan terms, confirmatory signals come from support by minority party members. Thus, the number of minority party cosponsors

provides a signal about the diversity of support. The greater the number, the stronger the

confirmatory signal.

Majority Party Sponsor: The final set of variables comes from the party theories.

Bills sponsored by majority party members deliver party benefits. I include a dummy variable for bills sponsored by Republicans.24 This is necessary for the interaction variable I use to capture electoral considerations of the party. In the 100th Congress,

Republicans were the minority party, so bills sponsored by Republicans should be less likely to be reported. In the 105th Congress, they were the majority party.

Electoral Success: The majority party also wants to enhance its electoral success.

This means advancing bills sponsored by marginal members of the majority party and

restricting bills sponsored by marginal members of the minority party. To capture this, I

23 Information theories also show that heterogeneous committees provide more information. Creating a heterogeneity measure, however, for bills still in committee is not possible with the data available. One logical measure is to use the heterogeneity of the bill’s cosponsors. However, having a heterogeneous set of cosponsors is different than a heterogeneous committee. The logic behind heterogeneous committees is that there is a diverse set of members influencing the shape of the bill reported. Cosponsors, however, do not necessarily shape the bill. Cosponsorship is a cheap way to “claim credit” (Mayhew 1974) and doesn’t mean that the cosponsors influenced the creation of the bill. Cosponsorship is best used in confirmatory signally, not to indicate nature of the process for creating the bill.

24 Each member’s party affiliation is identified using Poole and Rosenthal’s DW-NOMINATE dataset.

included two variables. The first is the Democratic proportion of the two party vote received by each sponsor in the last election.25 Since a differential effect is expected for

Republicans and Democrats, I also include an interaction term between the Democratic proportion of the vote and whether the bill is sponsored by a Republican. To ease in the interpretation, the Democratic proportion variable is mean centered.

Party Support: Party success is based on the support of party members in advancing party goals. Congressional Quarterly gives party support scores to each member based on how the member votes on key party votes. Party support scores are listed in the CQ Almanac for each session of Congress. I took the adjusted support score

(adjusted for being absent from a vote) and averaged it over the two sessions. This creates a measure of support towards each member’s party. I transformed the support scores for each party into one common scale measuring loyalty to the Democratic Party.

For Democrats, this is simply the CQ party loyalty measure averaged over both years.

For Republicans, their Democratic loyalty is 100 (the maximum) minus their Republican loyalty. The result is Democratic Party Unity a scale of 0-100 where 0 is no support for the Democratic Party and 100 is total support. This is the measure used for both

Congresses.

Additional Variables: In addition to the theoretically important variables, I included control variables. The first is a control for the date the bill was introduced. The

25 For the 100th Congress, the percentage of the 2 party vote comes from David Lublin’s (1997) Congressional District Demographic and Political Data. Since his data only goes to the 104th Congress, data for the 105th Congress came from the official election results posted by the Office of the Clerk of the House (http://clerk.house.gov/members/election_information/elections.php).

variable counts a calendar day. There were 299 calendar days in the 100th Congress and

253 in the 105th Congress. The higher is the number, the later in the Congress the bill was introduced. I also included dummy variables for each committee. Committees have different sized jurisdictions, vary in the number of bills referred to them, and vary in the complexity of the bills they consider. To control for any differences between committees in their propensity to report bills, dummy variables are included.

4.2.2: Results

To examine the legislative benefits provided in the committee agenda, I estimated three logistic regressions for each congress. The first model includes all theoretically derived independent variables. This is not ideal, however, because two party variables are highly correlated. The dummy variable for Republican Sponsored and the

Democratic Party Unity score are inversely correlated above p=0.78 for both congresses

(100th: -0.92; 105th: -0.78). In addition, the Republican Sponsored variable is highly correlated (r=-0.76) with the Outlier variable in the 105th Congress. A high level of

correlation between independent variables makes it harder to assess the individual effects

of the two variables and increases the probability of committing a Type II error – failing

to reject a null hypothesis that is false (Gujarati 1995). Thus, I estimate two more

models. The first excludes the Democratic Party Unity variable and the Outlier

variable.26 The second excludes the Republican Sponsored variable and the two election

variables because these variables are based on an interaction with the Sponsor variable.

26 The correlation in the 100th Congress between the outlier and sponsor variables is much lower (r=0.42), but to maintain the consistency in models across the two congresses, I excluded it from the second model in the 100th Congress. Including it, however, does not change any of the substantive results.

The results for the 100th Congress are shown in Figure 4.2 and the results for the 105th

Congress are presented in Figure 4.3.

The control variables included in the model are generally as expected. Bills introduced later in the congress are less likely to be reported. There are a number of plausible reasons for this. First, the bills considered most important by individual members and the majority party are probably introduced early in the session leaving less important bills for later. Second, bills introduced earlier in the congress give committees more time to collect information and prepare a bill to be reported. Third, bills that are introduced earlier give the sponsor more time to build a coalition in support of the bill.

For all of these reasons, it is not surprising that bills introduced earlier are more likely to be reported.

The committee control variables uncover the different propensities of each committee to report bills in their jurisdiction. In general, the coefficients for each committee reflect the relative proportion of the bills referred to committee that are reported. The proportion of bills reported from a committee depends on two factors.

First, committees with more bills referred to them report a lower proportion of bills.

Committees with significant negative coefficients typically have more bills referred to them. Second, some types of committees report fewer bills because the legislation is more controversial and complex. Policy committees, for example, tend to deal with more complex and controversial legislation than constituency committees. Therefore, policy committees have coefficients that are negative and have a larger impact on the predicted probability than constituency committees.

Regarding the theoretical variables, the results show that committees in both

Congresses report bills with characteristics reflective of all three legislative benefits.

Bills with higher distributive content and covering a larger number of subjects are significantly more likely to be reported in both Congresses. Bills sponsored by more experienced members and bills with an informative signal are more likely to be reported.

Finally, bills sponsored by majority party members and bills sponsored by more loyal majority party members are more likely to be scheduled. Multiply referred bills are more likely to be reported in the 100th Congress, but less likely (although insignificantly) to be reported in the 105th Congress. This lends support to the argument that these theories, although often portrayed as mutually exclusive, are different angles of “the same very complex puzzle” (Shepsle and Weingast 1995, 23).

While the results suggest all three benefits are produced, there are a few key variables that are either insignificant or in opposite directions. In the 105th Congress, multiply referred bills are less likely to be reported, although the coefficient is insignificant in the first two models. There are two possible interpretations. Committees in the 105th may be less efficient at providing gains-from-exchange across committees.

The committee reforms of the 104th Congress strengthened committee chairs and may have led to less willingness to compromise across committee jurisdictions. The other interpretation is that Speaker Gingrich used his power of referral differently than Speaker

Wright. For example, multiply referred bills include sequential referrals, which can be used for delaying tactics (or for keeping a bill from being reported from the committee system). Gingrich was more likely to use sequential referral than Wright. Since the other

Equation (1) (2) (3) Constant -1.950*** -1.674*** -2.936*** (0.411) (0.226) (0.242) Date Introduced -0.001 -0.001 -0.001 (0.001) (0.001) (0.000) Gains-from-Exchange Distributive Content 3.298*** 3.290*** 3.165*** (0.551) (0.551) (0.527) Scope (# of keywords) 0.036*** 0.036*** 0.025*** (0.003) (0.003) (0.002) Multiple Referral 0.833*** 0.834*** 0.552*** (0.238) (0.238) (0.208) Information Years in House 0.010* 0.011** 0.013** (0.005) (0.005) (0.005) Outlier -0.157 -0.215 (0.335) (0.312) Minority Party Cosponsors 0.007** 0.007*** 0.008*** (0.003) (0.003) (0.003) Partisan Republican Sponsored -0.778** -1.050** (0.351) (0.229) Vote % for Democratic Party in last Election 0.876** 0.822** (0.354) (0.349) Republican Sponsor* Democratic Election -1.928** -1.888** (0.925) (0.925) Democratic Party Unity 0.004 0.013*** (0.004) (0.002) Prestige Committee Appropriations -0.524 -0.542 -0.009 (0.351) (0.350) (0.305) Budget 0.097 0.114 0.778 (0.914) (0.912) (0.882) Rules -2.513*** -2.513*** -2.142*** (0.436) (0.410) (0.416) Ways and Means -3.913*** -3.911*** -3.346*** (0.411) (0.410) (0.363) (continued on next page)

Figure 4.2: Logistic Regression Predicting Which Bills are Reported from Committee in

the 100th Congress.

Figure 4.2 (continued)

Policy Committee Banking -1.946*** -1.937*** -1.444*** (0.340) (0.340) (0.307) Foreign Affairs -2.955*** -2.950*** -2.456*** (0.411) (0.411) (0.359) Energy -1.015*** -1.010*** -0.650*** (0.227) (0.227) (0.194) Judiciary -0.495** -0.497** -0.161 (0.209) (0.209) (0.178) Education -1.480*** -1.475*** -1.010*** (0.285) (0.284) (0.251) Government Operations -0.867*** -0.873** -0.382 (0.344) (0.344) (0.309) Constituency Committee Agriculture -0.781*** -0.783*** -0.707*** (0.243) (0.242) (0.210) Armed Services -1.642*** -1.653*** -1.476*** (0.342) (0.341) (0.336) Interior 0.046 0.046 0.420** (0.217) (0.217) (0.187) Merchant Marine -0.557** -0.560** 0.195 (0.252) (0.253) (0.221) Transportation -0.871*** -0.868*** -0.480** (0.243) (0.243) (0.213) Science 0.018 0.019 0.332 (0.289) (0.288) (0.259) Small Business -0.829 -0.810 -0.336 (0.518) (0.517) (0.484) Veterans Affairs -1.110*** -1.145*** -0.545* (0.307) (0.305) (0.279) Other Committee Administration -1.729*** -1.729*** -1.324*** (0.363) (0.363) (0.336) Post Office -2.144*** -2.138*** -1.943*** (0.290) (0.289) (0.269) Intelligence 0.927 0.920 1.263** (0.650) (0.649) (0.629)

Number of Cases 7274 7274 7702 Log likelihood -1639.706 -1640.249 -1752.083 Pseudo R2 0.227 0.227 0.205 Correctly Predicted 91.96% 91.93% 91.90%

Note: Standard errors in parentheses; *p<0.10; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01 91

Equation (1) (2) (3) Constant -4.268*** -4.092*** -1.910*** (0.393) (0.317) (0.203) Date Introduced -0.003*** -0.003*** -0.003*** (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) Gains-from-Exchange Distributive Content 10.180*** 10.104*** 9.574*** (1.842) (1.840) (1.784) Scope (# of keywords) 0.006*** 0.006*** 0.006*** (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) Multiple Referral -0.421 -0.429 -0.530* (0.277) (0.278) (0.279) Information Years in House 0.026*** 0.027*** 0.027*** (0.006) (0.006) (0.006) Outlier 0.344 -1.088*** (0.250) (0.196) Minority Party Cosponsors 0.001 0.001 -0.002 (0.003) (0.003) (0.002) Partisan Republican Sponsored 1.769*** 1.697*** (0.309) (0.265) Vote % for Democratic Party in last Election 0.208 0.284 (1.020) (1.019) Republican Sponsor* Democratic Election 2.343** 2.367** (1.136) (1.137) Democratic Party Unity -0.001 -0.006*** (0.001) (0.000) Prestige Committee Appropriations -0.648 -0.664 -0.427 (0.466) (0.468) (0.480) Budget -3.164*** -3.161*** -3.125*** (0.624) (0.623) (0.615) Rules 3.444*** 3.467*** 3.622*** (0.216) (0.215) (0.214) Ways and Means -1.427*** -1.432*** -1.353*** (0.228) (0.228) (0.227) (continued on next page)

Figure 4.3: Logistic Regression Predicting Which Bills are Reported from Committee in the 105th Congress.

Figure 4.3 (continued)

Policy Committee Banking -0.603** -0.632** -0.528* (0.301) (0.301) (0.297) International Relations -1.094*** -1.100*** -1.381*** (0.292) (0.291) (0.304) Energy 0.079 0.080 0.096 (0.215) (0.215) (0.214) Judiciary 0.300 0.314 0.425** (0.194) (0.194) (0.193) Education -0.297 -0.305 -0.293 (0.265) (0.265) (0.263) Government Reform -0.646** -0.650** -0.588** (0.289) (0.289) (0.288) Constituency Committee Agriculture -0.233 -0.226 -0.196 (0.321) (0.321) (0.314) National Security -2.805*** -2.780*** -2.728*** (0.627) (0.625) (0.632) Resources 0.846** 0.856*** 0.930*** (0.203) (0.203) (0.202) Transportation 0.340 0.334 0.336 (0.222) (0.222) (0.220) Science 0.865** 0.850** 0.960*** (0.355) (0.354) (0.349) Small Business 1.000 1.015* 1.015* (0.617) (0.617) (0.595) Veterans Affairs 0.323 0.355 0.175 (0.348) (0.344) (0.355) Other Committee Oversight -1.655*** -1.675*** -1.670*** (0.441) (0.442) (0.450) Intelligence 2.149*** 2.130*** 2.119*** (0.752) (0.749) (0.714)

Number of Cases 6020 6020 6020 Log likelihood -1446.763 -1447.905 -1505.303 Pseudo R2 0.345 0.344 0.318 LR chi2(32) 1522.66 1522.26 1405.58 Correctly Predicted 91.36% 91.31% 90.71%

Note: Standard errors in parentheses; *p<0.10; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

two gains-from-exchange variables are significant in the expected direction; the multiple referral variable does not imply that committees did not produce gains-from-exchange. It can only raise questions about whether or not committees in the 105th Congress were as efficient at producing gains-from-exchange as committees in the 100th Congress.

In both Congresses, the outlier and confirmatory signal variables are not consistently significant. In the 100th Congress, both coefficients are correctly signed, but only the confirmatory signal variable is significant. In the 105th Congress, the only significant variable is the outlier variable in the third model. It is correctly signed in this model, but not in the first model. The confirmatory signal variable is correctly signed in the first two models, but not in the third. While each model has at least one of these variables in the expected direction, support for informational efficiency is weak in the

105th Congress. The evidence in the 100th Congress is much stronger.

Finally, the marginal election variables are mostly significant, but not in the expected direction. In both Congresses, bills sponsored by marginal members are less likely to be reported. The effect is not significant for Democrats in the 105th Congress, but the coefficient is still positive. It is important not to read too much into what this means. It could be that safe members can spend more time legislating instead of campaigning and thus create higher quality bills that committees prefer. Or, safe members have more time to sponsor complex legislation. Whatever the alternative story, it is clear that committees are less likely to report bills from marginal members and to the extent that members need bills to “claim credit,” committees do not help marginal members.

In both Congresses, the committee agenda provides all three types of legislative

benefits. Bills that provide greater gains-from-exchange, information, and partisan benefits are more likely to be reported than bills that provide fewer benefits. This is

interesting because the bias of the committee system is not apparent from the significance

of the variables alone. All benefits are provided, but some types of benefits may be

relatively more important. Theorists have focused on the tradeoffs that exist between structuring committees that provide different benefits and so, while all benefits are provided, different benefits may lead to different changes in the predicted probability of a bill being reported.

There are multiple ways to uncover the relative impact of each variable. The simplest is to compare changes in the predicted probability of a bill being reported that result from changes in different variables. Using the logit estimates, all independent variables except one are held constant at their mean while the remaining variable is changed to calculate the associated change in the predicted probability of a bill being reported. Figure 4.4 shows the results for the ten theoretically important variables in both

Congresses. The probabilities are calculated using the first of the three models. I calculated the probabilities using all three models and the substantive results are the same. Since the substantive results do not vary, using the first equations allows the changes in the probability for all variables of interest to be shown. Each cell in Figure

100th Congress 105th Congress

Gains-from-Exchange

Distributive Content 0.010 0.011

Scope (# of keywords) 0.038 0.041

Multiple Referral 0.013 -0.006

Information

Years in House 0.003 0.011

Outlier -0.001 0.005

Minority Party Cosponsors 0.005 0.001

Partisan

Republican Sponsored -0.010 0.049

Dem. Election Margin 0.010 0.000

Rep. Election Margin -0.003 0.025

Democratic Party Unity 0.005 -0.002

Figure 4.4 Net Effects of Theoretically Important Variables on a Bill’s Probability of

Being Reported

4.4 answers the following question: what is the net change27 in the predicted probability that a bill is reported if the specified variable is increased one standard deviation from its mean?

In the 100th Congress, the two variables associated with the largest change in the predicted probability are gains-from-exchange variables (scope and multiple referral).

The distributive variable is fifth, after two party variables are in effect “tied” for third

(Republican Sponsored and the Election Margin for Democrats). These results indicate that committees in the 100th Congress were more biased towards providing gains-from- exchange than partisan benefits as expected by the balancing theory. In the 105th

Congress, being sponsored by a Republican produces the biggest change in the probability of being reported. In addition, the electoral margin for Republicans has the third largest effect. It is premature, however, to conclude that committees in the 105th were dominated by partisan interests, because the second largest change in a bill’s probability of being reported is associated with the scope of the bill.

Another way to assess the relative importance of variables is to compare odds ratios. Using the logit model, the parameters can be transformed into odds ratios, which indicate the expected change in odds of a bill being reported for a change in the independent variable holding all other variables constant. The advantage of odds ratios is that they are not dependent on the specific values of the other variables. To compare odds ratios, I calculated the change in the odds for a standard deviation increase in the

27 The net effect means that changes in interaction terms are also included in the effect. For example, changes in the Republican Sponsor variable also cause changes in the interaction term. To calculate the predicted probability of the Sponsor variable, the interaction term is also changed.

100th Congress 105th Congress

Odds Ratio Percent Odds Ratio Percent Change Change

Gains-from-Exchange

Distributive Content 1.264 26.4 1.243 24.3

Scope (# of keywords) 1.975 97.5 1.961 96.1

Multiple Referral 1.387 38.7 0.852 -14.8

Information

Years in House 1.092 9.1 1.244 24.4

Outlier 0.974 -2.6 1.119 11.9

Minority Party Cosponsors 1.138 13.8 1.022 2.2

Partisan

Republican Sponsored 0.688 -31.2 2.375 137.5

% Democratic in Election 1.255 25.5 1.043 4.3

Republican Sponsor* 0.802 -19.8 1.225 22.5 Democratic Election

Democratic Party Unity 1.131 13.1 0.953 -4.7

Figure 4.5: Change in the Odds of a Bill Being Reported for a Standard Deviation

Increase in Theoretically Derived Variables.

variable of interest. Figure 4.5 shows the odds ratios for the ten variables of interest

using the first model of the three models for each Congress. The odds ratio cell in the

figure answers the following question: what is the change in the odds of a bill being

reported if the specified variable is increased by one standard deviation? The odds ratios

can be somewhat difficult to interpret because they are “multiplicative coefficient[s],

which means that positive effects are greater than 1 and negative effects are between 0 and 1” (Long 1997, 82). To aid in interpretation, I have calculated the percentage change in the odds associated with the given odds ratio.

The differences between the committees of the 100th and 105th Congresses come through in the odds ratios as well. In the 100th Congress, the scope and multiple referral of a bill increase the odds more than other variables. Being sponsored by a Democrat has the next biggest effect followed by the amount of distributive content. The gains-from- exchange bias in the 100th Congress comes through more strongly using odds ratios. In the 105th Congress, the story is different. Being sponsored by a Republican increases the odds of being reported by over 137 percent. The scope of the bill, the tenure of the sponsor and the bill’s distributive content follow in importance.

Since the difference between the two Congresses seems to be between the relative importance of gains-from-exchange and party considerations, one additional look at the data is useful. Holding all other variables at their mean values, I simultaneously changed all gains-from-exchange variables one standard deviation to measure the change in the predicted probability of a bill being reported for gains-from-exchange variables in general. I did the same thing for all the party variables, except I either increased or

decreased one standard deviation based on the direction of the variable (so the direction of the change was all in the same partisan direction). The results are listed in Figure 4.6.

The aggregate effects are clear. In the 100th Congress, a bill with all the gains-from- exchange characteristics had a greater probability of being reported than a bill with all the characteristics that advantaged the Democratic Party. In the 105th Congress, the opposite was true. Bills that helped the Republican Party were more likely to be reported than bills that provided gains-from exchange.

100th Congress 105th Congress

Gains-from-Exchange 0.087 0.047

Partisan 0.011 0.098

Figure 4.6: Net Effects of Legislative Benefits on a Bill’s Probability of Being Reported

4.3: Implications

The committee bias of the 100th Congress raises questions about the extent to which the party cartel portrait of the House is correct. Cox and McCubbins argue that the majority party often relies on an “automatic pilot” control over the agenda. This means

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that the party structures committees and uses its leaders in such as way so as to create

incentives so that a party agenda is automatically produced without leaders having to

exercise “active” agenda control. The focus in their book is on the committee system.

The committee system is set on “automatic pilot” in two ways. First, the majority party

sets up the committee system. They create committees, assign jurisdictions, determine

the ratio of majority to minority party members, assign members to committees, and

choose committee chairs. This allows the party to “stack the deck” in its favor by creating

committees that are ideologically predisposed to produce partisan outcomes.

Second, the party gives leaders the ability to sanction members and committees

for bad behavior. The party can remove members from committees, eliminate committees, change jurisdictions, and reallocate resources. Most importantly, the

Speaker can “veto” bills reported from committee and adjust the schedule to advance partisan goals. The ability to sanction members changes committee incentives. To avoid

sanctions and to ensure that their bills are scheduled, committees reprioritize their agenda

to match the party’s preferences.

The data presented here raises questions about the effectiveness of the scheduling

“veto” in changing committee incentives. Wright and Gingrich are both considered by

legislative scholars to be very partisan Speakers. The veto threat should have given

committees an incentive to be biased towards partisan ends. However, in the 100th

Congress, the committee system prioritized gains-from-exchange benefits over partisan

benefits. One explanation may be that Wright was less partisan than Gingrich. Perhaps

the “conditions” for party government were not as strong during the 100th Congress.

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However, the 100th Congress at the time was considered to be the pinnacle of party resurgence (Rohde 1991). If Wright’s partisanship was not enough to put committees on

“automatic pilot,” then the generalizeability of the party cartel model of the House is very weak. The scheduling “veto” simply does not have as much effect on committee agendas that party theory expects.

This does not get around the fact that committees in the 105th Congress had a partisan bias. It may be that the scheduling veto is a weak incentive, but it is possible that

Gingrich effectively used his veto (or sent credible threats) and changed the committee agenda. A more plausible story, however, comes from party theory’s other method of control – structuring the committee system. The Republican takeover of the House led to a reorganization of the committee system. First, committees that were traditionally

Democratic strongholds were eliminated (Merchant Marine, District of Columbia, and

Post Office). Second, committee chairs were given more authority and the influence of subcommittees was reduced. Third, Gingrich selected committee chairs who were loyal to the party and in doing so bypassed more senior members. The result was a committee system more firmly in the hands of the committee chairs who were more ideologically committed to the party agenda (see Smith and Lawrence 1997). Through these structural reforms, the committees of the 105th Congress were more centralized and biased towards majority party benefits.

In the 100th Congress, the story was different. Subcommittees had greater influence over the committee agenda. The reforms of the 1970s reduced the power of committee chairs and gave subcommittees jurisdictional guarantees. In effect, the agenda

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was influenced by many different members. Davidson (1981, 131) said that “in place of

party labels there are individual politicians in business for themselves . . . instead of a few

leaders or checkpoints for legislation, there are many.” This presents a problem for the

party’s automatic control. The key to automatic control is to “give majority party

members significant advantages at every stage of the legislative process” (Cox and

McCubbins 1993, 258). This is easier in a more centralized system because loyal party

members can be placed in each position. The more decentralized the system, the more

diversity there are among the party members in control. Thus, despite the homogeneity

of the party in the 100th Congress, the structural setup of the committee system did not

“automatically pilot” the party agenda as it did in the 105th Congress.

The results in this chapter are not incontrovertible evidence that the scheduling

veto is a weak form of committee agenda control. After all, committees in both

congresses produced partisan benefits. However, the pattern of committee bias suggests

that structural changes in the committee system are the cause of the change in committee

bias, not changes in the partisanship of the Speaker. Committees are designed at the

beginning of each congress and through this design they are “stacked” in favor of

producing different types of benefits. In the 100th Congress, the decentralized control of the committee system produced gains from exchange. In the 105th Congress, the more centralized system provided partisan benefits. Once committees are set up, the Speaker has little effect on changing the underlying incentives of the system and has little effect on changing the committee agenda.

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4.4: Conclusion

Theoretical expectations about the Speaker’s scheduling behavior rest on the

nature of the committee agenda. My balancing theory argues that the Speaker will

facilitate the committee agenda by reinforcing the benefits produced by committees and

will balance the final agenda by scheduling unreported bills that are underproduced by

committees. Party theory, in contrast, expects that the Speaker will advance partisan

goals regardless of the committee agenda. The first step in testing these expectations is to

establish the nature of committee agenda.

In this chapter, I outlined the three theories of legislative organization that form

the basis for the different possible types of legislative benefits that can be produced.

Each theory posits different types of bills that deliver each benefit. Using these

predictions, I examined which types of bills are more likely to be reported from

committee. In both Congresses, committees provided all three legislative benefits.

However, committees of each Congress differed in the emphasis they placed on different

benefits. In the 100th Congress, gains-from-exchange benefits had the largest impact on

the probability that a bill would be reported. In the 105th Congress, partisan benefits had

the largest impact.

The shift in committee bias raises questions about the effect of the Speaker’s scheduling veto on committee priorities. Party cartel theory argues that committees adjust their priorities in order to report bills that reflect the partisan bias of the Speaker.

However, even though Speaker Wright is considered a very partisan Speaker, the

committees in the 100th Congress emphasized gains-from-exchange over partisan

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benefits. The implication is that party control over the committee agenda is best understood through the design of the committee system, rather than control over the schedule.

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CHAPTER 5

BALANCING THE LEGISLATIVE AGENDA

Committees produce the default schedule in the House, but the Speaker has the authority to change the schedule so that the final legislative agenda differs from the committee agenda. The Speaker can change the legislative agenda in two basic ways – he can change the regular order of business or he can schedule bills that have not been reported. In Chapter 3, I showed that the Speaker generally follows the regular order of business. After organizing the work week, the Speaker follows the committee agenda over 75 percent of the time. The analysis in Chapter 4 demonstrated that by following the committee agenda, the Speaker accepted the gains-from-exchange bias of the 100th

Congress and the partisan bias of the 105th Congress. However, the analysis to this point has not considered how the Speaker changes the schedule. Despite the general adherence to the calendar order, the Speaker does not schedule all the bills reported from committees and schedules around 600 unreported bills (100th: n=577; 105th: n=643). In this chapter, I examine the Speaker’s decision to change the legislative agenda.

Partisan theories of the House see the Speaker’s control over the schedule as a tool for advancing partisan interests. Cox and McCubbins (2002, 153) argue that the

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Speaker’s scheduling authority is key to the majority party’s ability to exercise “positive”

and “negative agenda control” – the ability to advance and block policy changes

respectively. Sinclair (1995, 210) argues that the Speaker uses his scheduling authority

to consider legislation when the party has “the requisite votes and when the political

benefits of passage are at their height.”

The Speaker’s partisan bias leads to two specific claims about the Speaker’s

scheduling behavior. First, the Speaker will “veto” bills on the calendars that are less

partisan. Time on the floor is scarce and if some bills on the committee agenda are less

partisan than others, the Speaker will schedule the reported bills that are more partisan.

Second, the Speaker will use his authority to schedule unreported bills that advance

partisan goals. For whatever reason, committees may not report all the party bills the

Speaker wants to include in the final agenda. Thus, to ensure that the final agenda

delivers the maximum party benefit, the Speaker will add party bills to the schedule.

In contrast, I argue that the Speaker uses his authority to facilitate the committee

agenda. The Speaker is not a purely partisan leader, but rather one that is caught between

institutional and partisan responsibilities. The goal of the Speaker is to produce a final

agenda that provides gains-from-exchange, informational, and partisan benefits. In doing

so, the Speaker facilitates the committee agenda. This does not mean that all reported

bills are scheduled. The committee system has a legislative bias that he balances by

scheduling unreported bills. To make room for these bills, the Speaker will “veto” bills on the regular order of business. However, in making choices over which bills to veto, the Speaker will not alter the general tendency of the committee agenda. Through this

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strategy, the Speaker gives committees agenda control over their jurisdiction and provides a balance of benefits that serve both institutional and partisan interests.

This leads to two expectations that contrast with the party theory. First, the

Speaker will “veto” bills that are the least congruent with the committee bias. For example, if the committee agenda has a strong distributive tendency, the Speaker will veto bills that are low in distributive content, ensuring that the distributive bias is preserved. Second, to balance the agenda, the Speaker will schedule unreported bills that provide benefits undersupplied by the committee agenda.

In this chapter, I test these competing expectations. First, I look at the Speaker’s scheduling decision over reported bills. Using logistic regression, I examine the types of benefits that the Speaker is most likely to schedule. To test the two theories, I compare the Speaker’s scheduling bias to the committee bias. Second, I use the same method to determine the Speaker’s scheduling bias in unreported bills. Again, comparing these results to the committee bias provides a test of the two theories. Before getting to the analysis, however, I present a different method for operationalizing the informational variables.

5.1: Information Variables

Information theories have been developed to around the structure of committees.

In chapter 4, I presented three different characteristics of the types of bills that provide informational benefits. Two of these were directly related to characteristics of the composition of committees. First, committees with more expertise provide more

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informational benefits. Second, committees that are non-outlying and heterogeneous are

more informative. In Chapter 4, the analysis was on committee decisions. Since

committee level characteristics do not vary within committee, the concepts embedded in

these predictions had to be translated into bill specific characteristics. The Speaker’s

scheduling decision, however, does not have this problem. The Speaker can use the

composition of the committee as an indicator of informational efficiency. Using

committee composition variables allows for a more direct test of the importance of

informational characteristics because they are closer to the actual predictions of

information theories.

Committee Expertise: Committees with greater expertise bring better information to the table. Krehbiel (1991) measures committee expertise as the mean number of years that the members of the committee have served on the committee. Specialization and expertise come with time spent in particular areas of public policy. Serving on a

committee builds this expertise. The more veteran the committee members, the more

expertise they embody. Thus, for each committee I calculated the average number of

years members had served on the committee. Committee service for the 100th Congress

was collected from Nelson’s (1993) Committees in the U.S. Congress, 1947-1992. Since

his data end with the 101st Congress, I supplemented his data with committee rosters

printed in the Congressional Quarterly Almanac (1992-98) to determine committee service in the 105th Congress.

Outliers and Heterogeneity: The preference outlier and heterogeneity characteristics are based on how the ideology of the committee differs from the House

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ideology. Committees are outliers if the median of the committee is extreme relative to

the median of the House. Outlying committees are less likely to represent the preferences

of the full chamber (Gilligan and Krehbiel 1990). Committees are heterogeneous if they

are ideologically diverse. Heterogeneous committees are more informative because they

provide more credible information (Gilligan and Krehbiel 1989). To capture these

concepts, Krehbiel (1991) used ADA scores to measure the ideology of members. From

this, he calculated the median score and standard deviation for each committee and the

full House. Committees were relatively more outlying the greater the distance the

committee median was from the House median. Similarly, committees were relatively

more heterogeneous, the greater their standard deviation was compared to the House’s

standard deviation.

Debate is widespread about how to best measure ideology (see Groseclose et al.

1999). I created outlier and heterogeneity measures using Poole and Rosenthal’s (1985)

W-NOMINATE scores.28 The outlier variable is the absolute difference between the median ideology score of the committee and the median ideology score of the House.

The heterogeneity variable is the difference between the standard deviation of the ideology scores of the committee and the standard deviation of the House. The heterogeneity variable is not the absolute difference like the outliers variable is. The heterogeneity variable is a measure of the relative spread of ideology. So, if the

28 See Chapter 4 for a discussion of W-NOMINATE scores.

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committee represents a broader cross-section of the House than is typical, this will send a positive sign to the House that their interests are served.

Initially, these measures did not pose a problem. The correlation between the two variables is relatively low for both Congresses. However, in the 105th Congress, the correlation between the outlier and heterogeneity variables is high for the subset of bills reported from committee (r=0.65). In estimating the model predicting the Speaker’s scheduling decision over reported bills, the correlation between the two variables inflates the standard errors and increases the chance of a Type II error. To overcome this problem, I created a different method for capturing heterogeneity and extremity.

Each committee has both Democratic and Republican Party contingents. Across committees, the median of each party contingent varies. For example, some committees have more a more liberal Democratic contingent and others have a more conservative

Democratic contingent. The same is the case for the Republicans. The median members of each committee’s party contingent can be used to capture the relative heterogeneity and extremity of the committee. For example, if the median member of both the

Republican and Democratic Party contingent are moderate, then the committee is not much of an outlier (both moderate party medians create a moderate committee median) but it is homogenous (not much variation between medians). Contrast this with a committee whose median members are both relatively extreme. In this case, the committee is still not an outlier (the extreme medians counteract each other to keep the committee median moderate), but it is heterogeneous (there is more variation in the committee). Figure 5.1 shows the different types of committees that result from different

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Party median configurations. In the off-diagonal cells, the committee is an outlier because both party medians are in the same direction and create an outlier committee median. The heterogeneity of the committee is somewhere in-between the homogenous committee (two moderate medians) and the heterogeneous committee (two extreme medians).

Democratic Median Moderate Extreme

Moderate Homogenous Semi-Homogenous Republican Inlier Outlier Median Extreme Semi-Homogenous Heterogeneous Outlier Inlier

Figure 5.1: Committee Composition and Informational Efficiency

To demonstrate that this method captures the same idea as the outlier and heterogeneous measures traditionally used, I divided committees in the 100th and 105th

Congresses according to their party contingents. Using W-NOMINATE scores as the measure of ideology, I classified a party contingent as extreme if the median member was more liberal or conservative than the average party contingent for that party. Likewise, I classified a party contingent as moderate if the median member was less liberal or

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Democratic Median Moderate Extreme 100th Congress Moderate Agriculture District of Columbia Appropriations Education Republican Armed Services Foreign Affairs Median Banking Post Office Merchant Marine Rules

Extreme Commerce House Administration Science Budget Small Business Government Operations Veterans Affairs Interior Judiciary Public Works Standards of Official Conduct Ways and Means

105th Congress Moderate Intelligence Appropriations Transportation Banking Republican International Relations Median House Oversight Rules

Extreme Agriculture Commerce Budget Education National Security Judiciary Resources Government Reform Science Rules Small Business Standards of Official Conduct Veterans Affairs

Note: Moderate party medians are party contingents whose median is more moderate than the average party contingent of all committees. Extreme party medians are more extreme than the median. Ideology is measured using Poole and Rosenthal’s W-NOMINATE scores.

Figure 5.2: The Party Contingent Median for Each Committee

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conservative (more moderate) than the average party contingent (see Figure 5.2 for the

committee breakdown).

To see the relationship between party medians and characteristics of the full

committee, I calculated the standard deviation and median for each committee. Figure

5.3 shows the average standard deviation for the committees in each cell. In both

Democratic Median Moderate Extreme

100th Congress Moderate 0.309 0.336 Republican Median Extreme 0.330 0.372

105th Congress Moderate 0.512 0.588 Republican Median Extreme 0.539 0.603

Note: Cell entries are the average standard deviation of the committees listed in Figure 5.2. Moderate party medians are party contingents whose median is more moderate than the average party contingent of all committees. Extreme party medians are more extreme than the median. Ideology is measured using Poole and Rosenthal’s W-NOMINATE scores.

Figure 5.3: Relationship between Committee Party Medians and the Full Committee

Standard Deviation

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Congresses, the committees with moderate party contingents have the lowest average

standard deviation; committees with extreme party contingents have the highest standard

deviation. Committees with only one extreme party median have an average standard

deviation in between the others. Thus, using party medians for each committee captures

the heterogeneity of the committee.

Likewise, party medians capture the outlier concept. In Figure 5.4, the average median of the committees in each cell are shown. The numbers in the 100th Congress are

negative because the W-NOMINATE scores range from -1 to 1 with negative numbers

being more liberal. To ease the interpretation, the absolute difference between the

average committee median and the full chamber is shown in parentheses. The

committees on the main diagonal are closest to the chamber median (non-outliers) and

the committees on the off diagonal are farthest (outliers). Again, this matches my

expectations.

Committee party medians can be used to capture the outlier and heterogeneity

characteristics of different committees. In place of the Sponsor Outlier variable used in

Chapter 4, I include in each equation the Democratic and Republican Party medians for

the bill’s committee. For multiply referred bills, I take the average party median for all

the committees to which the bill was referred. These variables can be used to test the

extent to which the Speaker advances bills from informationally efficient committees.

By examining the predicted probabilities that result from different configurations of party medians, the Speaker’s propensity to schedule bills from outlying and homogenous committees can be determined.

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Democratic Median Moderate Extreme

100th Congress Moderate -0.041 -0.191 Republican (0.012) (0.123) Median Extreme -0.068 -0.060 (0.015) (0.007)

105th Congress Moderate 0.383 0.451 Republican (0.018) (0.086) Median Extreme 0.490 0.432 (0.125) (0.067)

Note: Cell entries are the average committee median of the committees listed in Figure 5.2. In parentheses is the absolute distance the average median is from the median of the full chamber; it is the traditional measure of “committee outlier.” Moderate party medians are party contingents whose median is more moderate than the average party contingent of all committees. Extreme party medians are more extreme than the median. Ideology is measured using Poole and Rosenthal’s W-NOMINATE scores.

Figure 5.4: Relationship between Committee Party Medians and Full Committee Median

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5.2: Scheduling Reported Bills

In both the 100th and 105th Congresses just under 90 percent of the bills reported from committee were scheduled. In Chapter 3, I showed that most of these bills were

considered in their calendar order; but, not all bills are scheduled. Both Wright and

Gingrich exercised discretion over which bills to schedule and which bills to veto. Party

theories predict that party bills will not be vetoed. In winnowing down the list of reported bills that are scheduled, a partisan Speaker would veto non-partisan bills in order

to make the final agenda deliver greater partisan benefits. This is a null hypothesis that

can be tested. In contrast, I argue that the Speaker facilitates the committee agenda.

Thus, in the 100th Congress, the Speaker will be more likely to schedule gains-from-

exchange bills than partisan bills. In the 105th Congress, the Speaker will be more likely to schedule partisan bills. In this section, I test my alternative hypothesis against the null.

The data used for this analysis is a subset of the data used in Chapter 4. Instead of including all bills sent to a committee, the dataset includes all bills reported from committee. In the case of multiply referred bills, only bills that were reported from all committees are included. In the 100th Congress, 645 bills were reported from committee.

In the 105th Congress, 731 bills entered the calendar system. The dependent variable is a dummy variable for whether or not the bill was considered on the floor. The independent variables are the same as in Chapter 4 with a few exceptions. The information variables from Chapter 4 are replaced with the committee level variables (see Appendix for the same models run using the information variables from Chapter 4). The dummy variables for each committee are replaced with dummy variables for Bach and Smith’s (1988)

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classification of committee types (Prestige, Policy, Constituency, Other). Since the

information variables are committee level variables, the individual committee variables

were perfectly collinear. The figures in Chapter 4 show which committees fall in each

category. Finally, the Date Introduced variable is replaced with a calendar variable,

which is each bill’s calendar number. This is a control variable for the calendar order.

Following the calendar means that bills higher up on the calendar (those with lower

numbers) will be scheduled first.

5.2.1: Results

For each Congress, I estimated three different logistic regressions. As in the analysis of committee reports, the Republican Sponsored variable and the Democratic

Party Unity variable are highly correlated (100th: p= -0.89; 105th: p= -0.67). It is difficult to determine independent effects with collinear variables, so in Equation 2 I exclude the unity variable. In Equation 3, I exclude the sponsor variable and the election variables

(because they are interactions with the sponsor variable). The results for the 100th and

105th Congresses are found in Figures 5.5 and 5.6 respectively. Notice in both

Congresses, the bill’s placement on the calendar is significant and in the expected direction. As bills are reported and placed lower on the calendar, the probability of being scheduled decreases. This is further support for the conclusion in Chapter 3 that the regular order of business plays a significant part in determining the actual legislative schedule.

The partisan and balancing theories of scheduling differ in their predictions of the types of bills that the Speaker will schedule. The partisan theory expects partisan

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characteristics to be dominant in determining which bills are scheduled. In this way, the

Speaker biases the committee agenda to partisan ends. The balancing theory, in contrast,

expects the Speaker to facilitate the committee agenda and select bills to be scheduled

based on the bias of the committee system. In Chapter 4, I established that the committee

system in the 100th Congress had a gains-from-exchange bias and committees in the 105th

Congress had a partisan bias. My balancing theory expects that gains-from-exchange

characteristics will be most important in the 100th Congress and partisan characteristics

will be most important in the 105th Congress.

The results support the balancing picture of scheduling. In the 100th Congress,

partisan characteristics are not significant in any of the models, but the distributive gains- from-exchange variable is significant in all three. In the 105th Congress, the opposite pattern holds. The gains-from-exchange variables are all insignificant while the

Democratic Party Unity variable is significant in both equations in which it is included.

Speakers Wright and Gingrich differ, then, in the types of bills that they carry from the calendar to the floor. Wright made sure that bills with high distributive content were scheduled. Gingrich made sure that members who were loyal to the Republican Party had their bills considered. In this way, both Speakers facilitated the bias of the committees system.

This is especially interesting in light of party cartel expectations about the

Speaker’s reaction to different types of committee agenda. Party cartel theory expects that the Speaker will use “active” control over committees that do not advance the party agenda. The absence of “active” control means that committees are working on

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Figure 5.5: Logistic Regression Predicting Which Reported Bills are Scheduled in the

100th Congress

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Equation (1) (2) (3) Constant -0.206 -1.011 -0.667 (2.058) (1.746) (1.813)) Calendar Number -0.002*** -0.002*** -0.002*** (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) Gains-from-Exchange Distributive Content 8.209*** 8.123*** 8.506*** (2.736) (2.721) (2.735) Scope (# of keywords) 0.005 0.005 0.005 (0.004) (0.004) (0.004) Multiple Referral -1.052 -1.054 -1.038 (0.743) (0.741) (0.742) Information Committee Seniority 0.133 0.144 0.112 (0.259) (0.260) (0.260) Republican Median 8.968*** 9.014*** 9.410*** (2.591) (2.580) (2.577) Democratic Median -1.995 -1.742 -2.520 (2.845) (2.825) (2.779) Minority Party Cosponsors -0.006 -0.005 -0.005 (0.008) (0.008) (0.008) Partisan Republican Sponsored 0.012 0.650 (1.316) (0.985) Vote % for Democratic Party in last Election -0.825 -0.729 (1.025) (1.014) Republican Sponsor* Democratic Election 2.147 2.285 (3.572) (3.476) Democratic Party Unity -0.008 -0.008 (0.011) (0.006) Committees Prestige 0.455 0.455 0.469 (1.251) (1.250) (1.254) Policy -0.674 -0.687 -0.728 (0.707) (0.705) (0.705)) Constituency -0.306 -0.255 -0.312 (0.838) (0.834) (0.836))

Number of Cases 620 620 638 Log likelihood -177.233 -177.509 -178.675 Pseudo R2 0.148 0.147 0.149 Correctly Predicted 89.52% 89.52% 89.66%

Note: Standard errors in parentheses; *p<0.10; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01 121

Figure 5.6: Logistic Regression Predicting Which Reported Bills are Scheduled in the

105th Congress

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Equation (1) (2) (3) Constant 1.256 -0.448 0.544 (4.027) (3.815) (3.823) Calendar Number -0.006*** -0.006*** -0.006*** (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) Gains-from-Exchange Distributive Content 1.081 0.431 1.186 (5.415) (5.252) (5.390) Scope (# of keywords) 0.000 0.000 0.000 (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) Multiple Referral 1.215 1.124 1.129 (1.403) (1.395) (1.403) Information Committee Seniority -0.355 -0.279 -0.346 (0.401) (0.398) (0.402) Republican Median 1.735 2.092 1.609 (4.986) (4.890) (4.926) Democratic Median -3.303 -2.917 -3.233 (2.472) (2.429) (2.476) Minority Party Cosponsors 0.011 0.011 0.011 (0.008) (0.008) (0.008) Partisan Republican Sponsored -0.987 0.221 (0.937) (0.632) Vote % for Democratic Party in last Election -1.025 -0.391 (2.209) (2.067) Republican Sponsor* Democratic Election -0.103 -1.058 (2.721) (2.586) Democratic Party Unity -0.016* -0.010** (0.009) (0.004) Committees Prestige 3.291** 3.242** 3.253** (1.420) (1.414) (1.421) Policy 2.043 1.915 1.992 (1.370) (1.364) (1.372) Constituency 2.131 2.044 2.090 (1.500) (1.489) (1.501)

Number of Cases 729 729 729 Log likelihood -207.909 -210.479 -208.722 Pseudo R2 0.226 0.216 0.223 Correctly Predicted 88.61% 88.20% 88.75%

Note: Standard errors in parentheses; *p<0.10; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01 123

“automatic pilot.” Contrary to this expectation, the Speaker uses “active” party control

precisely when he does not need to exercise control. Speaker Wright should have been

the most prone to use party characteristics because the committee agenda did not have a

strong partisan bias. Since the committee system did not have a strong “automatic pilot,”

Speaker Wright should have exercised more “active” control over the agenda. Speaker

Gingrich, on the other hand, had a committee system with a strong partisan bias. Since

there was an element of “automatic” agenda control, there did not need to be as much

“active” control. However, just the opposite occurred. The Speaker does not appear to

use his scheduling authority to alter the committee agenda and advance partisan interests.

Rather, the Speaker facilitates the committee agenda and makes scheduling choices based

on the nature of the committee agenda.

In addition to the gains-from-exchange and partisan variables, the information

variables are interesting. In the 100th Congress, the Republican Median variable is

positive and significant. This means that the Speaker is more likely to schedule bills that

come from committees with more conservative Republican contingents. Taken by itself,

the Republican Median variable can be interpreted as a confirmatory signal. The

Democrats are the majority party in the 100th Congress and Republicans are the “natural adversaries.” From an information signaling perspective, the more extreme is the ideology of the Republicans, the stronger the signal. Speaker Wright favored bills with a strong signal. Ceteris paribus, Wright was more likely to schedule bills from committees with a more conservative Republican contingent.

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To explore the extremity (outlier) and heterogeneity characteristics both the

Democratic and Republican medians must be used. I calculated the predicted probability of a bill being scheduled for four different pairs of party medians. The party median pairings match the committee types summarized in Figure 5.1. I used the minimum and maximum of each variable to calculate the probabilities for each cell. For example, to calculate the moderate/moderate cell I used the minimum Republican Median (100th:

0.149; 105th: 0.625) and the maximum Democratic Median (100th: -0.040; 105th: -0.170).

To calculate the extreme/extreme cell I used the maximum Republican Median (100th:

0.473; 105th: 0.750) and the minimum Democratic Median (100th: -0.378; 105th: -0.560).

All other variables are held at their mean values. The probabilities for both congresses are shown in Figure 5.7.

Both Speakers have an informational bias. The information variables in the 105th

Congress are not significant, but they tell the same story as the 100th Congress. In both cases, committees that are heterogeneous and moderate (extreme/extreme) have the highest probability of being scheduled. Thus, committees that have both informational attributes and are the most informationally efficient have the greatest probability of having their bills scheduled. The second most preferred committee type is biased committees towards the minority party. Thus, both Speakers look for support from the minority party when choosing the bills to schedule. This paints a much different picture than a purely partisan Speaker using his authority to advance party goals. Even in the case of Gingrich, who advances partisan goals, decisions are tempered by informational

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Democratic Median Moderate Outlier 100th Congress

Moderate 0.576 0.702 Republican Median Outlier 0.932 0.966

105th Congress

Moderate 0.827 0.945 Republican Median Outlier 0.856 0.953

Note: Cell entries are the predicted probabilities of being scheduled for different values of committee party medians for Equation 1 in Figures 5.6 and 5.7. Predicted probabilities are based on the minimum and maximum party medians. Ideology is measured using Poole and Rosenthal’s W-NOMINATE scores, which range from -1 to 1 with 1 being conservative. Thus, Republican outlier is the maximum Republican Party median. Since more liberal committees are negative, the Democratic outlier is the minimum Democratic Party median.

Figure 5.7: Predicted Probability of Being Scheduled By Committee Party Medians

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efficiency (although the insignificance of the variables necessitates some hesitation in

making this conclusion).

The general picture that arises is one of a Speaker who uses his scheduling

authority to facilitate the committee agenda. First, the Speaker follows the calendar order

allowing bills reported earlier in the session to be scheduled over bills reported later in

the session. Second, since not all bills are scheduled, the Speaker ensures that bills that

reflect the committee bias the best are brought to the floor. Third, in selecting bills to

schedule, the Speaker looks for bills that have the greatest informational efficiency. This

pattern is consistent with my balancing theory of scheduling. The next step in testing the

partisan and balancing theories of scheduling is to explore how the Speaker schedules

unreported bills.

5.3: Scheduling Unreported Bills

Around fifty percent of the bills scheduled in the House are brought to the floor without being reported from committee (100th: 57 percent; 105th: 49 percent). The shear volume of bills brought to the floor through this route opens the door for tremendous agenda control by the Speaker. In the 100th Congress, around 10,000 bills and resolutions were not reported. In the 105th Congress, over 8000 bills and resolutions were left. The

Speaker’s scheduling authority allows him to pick from these bills the 600 or so that he wants to schedule. In essence, the Speaker has the power to bypass committees directly bring bills to the floor. In doing so, he can fundamentally change the nature and bias of the legislative agenda.

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This does not mean that committees are uninvolved. The Speaker communicates

with committee chairs and bill sponsors. Committees vote to have their bills considered

under suspension instead of reporting them. Sponsors petition the Speaker to have their

bills brought up under suspension. Thus, many of these decisions are made with the

consent of committees. This is not surprising since the Speaker is an agent of the

chamber and circumventing committees is risky when trying to maintain support. Yet

even with committee consultation, the Speaker has tremendous agenda setting authority.

It is surprising that the literature is silent on the use of bypass procedures to circumvent committees. In general, empirical and theoretical studies explicitly exclude bills that take this path to the floor. Therefore, specific theoretical predictions about scheduling unreported bills do not exist. However, the general spirit of the party cartel and other partisan theories (i.e. conditional party theory) suggest that leaders use their authority to advantage the majority party. The partisan expectation, then, is that the

Speaker will schedule unreported bills that further provide partisan benefits. In fact, the

Speaker’s absolute discretion over which bills to schedule suggests that partisan characteristics will be the only factors that determine whether or not unreported bills are scheduled. The Speaker does not have to schedule any unreported bills. If committees are asking for non-partisan (or minority party) bills to be scheduled without a report, a partisan Speaker should find no utility in scheduling these bills. Committees with non-

partisan bills must report them and place them in the regular order of business.

In contrast, I argue that the Speaker schedules unreported bills to balance the

schedule. Committees cannot be fine-tuned to provide the balance between partisan,

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informational and gains-from-exchange benefits that members demand. Members give the Speaker authority to dip into committee jurisdictions so that the final agenda provides all three benefits. I expect, then, that the Speaker will schedule bills that provide benefits that are undersupplied by the committee system. More precisely, I expect that Wright will schedule partisan bills during the 100th Congress and Gingrich will schedule gains- from-exchange bills during the 105th Congress.

On the one hand, the balancing theory expectations are precise. I expect certain benefits to be provided. On the other hand, the expectation is loose. I do not make an argument about the “optimal” balance in the schedule. This means that the Speaker may schedule types of bills that are also supplied by the committee system. For example, the optimal balance might demand that additional partisan bills be supplied, even if the committee system is biased towards partisan benefits. In this case, the Speaker will schedule unreported partisan bills. However, I predict that the Speaker will also schedule gains-from-exchange bills.

The data used in this analysis are all bills and resolutions introduced in the House, or passed in the Senate, that are not reported from committee. This includes multiply referred bills that are only reported from one committee. The dependent variable is dummy variable for whether or not the bill was considered on the floor. The independent variables are the same as those used for reported bills with one exception. The calendar number variable is excluded (because none of these bills are on the calendar) and is replaced by the Date Introduced. This is the same variable used in Chapter 4. Bills are

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coded for the legislative day they are introduced. Higher numbers mean the bill was

introduced later in the Congress.

5.3.1: Results

As with the previous analyses, I estimated three logistic regressions to manage the collinearity problem associated with the Republican Sponsor and Democratic Party Unity

variables. The results for the 100th and 105th Congresses are shown in Figures 5.8 and

5.9 respectively. Almost all of the variables are significant, but the directions are not always in expected directions.

To deliver gains-from-exchange benefits both Speakers scheduled larger and more distributive bills. In Gingrich’s case, this supports the balancing theory. The committees of the 105th Congress were biased more towards partisan benefits and

Gingrich uses his authority to schedule unreported bills that deliver gains-from-exchange benefits. In Wright’s case, scheduling distributive bills furthers the committee bias towards gains-from-exchange benefits. This does not contradict the balancing expectations because I do not make claims about the optimal balance. The true test of balancing comes in scheduling partisan bills.

In both cases, unreported multiply referred bills are less likely to be scheduled.

Multiply referred bills involve more complex jurisdictional issues and tap into multiple aspects of public policy. Scheduling bills before they are reported does not allow committees to issue committee reports, which can have informational value. Further, the process of marking up the bill and reporting it allows committees to put their individual

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Figure 5.8: Logistic Regression Predicting Which Unreported Bills are Scheduled in the

100th Congress

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Equation (1) (2) (3) Constant 0.423 1.637** 0.669 (0.856) (0.765) (0.677) Date Introduced 0.003*** 0.003*** 0.002*** (0.001) (0.001) (0.000) Gains-from-Exchange Distributive Content 2.459*** 2.415*** 2.693*** (0.740) (0.738) (0.623) Scope (# of keywords) 0.009*** 0.009*** 0.007*** (0.003) (0.002) (0.001) Multiple Referral -1.423*** -1.418*** -1.468*** (0.217) (0.216) (0.180) Information Committee Seniority -0.336** -0.338** -0.293** (0.139) (0.138) (0.122) Republican Median -3.811*** -3.882*** -3.554*** (1.091) (1.085) (0.924) Democratic Median 2.914* 2.777** 1.751 (1.309) (1.306) (1.120) Minority Party Cosponsors 0.018*** 0.017*** 0.014*** (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) Partisan Republican Sponsored 0.252 -0.650*** (0.363) (0.234) Vote % for Democratic Party in last Election -0.799* -0.837* (0.434) (0.434) Republican Sponsor* Democratic Election 2.654** 2.595** (1.073) (1.069) Democratic Party Unity 0.014*** 0.007*** (0.004) (0.001) Committees Prestige -2.977*** -2.993*** -3.514*** (0.382) (0.381) (0.373) Policy -0.925*** -0.915*** -1.294*** (0.172) (0.170) (0.147) Constituency -2.142*** -2.164*** -2.180*** (0.299) (0.298) (0.250)

Number of Cases 6651 6651 7138 Log likelihood -1272.965 -1278.122 -1661.434 Pseudo R2 0.193 0.190 0.193 Correctly Predicted 93.56% 93.56% 91.44%

Note: Standard errors in parentheses; *p<0.10; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01 132

Figure 5.9: Logistic Regression Predicting Which Unreported Bills are Scheduled in the

105th Congress

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Equation (1) (2) (3) Constant 4.362*** 4.317*** 5.229*** (1.482) (1.481) (1.461) Date Introduced 0.005*** 0.005*** 0.005*** (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) Gains-from-Exchange Distributive Content 17.835*** 17.851*** 17.319*** (2.039) (2.042) (1.978) Scope (# of keywords) 0.002*** 0.002*** 0.002*** (0.000) (0.000) (0.001) Multiple Referral -2.239*** -2.240*** -2.362*** (0.359) (0.360) (0.355) Information Committee Seniority 0.248 0.264* 0.241 (0.159) (0.159) (0.158) Republican Median -10.103*** -10.324*** -9.679*** (1.943) (1.936) (1.926) Democratic Median 2.946*** 2.999*** 2.832*** (1.119) (1.121) (1.101) Minority Party Cosponsors 0.010*** 0.009*** 0.008*** (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) Partisan Republican Sponsored 1.039*** 1.180*** (0.240) (0.222) Vote % for Democratic Party in last Election 1.043 1.078 (0.743) (0.747) Republican Sponsor* Democratic Election -2.398** -2.458*** (0.939) (0.940) Democratic Party Unity -0.001 -0.006*** (0.001) (0.001) Committees Prestige -3.048*** -3.066*** -3.055*** (0.384) (0.384) (0.378) Policy -0.747** -0.747** -0.868*** (0.301) (0.302) (0.298) Constituency -2.384*** -2.392*** -2.465*** (0.439) (0.440) (0.431)

Number of Cases 5365 5365 5365 Log likelihood -1234.09 -1235.187 -1260.198 Pseudo R2 0.154 0.153 0.136 Correctly Predicted 92.10% 92.12% 92.08%

Note: Standard errors in parentheses; *p<0.10; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01 134

stamp on the bill that is sent to the floor. Unreported bills may not have the full gains- from-exchange until all committees have their input and report the bill. The complexity of multiply referred bills may mean that gains-from-exchange are best captured by being reported and placed on the calendar. Thus, by not scheduling unreported multiply referred bills, the Speaker is actually increasing the potential gains-from-exchange.

Delivering informational benefits is also a priority, but the results are less clear cut. In both Congresses, the Speaker looks for a confirmatory signal. Minority party support is significant in every equation. However, committee heterogeneity is not important to either Speaker. Figure 5.10 shows the predicted probabilities for different configurations of party contingents. The committees with the highest probability of being scheduled are the most homogenous (moderate/moderate). The committees with the lowest probability are the most heterogeneous (extreme/extreme). Despite the lack of heterogeneity, both Speakers choose low variance committees that are not outliers. So, there is still a preference for committees that roughly match the median preferences of the full chamber. Further, the confirmatory signal on each bill increases the information transferred from the homogenous committees. Remember that homogenous committees are the least likely to have their bills scheduled after they are reported. Perhaps this is the

Speaker’s way of ensuring that these committees have access to the schedule. But he does so in a way that encourages information because he also looks for a confirmatory signal on a bill by bill basis.

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Democratic Median Moderate Outlier 100th Congress

Moderate 0.168 0.069 Republican Median Outlier 0.056 0.021

105th Congress

Moderate 0.195 0.072 Republican Median Outlier 0.065 0.022

Note: Cell entries are the predicted probabilities of being scheduled for different values of committee party medians for Equation 1 in Figures 5.10 and 5.11. Predicted probabilities are based on the minimum and maximum party medians. Ideology is measured using Poole and Rosenthal’s W-NOMINATE scores, which range from -1 to 1 with 1 being conservative. Thus, Republican outlier is the maximum Republican Party median. Since more liberal committees are negative, the Democratic outlier is the minimum Democratic Party median.

Figure 5.10: Predicted Probability of Being Scheduled By Committee Party Medians

Committee seniority is another interesting result. In the 100th Congress, senior committees are significantly less likely to have bills scheduled. In the 105th Congress, committee seniority positively impacts the probability of being scheduled, but is only significant in one of the three equations. The differential impact of seniority between the two Congresses makes speculation difficult. It is possible that the advantage of senior 136

committees is their ability to write informative reports or hold informative mark-up sessions. Thus, there is an informational value to having senior committees report their bills; scheduling bills that have not been reported forfeits that informational advantage.

That may explain the 100th Congress, but it raises questions about the 105th. It is also possible that senior committees create better bills and thus members do not need a report to know that expert knowledge was brought to the table. Thus, senior committees do not need to report bills to convey information; scheduling unreported bills from senior committees may be more informative than bills from less senior committees. This explains the 105th Congress, but casts doubt on the informational approach in the 100th

Congress. Without more precise predictions about unreported bills (or the value of committee reports) from information theories, it is difficult to conclude one way or another about the informational consequences of these results. However, in light of the other informational variables in the model it is clear that informational efficiency is at least part of the Speaker’s scheduling decision.

Partisan considerations are also important for both Speakers. Wright and

Gingrich both show a preference for majority party sponsored bills and especially bills sponsored by more loyal members of the party. Interestingly, Gingrich did not use scheduling to help electorally marginal members. The positive coefficient on the

Democratic Party Unity variable means that Democrats from safer districts were more likely (although insignificantly) to have their bills scheduled. The negative coefficient on the interaction variable means that safer Republicans were more likely to have their bills scheduled. Wright was different. He was more likely to schedule bills sponsored by

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marginal members in both parties. To the extent that legislative success is important for electoral success, Wright helped marginal members of his party in their electoral pursuit and Gingrich did not. However, Wright also helped marginal Republicans.

On the whole, both Speakers provide partisan benefits. Again, this supports the

balancing expectation. Wright scheduled partisan bills to balance the gains-from-

exchange bias of the committees in the 100th Congress. Gingrich also scheduled partisan

bills. In his case, partisan benefits furthered the partisan bias of the committee system.

This is the most ambiguous result regarding the partisan and balancing expectations. As

the partisan theory expects, Gingrich further biased the already partisan committee

agenda with partisan bills. However, Gingrich also scheduled bills that provide gains-

from-exchange and informational benefits. From a partisan standpoint, these benefits

should not be important.

The picture that emerges from this analysis is a Speaker that uses his authority to

schedule unreported bills that advance all three types of legislative benefits. This is perhaps the strongest evidence that the Speaker is not a strong partisan but rather acts as an agent of both the chamber and the majority party. Scheduling unreported bills is the sole prerogative of the Speaker and if purely partisan scheduling decisions are to be made

anywhere, they would be made here. Instead the Speaker advances all three goals. In

doing this, he creates a balanced final agenda. In the 100th Congress, committees had a

gains-from-exchange bias. In response, partisan characteristics were important in

Wright’s scheduling of unreported bills. Committees in the 105th Congress had partisan

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priorities. In response, the distributive nature of the bill was important in Gingrich’s scheduling of unreported bills.

5.4: Conclusion

Partisan theories of scheduling suggest that the Speaker uses his scheduling authority to advance party goals at the expense of other considerations. Specifically, this means that the Speaker rearranges the regular order of business to advantage partisan interests. This is especially the case if the committee system does not provide an agenda biased towards partisan goals. Without a partisan committee agenda, the Speaker must exercise “active” control over the agenda to advance partisan interests. In addition, the

Speaker will use his authority to schedule unreported bills that also advance partisan interests. Because scheduling unreported bills is entirely at the Speaker’s discretion, partisan characteristics will be the only important factors.

In contrast, I argued that the Speaker is an agenda of both the chamber and the majority party. This means that the Speaker has an interest in creating a final agenda that provides all three types of legislative benefits (partisan, informational, and gains-from- exchange). In creating this agenda, the Speaker does not alter the basic tendency of the committee system; instead, he facilitates the committee agenda ensuring that bills consistent with the committee bias are scheduled. This does not necessarily create the optimal balance between all three benefits. To ensure the proper balance, the Speaker uses his authority to schedule unreported bills. Specifically, the Speaker will schedule bills that provide benefits under-produced by the committee system.

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In this chapter, I tested these competing expectations. First, I examined the

Speaker’s scheduling decision over reported bills. In Chapter 4, I discovered that

committees in the 100th Congress had a gains-from-exchange bias while committees in the 105th Congress had a partisan bias. Consistent with the balancing theory, I demonstrated that the Speaker’s scheduling decision of reported bills reinforces the committee bias. Three factors are significant in the scheduling decision of reported bills.

First, calendar order is important (consistent with the results of Chapter 3). Second, the nature of the committee bias is important. Third, the Speaker looks for informational efficiency.

I also examined the Speaker’s scheduling decision over unreported bills.

Contrary to the partisan theory, I show that the Speaker provides all three legislative benefits, not just partisan benefits. This is also consistent with the balancing theory. In the 100th Congress, Wright balanced the committee agenda by providing partisan benefits. In the 105th Congress, Gingrich balanced the committee agenda by delivering distributive benefits. The general conclusion that comes from this is that the Speaker is not a strong partisan purely interested in advancing partisan interests. Rather, the

Speaker is an agent of the chamber and the majority party balancing the legislative demands of these competing principals.

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CHAPTER 6

CONCLUSION

In the modern House, the Speaker has been given greater control over the legislative agenda. Through his procedural control of the scheduling decision, the

Speaker has been given an effective veto over which bills are scheduled and when. The centralization of the scheduling decision and the increased partisanship in the House has led scholars to argue that the agenda in the House is a partisan agenda that advantages the members of the majority at the expense of the minority (Aldrich and Rohde 2001; Cox and McCubbins 1993; Kiewiet and McCubbins 1991; Rohde 1991; Sinclair 1995, 2000).

In this dissertation, I have presented empirical evidence that calls this portrait of the scheduling decision into question. In the process, I have outlined an alternative theory of scheduling that focuses on the Speaker’s need to balance partisan and institutional demands. In this chapter, I summarize my basic argument and draw out the implications for current theories of legislative organization, the basis of agenda control in the House, and the nature of legislative politics.

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6.1: Summary of Argument

The Speaker is a unique leader because he is caught between the conflicting demands of his institutional responsibility and partisan loyalty. His institutional responsibility derives from the fact that he is the only leader in the House elected by the full chamber. The office of the Speaker was created to oversee the operation of the

House and ensure a fair and efficient consideration of legislation. His partisan loyalty comes from his membership in the majority party and the fact that the election as Speaker is almost always a straight party vote. The tension between these two competing principals demands a delicate balancing act when setting the schedule. Leaning too far towards one principal at the expense of the other has electoral consequences. History has shown that being too partisan will bring revolt by the House and being too fair will bring anger from the party. The Speaker must balance the demands of these principals and any theory of the Speaker’s scheduling decision must recognize this need for balance.

Balancing the agenda means that the Speaker must create an agenda that provides legislative benefits important to both the chamber and the majority party. The literature on institutional design has identified three primary legislative benefits demanded by all legislatures - gains-from-exchange, information, and party benefits. Committees can be designed to provide these benefits, but there is fundamental tradeoff that exists when constructing committees – producing one benefit comes at the expense of producing others. As a result, the Speaker must use his scheduling authority to ensure that all benefits are provided and that the optimal balance is reached between chamber and party demands.

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The optimal balance between the partisan and chamber benefits varies over time.

Thus, my theory does not make any claims about the correct proportion of partisan and chamber benefits in the final agenda. However, I have made specific claims about general patterns in scheduling. The first is that the Speaker will follow the committee

agenda. The committee system is the primary institution that filters through the massive

volume of bills proposed in each congress. Individual members work hard to select bills

in their jurisdiction that fit various political and policy goals. The Speaker, as an agent of the chamber, finds it dangerous to alter the agenda set by the committee system. This impinges on committee rights and reduces the ability for individual members to pursue

their own goals. The best strategy for the Speaker is to facilitate the committee agenda.

This leaves the agenda setting in the hands of committees and helps satisfy a basic

institutional demand for fairness. The major change that the Speaker makes when

scheduling the committee agenda is to organize the work week so that non-controversial

bills are considered early in the week, allowing members the luxury to spend more time

in the district.

Balancing the schedule, however, requires some change in the committee agenda.

Committees cannot be designed to provide all benefits in the proper balance. As a result,

the Speaker uses his authority to augment the committee agenda. The Speaker schedules

bills that have not been reported from committee to round out the final agenda. He

makes sure that the agenda is balanced by scheduling bills that provide benefits

undersupplied by the committee system. Since committees recognize that they cannot

provide the optimal balance, they give up some autonomy over their jurisdiction and

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allow the Speaker to dip into their set of bills. In this way, the final agenda provides the balance demanded by the chamber and the majority party and committees retain primary control over the agenda in their jurisdiction.

This does not mean that committees always have their bills scheduled. For different reasons, the Speaker does not schedule all the bills reported from committee.

One reason is that committee bills do not always have enough support to pass. The

Speaker does not want to waste time on the floor considering bills that he knows will not pass. Another reason is that balancing the schedule may require unreported bills to take the place of reported bills on the schedule. However, when choosing between reported bills, the Speaker will make sure that bills consistent with the general legislative bias of the committee system will be scheduled. That is, if the committee system has a general bias towards distributive benefits, the Speaker will make sure that bills high in distributive content are scheduled. Bills low in distributive content, however, may be

“vetoed” to make room for unreported bills in the final agenda. In short, when the

Speaker cannot follow the committee agenda exactly, he ensures that the basic legislative tendency of the committee system is scheduled.

The Speaker, in my view, is not a strong partisan. Rather, he is leader constrained by the expectations of the full chamber and the majority party. This means that the

Speaker is reluctant to challenge the agenda setting power of the committee system. In changing the agenda, the Speaker works to strike a balance the preserves the interests of the committees and provides all three types of legislative benefits. Securing partisan

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benefits are just one of the Speaker’s scheduling objectives. He is much more concerned with passing a balanced agenda than a partisan one.

6.2: Implications

My argument has several implications for theories of legislative organization and our understanding of the House in general. In recent years, various party theories have developed that make specific claims about the Speaker’s use of his scheduling authority and the effect this has on agenda control in the House. First, the basic assumption of these theories is that the Speaker is an agent of the party and pushes as partisan an agenda as is supported by members of the majority party (Cox and McCubbins 1993; Aldrich and

Rohde 2001; Sinclair 1995). In the past twenty years, the increased homogeneity of the parties has created a modern Speaker that is highly partisan and interested in advantaging the majority party at every turn (Rohde 1991). Yet the evidence presented in this dissertation supports the portrait of a Speaker interested in following the committee agenda and balancing the legislative schedule. This is the case despite the fact that both the Speakers studied here (Wright and Gingrich) are considered to be modern examples of extreme partisanship.

Second, Cox and McCubbins (1993; 1994; 2002) party cartel theory argues that scheduling is important to the majority party’s ability to usurp the agenda setting power of the House. The Speaker’s partisan scheduling is said to change the incentives of committees so that the bills reported from committee satisfy the partisan demands of the

Speaker. In this way, party cartel theory suggests a fundamental shift in the understanding of agenda-setting in the House. In this view, the agenda is defined by the

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Speaker and other party leaders from the top down. Committees do not control the agenda because the Speaker successfully uses the scheduling veto to control de facto which bills will be reported.

The evidence supports something very different. Committees in the 100th

Congress were not primarily partisan committees. Rather, they were biased towards providing gains-from-exchange benefits. In the 105th Congress, the committee system showed a partisan bias, but this was after major reforms at the beginning of the 104th

Congress. The change in committee agendas is hard to explain by changes in the partisanship of the Speaker because both Wright and Gingrich are considered to be very strong partisans. The change is better explained by the 1994 reforms in the committee system that strengthened the role of committee chairs and created a group of committee chairs that were more ideologically committed to the party agenda (Smith and Lawrence

1997).

These results challenge the very assumptions that party cartel theory makes about the effect of the scheduling veto on committees and the Speaker’s propensity to use the veto. First, these results imply that the speaker’s scheduling veto is ineffective at changing the incentives of the committee system. The committee system is an enormous institution that can only be changed through structural reform. When committees are created and rules defined at the beginning of each congress, committees can be set up to efficiently supply different types of benefits. But once committees are in place, their incentives cannot be changed. Second, these results suggest that the Speaker does not try to use his scheduling authority to change committee incentives. Instead of punishing

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committees for underproducing partisan benefits, the Speaker facilitates the committee bias. The reluctance of the Speaker to issue sanctions and punish members is consistent with other studies that have raised doubts about the implications of cartel theory in other leadership decisions (Schickler and Rich 1997).

The balancing theory of scheduling also changes how we conceptualize the politics of the modern House. Many accept that the modern House is dominated by partisan politics. Rohde (1991, 171) concluded a decade ago that “our textbook picture must change not only to encompass stronger parties in the House, but also to include stronger and more influential party leaders.” He is careful not to assert that parties are all encompassing, but more recent party theories have painted House politics as primarily partisan (Cox and McCubbins 1993). In addition, the “conditions” that support party government are at considered to be at their height and expected to continue into the foreseeable future (Aldrich and Rohde 2001).

The picture of politics in the House presented here is fundamentally different.

Partisan divisions are not dominant; rather, much of the business of the House is spent on bills that advantage the chamber and help all members. In many respects, the Speaker can be seen as a leader who works to ensure that partisan politics is not dominant. He organizes the work week to benefit all members, he ensures that gains-from-exchange are realized, and he encourages bills with informational efficiency to be part of the final agenda. In other words, legislative politics is as much about achieving common, party neutral goals, as achieving partisan goals. This is finding is especially interesting because both Wright and Gingrich are considered to be very partisan Speakers. This begs

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the question, if Wright and Gingrich are highly partisan Speakers, what role do party

benefits play when the Speaker is a weak partisan?

One reason that my results support a less partisan story than other studies is my

broader focus on all legislation. Conventional studies of the House focus on “major”

legislation. These bills are generally selected because of their controversy and partisan

content. As a result they are unrepresentative, are biased towards finding partisan

conflict, and cannot be taken to reflect the nature of politics in the House as a whole. The

true nature of legislative politics can only be found by looking at all bills, major and

minor. While noncontroversial bills are often dismissed as uninteresting, they are not

unimportant. As Congressman Clem Miller (1962, 44) pointed out, minor bills “may be

the life-blood of individual congressmen.” If this is the case (and I believe it is),

legislative politics is as much about choosing whose noncontroversial bills are scheduled

as it is about which major bills make the agenda. In taking this comprehensive view, I

find that the partisan nature of legislative politics is greatly exaggerated. Perhaps the

nature of legislative politics is not much different than when Mayhew (1974, 105) wrote

that “the interesting division in congressional politics is not between Democrats and

Republicans, but between politicians in and out of office.”

To be clear, I am not suggesting that parties are unimportant. The electoral and legislative benefits that parties provide are important parts of the story. However, they are not the only part of the story and are possibly not the dominant part of the story.

Highly partisan and controversial bills make up a small percentage of the total legislative agenda and when the scope is expanded to take in the total legislative picture, the

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Speaker’s attention to non-partisan concerns becomes clear. In short, from the evidence presented here, the Speaker is as concerned with maintaining the “cross-party conspiracy among incumbents to keep their jobs” (Mayhew 1974, 105) as he is with “increasing the probability that [the majority] party secures a majority” (Cox and McCubbins 1993, 128).

To accurately capture the role that the Speaker plays in legislative outcomes, theories must recognize that the Speaker is not only an agent of the party, but an agent of the chamber as well.

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APPENDIX A

DATA COLLECTION

Since the data used in this dissertation is different than past data on Congress, it is useful to outline in more detail exactly how the data was collected. The primary difference between this data and past data is the volume of bills contained in the analysis.

The ability to rapidly collect data on thousands of bills comes from the electronic nature of the data available through the Library of Congress’ THOMAS website

(http://thomas.loc.gov). THOMAS began in 1995 with the start of the 104th Congress29 and has continuously updated the information available for each Congress as well as the number of Congresses available.

Two pages of THOMAS were the primary source of data for this research. Most of the data was taken from the “Bill Summary and Status” section. Within this section of

THOMAS are two pages – the summary page and the subject page. Every bill and resolution introduced in the House and the Senate has a separate summary webpage that lists the title of the bill, the dates that the bill made a step in the legislative process, the

29 see About THOMAS at http://thomas.loc.gov/home/abt_thom.html

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committee(s) it was referred to, the cosponsors and the dates they signed on, and related

bills in the House or Senate. The information about a bill’s progress through the

legislative process is extensive. The dates are listed for when a bill is introduced,

referred to a committee or subcommittee, has hearings in a committee or subcommittee,

is voted on, ordered to be reported, and reported. When a bill is reported, the calendar

number is listed. When a bill is scheduled, the date it is scheduled, the method used to

consider the bill, amendments that are offered, and the outcome are listed. During

consideration of a bill, the time is listed when amendments are offered as well as any

other motions concerning the bill. The same level of detail is used in both the House and

the Senate.

Each bill also has a subject page. The subject page lists the Legislative Indexing

Vocabulary used to classify each bill. The number of subjects listed ranges from 1 to

hundreds (547 is the most in the 100th and 105th Congresses). The majority of the data

needed for the analysis was taken from the summary page. The subject page was used

for the scope and distributive variables.

The challenge in collecting this data is first downloading the two pages for all

14,000 bills and then turning the HTML files into datasets. Downloading the pages can

be done by using almost any free download manager found on the web. To transform the

HTML files into datasets I used two methods. First, I hand coded all the information about a bill’s progress. I coded when a bill was introduced, when it was ordered to be reported, when it was reported, the calendar it was sent to and the calendar number, when

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it was scheduled, the method used to consider the bill (and the H. Res. used as the special rule if applicable), and the outcome.

Second, I had a computer program written to extract data from the pages. The sponsor, cosponsor, and committee information from the summary pages were all collected through the program. I also used a program to extract the subject data from the subject pages. The program also identified and counted the total number of keywords and the total number states listed in the keywords. Creating the variables was relatively simple from the raw data. Sponsor and committee variables simply required matching the raw data listing the sponsors and committees for each bill with another dataset that contained information (ideology, tenure, party, etc.) about sponsors and committees collected from other sources.

The computer program that I used was developed by Jim Ludwig, the resident computer programmer in the Department of Political Science at the Ohio State

University. The programs are available from the author. It is important to note that the programs are “brute force” programs that will not work on other types of webpages.

Further, the nature of each program limits its use on other THOMAS pages. We discovered that the HTML format within THOMAS varies by Congress. As we encountered different formats, the program was made more general; but, it is limited to the pages we used.

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APPENDIX B

ALTERNATE MODELS FOR ANALYSIS IN CHAPTER 5

In Chapter 5, the variables used to capture informational benefits are different than the variables used in Chapter 4. This may cause some concern about the inferences made about the importance of informational benefits at different stages. In this

Appendix, I present the logistic regression models from Chapter 5 using the informational variables from Chapter 4. The substantive results made in Chapter 5 are consistent with the results of these models.

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Equation (1) (2) (3) Constant 3.449*** 3.124*** 3.336*** (1.277) (0.707) (0.759) Calendar Number -0.002*** -0.002*** -0.002*** (0.001) (0.000) (0.000) Gains-from-Exchange Distributive Content 8.690*** 8.636*** 8.825*** (3.075) (3.067) (3.053) Scope (# of keywords) 0.010 0.009 0.009 (0.006) (0.006) (0.006) Multiple Referral -0.124 -0.138 -0.098 (0.567) (0.564) (0.565) Information Years in House -0.005 -0.005 -0.004 (0.018) (0.017) (0.018) Outlier -0.479 -0.559 -0.493 (1.160) (1.131) (1.102) Minority Party Cosponsors -0.009 -0.008 -0.009 (0.009) (0.008) (0.008) Partisan Republican Sponsored -0.026 0.287 (1.395) (0.955) Vote % for Democratic Party in last Election -0.439 -0.368 (1.140) (1.116) Republican Sponsor* Democratic Election 0.972 1.049 (3.400) (3.359) Democratic Party Unity -0.004 -0.004 (0.013) (0.006) Prestige Committee Appropriations -0.898 -0.883 -0.877 (0.837) (0.834) (0.837) Budget -1.959 -2.011 -2.044 (1.524) (1.514) (1.509) Rules -1.188 -1.200 -1.248 (0.992) (0.990) (0.987) Ways and Means 0.186 0.201 0.154 (1.152) (1.150) (1.147) (continued on next page)

Figure B.1 Logistic Regression Predicting Which Reported Bills are Scheduled in the

100th Congress

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Figure B.1 (continued)

Policy Committee Banking -1.789*** -1.795*** -1.794*** (0.668) (0.667) (0.667) Foreign Affairs -0.330 -0.352 -0.333 (0.945) (0.941) (0.938) Energy -0.178 -0.192 -0.225 (0.496) (0.494) (0.495) Judiciary 0.679 0.672 0.660 (0.540) (0.539) (0.539) Education -1.159* -1.175* -1.180* (0.615) (0.612) (0.611) Government Operations 0.767 0.794 0.842 (0.924) (0.923) (0.912) Constituency Committee Agriculture -0.660 -0.641 -0.726 (0.586) (0.583) (0.584) Armed Services 1.117 1.141 1.068 (1.436) (1.423) (1.424) Interior 0.310 0.306 0.378 (0.598) (0.598) (0.595) Merchant Marine -0.839 -0.829 -0.854 (0.538) (0.537) (0.539) Transportation -0.357 -0.361 -0.327 (0.703) (0.704) (0.699) Science -0.168 -0.159 -0.082 (0.736) (0.735) (0.726) Veterans Affairs -0.576 -0.611 -0.701 (1.232) (1.227) (1.204) Other Committee Administration -0.666 -0.678 -0.648 (0.930) (0.928) (0.916) Post Office -0.157 -0.170 -0.189 (0.716) (0.715) (0.716) Intelligence -2.814* -2.797* -2.807* (1.517) (1.514) (1.499)

Number of Cases 621 621 638 Log likelihood -174.256 -174.303 -175.550 Pseudo R2 0.171 0.171 0.173

Note: Standard errors in parentheses; *p<0.10; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

155

Equation (1) (2) (3) Constant 6.180*** 4.341*** 4.628*** (1.596) (1.072) (0.611) Calendar Number -0.007*** -0.007*** -0.008*** (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) Gains-from-Exchange Distributive Content -1.376 -1.780 -0.993 (5.871) (5.713) (5.837) Scope (# of keywords) 0.001 0.000 0.000 (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) Multiple Referral 0.399 0.391 0.282 (0.702) (0.694) (0.686) Information Years in House 0.014 0.014 0.018 (0.017) (0.018) (0.017) Outlier 0.318 0.292 0.323 (0.739) (0.724) (0.692) Minority Party Cosponsors 0.013 0.011 0.012 (0.009) (0.009) (0.009) Partisan Republican Sponsored -1.543 -0.000 (1.233) (0.788) Vote % for Democratic Party in last Election -3.125 -2.812 (2.601) (2.582) Republican Sponsor* Democratic Election 2.004 1.481 (3.109) (3.101) Democratic Party Unity -0.021 -0.013** Prestige Committee Appropriations 0.190 0.138 0.172 (1.308) (1.302) (1.303) Budget

Rules 0.118 0.253 0.236 (0.584) (0.572) (0.573) Ways and Means -0.959 -0.876 -0.835 (0.596) (0.585) (0.587)

(continued on next page)

Figure B.2: Logistic Regression Predicting Which Reported Bills are Scheduled in the

105th Congress

156

Figure B.2 (continued)

Policy Committee Banking -1.046 -1.390* -1.210 (0.811) (0.785) (0.793) International Relations -0.390 -0.075 -0.277 (0.866) (0.872) (0.861) Energy -1.126** -0.964* -1.023** (0.540) (0.527) (0.519) Judiciary -0.481 -0.462 -0.424 (0.485) (0.475) (0.475) Education -1.440 -1.350** -1.368** (0.621) (0.620) (0.611) Government Reform -0.007 -0.150 0.000 (0.762) (0.773) (0.764) Constituency Committee Agriculture 0.479 0.530 0.539 (1.286) (1.268) (1.263) National Security -2.096 -2.227* -1.934 (1.338) (1.350) (1.328) Resources -1.390*** -1.295*** -1.288*** (0.462) (0.453) (0.441) Transportation -0.994* -0.952 -0.883 (0.590) (0.582) (0.580) Science -1.909** -2.270*** -2.023** (0.874) (0.849) (0.861) Small Business

Veterans Affairs -0.099 -0.077 -0.056 (1.239) (1.212) (1.235) Other Committee Oversight -2.923*** -2.878*** -2.883** (1.013) (1.000) (1.004) Intelligence -1.624 -1.529 -1.571 (1.504) (1.508) (1.481)

Number of Cases 722 722 722 Log likelihood -193.185 -194.857 -194.427 Pseudo R2 0.273 0.267 0.268

Note: Standard errors in parentheses; *p<0.10; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

157

Equation (1) (2) (3) Constant -4.717*** -3.400*** -4.776*** (0.414) (0.193) (0.188) Date Introduced 0.004*** 0.004*** 0.003*** (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) Gains-from-Exchange Distributive Content 0.834 0.780 0.896 (0.742) (0.741) (0.599) Scope (# of keywords) 0.019*** 0.019*** 0.007*** (0.003) (0.003) (0.001) Multiple Referral 0.339 0.324 0.042 (0.211) (0.209) (0.175) Information Years in House 0.042*** 0.045*** 0.040*** (0.005) (0.005) (0.004) Outlier -0.307 -0.413 0.021 (0.353) (0.351) (0.267) Minority Party Cosponsors 0.020*** 0.020*** 0.017*** (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) Partisan Republican Sponsored 0.303 -0.677*** (0.345) (0.224) Vote % for Democratic Party in last Election -0.256 -0.366 (0.388) (0.385) Republican Sponsor* Democratic Election 1.629 1.558 (1.079) (1.072) Democratic Party Unity 0.014*** 0.011*** (0.004) (0.001) Prestige Committee Appropriations -0.462 -0.525 -0.144 (0.412) (0.409) (0.390) Budget 1.591 1.688 1.826 (1.144) (1.136) (1.136) Rules -1.864*** -1.873*** -1.426*** (0.428) (0.428) (0.393) Ways and Means -2.394*** -2.402*** -2.168*** (0.319) (0.319) (0.305) (continued on next page)

Figure B.3: Logistic Regression Predicting Which Reported Bills are Scheduled in the

100th Congress 158

Figure B.3 (continued)

Policy Committee Banking -0.013 0.029 0.280 (0.233) (0.231) (0.215) Foreign Affairs 0.664*** 0.711*** 1.022*** (0.168) (0.167) (0.145) Energy -0.899*** -0.857*** -0.202 (0.237) (0.235) (0.187) Judiciary -1.355*** -1.343*** -0.742*** (0.246) (0.245) (0.199) Education -0.635** -0.605** -0.270 (0.276) (0.275) (0.248) Government Operations -0.752* -0.806* -0.444 (0.451) (0.451) (0.407) Constituency Committee Agriculture -0.240 -0.261 0.198 (0.237) (0.235) (0.181) Armed Services -0.453 -0.490* -0.154 (0.288) (0.287) (0.265) Interior -0.704** -0.674** 0.133 (0.294) (0.293) (0.225) Merchant Marine -0.300 -0.281 -0.047 (0.293) (0.293) (0.273) Transportation -0.434 -0.417 0.077 (0.280) (0.279) (0.239) Science -0.525 -0.521 -0.065 (0.450) (0.448) (0.389) Small Business -0.677 -0.613 -0.050 (0.746) (0.746) (0.620) Veterans Affairs -0.735* -0.865** -0.469 (0.407) (0.406) (0.396) Other Committee Administration 0.569*** 0.587*** 0.959*** (0.221) (0.220) (0.197) Post Office 0.957 *** 0.987*** 1.763*** (0.151) (0.149) (0.116) Intelligence 0.402 0.422 0.159 (0.589) (0.589) (0.603)

Number of Cases 7578 7578 9762 Log likelihood -1525.574 -1532.385 -2100.301 Pseudo R2 0.204 0.200 0.191

Note: Standard errors in parentheses; *p<0.10; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

159

Equation (1) (2) (3) Constant -3.590*** -3.798*** -2.751*** (0.276) (0.258) (0.154) Date Introduced 0.003*** 0.003*** 0.003*** (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) Gains-from-Exchange Distributive Content 11.839*** 11.855*** 11.495*** (1.661) (1.662) (1.647) Scope (# of keywords) 0.000 0.000 0.000 (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) Multiple Referral -0.735**** -0.730*** -0.818*** (0.255) (0.255) (0.254) Information Years in House 0.016*** 0.015*** 0.019*** (0.005) (0.005) (0.005) Outlier -0.273 -0.293 -0.737*** (0.214) (0.215) (0.179) Minority Party Cosponsors 0.010*** 0.010*** 0.009*** (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) Partisan Republican Sponsored 0.513** 0.694*** (0.203) (0.185) Vote % for Democratic Party in last Election 0.822 0.867 (0.621) (0.623) Republican Sponsor* Democratic Election -2.828*** -2.907*** (0.813) (0.813) Democratic Party Unity -0.002** -0.004*** (0.001) (0.000) Prestige Committee Appropriations 1.906*** 1.937*** 2.269*** (0.423) (0.421) (0.394) Budget -0.307 -0.314 -0.224 (0.668) (0.669) (0.662) Rules -0.850 -0.854 -0.815 (0.608) (0.608) (0.605) Ways and Means -1.613*** -1.603*** -1.577*** (0.241) (0.241) (0.240) (continued on next page)

Figure B.4: Logistic Regression Predicting Which Unreported Bills are Scheduled in the

105th Congress

160

Figure B.4 (continued)

Policy Committee Banking 0.160 0.160 0.192 (0.247) (0.246) (0.245) International Relations 1.516*** 1.559*** 1.486*** (0.147) (0.145) (0.144) Energy -1.039*** -1.015*** -1.010*** (0.282) (0.281) (0.281) Judiciary 0.232 0.243 0.292** (0.150) (0.149) (0.147) Education -0.127 -0.130 -0.113 (0.237) (0.237) (0.236) Government Reform 1.239*** 1.237*** 1.273*** (0.168) (0.168) (0.164) Constituency Committee Agriculture -0.724* -0.724* -0.697 (0.436) (0.436) (0.433) National Security -0.626* -0.609* -0.628* (0.349) (0.349) (0.351) Resources -0.091 -0.088 -0.059 (0.189) (0.189) (0.188) Transportation -0.459 -0.456* -0.422 (0.268) (0.268) (0.265) Science 0.709 0.696 0.737 (0.450) (0.450) (0.450) Small Business 0.024 0.027 -0.112 (0.814) (0.814) (0.842) Veterans Affairs -2.251** -2.176** -2.416** (1.014) (1.013) (1.018) Other Committee Oversight 0.770*** 0.772*** 0.829*** (0.225) (0.225) (0.223) Intelligence -0.493 -0.524 -0.416 (1.078) (1.080) (1.069)

Number of Cases 8002 8002 8002 Log likelihood -1826.412 -1828.504 -1841.548 Pseudo R2 0.150 0.149 0.143

Note: Standard errors in parentheses; *p<0.10; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

161

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