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The House Committee on Ways and Means

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The House Committee on Ways and Means This dissertation has been 65-13,211 microfilmed exactly as received CATALDO, Everett Felix, 1935- THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1965 Political Science, general University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University Everett F. Cataldo, B.A., M.A. ****** The Ohio State University 1965 Approved by Adyz.ser u Department orPolitical Science VTTA October 5? 1935 Born - Franklin, Massachusetts 1957.......... B.A., College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts 1959.......... M.A., Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts I96O- 6 2....... Teaching Assistant, Department of Political Science, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1 9 6 2 -6 3....... Congressional Fellow of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D. C. 1 9 6 3 -6 5....... Visiting Lecturer, Department of Political Science, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Political Science American Government and Politics. Professors Harvey C. Mansfield and Myron Q. Hale Parties, Politics, and Political Processes. Professors Allen E. Helms, Lawrence J. R. Herson, and James B. Christoph Political Theory. Professor David Spitz Comparative Government. Professors Harold Zink and James B. Christoph TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES............ v INTRODUCTION....................................... 1 Chapter I. THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS: STRUCTUAL PROPERTIES..................... 12 Committee Organization Recruitment of Committee Members Summary and Conclusion II. PERCEPTIONS AND ATTITUDES OF WAYS AND MEANS MEMBERS................... 51 Summary and Conclusions III. GENESIS OF THE TAX PROGRAM................. 70 IV. THE COMMITTEE AND THE BILL — PART 1 ........ 91 Introduction Opening of the Tax Debate Taxes and Special Interests The Change in Strategy The Fate of Reforms in Committee Nature of Representation V. THE COMMITTEE AND THE BILL — PART II....... 122 Introduction The Obstacle Course Tax Hearings The. Decisive Days The Floor Debate Summary and Conclusions iii VI . THE COMMITTEE AND THE CONGRESS. .. Introduction External and Internal Committee Relationships The Roots of Party in the House Criticisms of Party in Congress Summary'and Conclusions BIBLIOGRAPHY LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1. Percent of Total Seats in House Held by Majority Party, 80th through 88th Congresses.. 13 2. House Membership and Committee Membership, Demographic Characteristics, 88th Congress.... 2b 3. Republicans, Ways and Means Committee, 80th through 88th Congresses............. 26 Democrats, Ways and Means Committee, 80th through 88th Congresses............. 30 5. House Democratic Co.mmittee-on-Coramittees and Zone Assignments..................... 36 6. Changes in Membership on Democratic Committee-on-Committees and Zone Assignments.. 38 7. General Election Results, Ways and Means Members' Districts, 1 9 6 2................. Ml 8. Party Unity Scores, Ways and Means Committeemen, and House Parties, 83rd through 88th Congresses............... .. 6l 9. Larger Federal Role Support-Opposition Scores, Ways and Means Committeemen, 86th through 8 8£h Congresses............. 62 10. Conservative Coalition Support-Opposition Scores, Ways and Means Committeemen, 86th and 87th Congresses................. 62 1 1 . Conservative Coalition Support-Opposition Scores of Ways and Means Southern Democrats, 8 6th and 8 7th Congresses..... 63 Table Page 12. Party Unity Scores, U. S. House of Representatives, 83 rd. through 88th Congresses................................... 170 13. Party Unity Scores, Ways and Means Members, 83 rd through 88th Congresses.................. 171 ll+. Party Unity Scores for Wilbur Mills and John Byrnes, 83 rd through 88th Congresses................................... 179 15. Ways and Means Legislation Reported and Passed, 80th through 87th Congresses 189 vi INTRODUCTION Woodrow Wilson’s characterization of American government as "gov­ ernment by the Standing Committees of Congress"^ is no longer accurate. His general description of Congress in committee as Congress at work, however, remains largely true. For that reason alone, one might expect knowledge about Congress to grow correspondingly with a growth in knowl- 2 edge about Congressional committees. •^Congressional Government (New York: Meridian Books, 1 9 5 6), p. 5 6. ? While the bibliography on Congress is vast, the number of spe­ cific studies of Congressional committees is surprisingly small. The more useful ones, all of fairly recent vintage, are: Robert K. Carr, The House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1945-1950 (ithica, 1952); David N. Farnsworth, The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (Urbana, 1 9 6 1); Richard F. Fenno, Jr., "The House Appropriations Committee as a Political System: The Problem of Integration," American Political Sci­ ence Review, Vol. 5 6, June, 1962, pp. 310-24; Ralph K. Huitt, "The Con- gressional Committee: A Case Study," American Political Science Review, Vol. 48, March, 1954, pp. 340-65; Charles 0. Jones,"Representation in Congress: The Case of the House Agriculture Committee," American Polit­ ical Science Review, Vol. 5 5, June, 1 9 6 1, pp. 358-67; Robert L. Peabody, and Nelson W. Polsby (Eds.), New Perspectives on the House of Represen­ tatives (Chicago, 1 9 6 3 )5 pp. 129-64; H. Douglas Price, ''Race, Religion and the Rules Committee: Kennedy's Aid-To-Education Bills," Alan F. Wes tin (Ed.), The Uses of Power: 7 Cases in American Politics C New York, 1 9 6 2), pp. 1-71; James A. Robinson, The House Rules Committee (Indianap­ olis and New York, 1 9 6 3); Gilbert Y. Steiner, The Congressional Confer­ ence Committee: Seventieth to Eightieth Congresses (Urbana, 1951); Albert C. F. Westphal, The House Committee on Foreign Affairs (New York, 1942). An attempt to survey all committees has not been undertaken since Lauros G. McConachie, Congressional Committees (New York and Boston, I898). 1 2 Approach to the study and its objectives. A number of approaches could be taken to the study of Congressional committees, with variations in style, judgment, use of data, and purpose. The approach of the pres­ ent study of a single Congressional committee — the House Committee on Ways and Means — is functional: it seeks to determine the role of the committee within the Congressional system, and the consequences for that system of committee patterns of behavior. Recent studies of Congressional committees have tended to analyze •3 or describe a specific feature of a particular committee: role playing, k specifically with respect to styles of representation; self-integra- 5 6 tion, workload and job performance. Each of these approaches consti­ tutes a legitimate and valuable path of inquiry into the complexities of Congressional organization and procedures. The committee system has always been the heart of legislative ac­ tivity in the House of Representatives, although it was characteristic of the House to exercise greater control over committees in its early history than now. The precedent for the use of committees — select, standing, and the Committee of the Whole — came from the English House of Commons and the colonial assemblies, particularly those of Virginia ^Huitt, op. cit. k Jones, op. cit. 5 "Tenno, op. cit. Farnsworth, op. cit., Robinson, op. cit., Peabody, op. cit. 7 and Pennsylvania. At the outset, the House established a select com­ mittee for every bill or claim, and for its first quarter century relied largely on select committees. From the start, however, the House also established permanent standing committees. The Elections Committee was vested in 1789 as the first standing committee of the House and was fol­ lowed by Claims in 179^-j and by Interstate and Foreign Commerce and Revisal and Unfinished Business in 1795* Beginning in 1802 with Ways and Means, many of the select committees were converted into standing committees, and as the nineteenth century progressed, more standing com­ mittees were created and reliance on select committees dwindled. In its entire history, the House has created 68 standing committees. 8 At first, the practice was to refer legislative proposals initially to a Committee of the Whole House in which the main principles of legis­ lation were developed. Only after the principles were determined would a legislative matter be referred to a committee, whose main role was to draft legislation according to the terms of the reference resolution of the Committee of the Whole. With the growth of Congressional business and the growth of standing committees, however, the roles of the Committee of the Whole and the standing committees came to be reversed, and by 1825> perhaps earlier, the practice of initiating legislative work in the stand­ ing committees and afterward sending bills to the floor of the House for final approval was well established.^ Thus, Woodrow Wilson’s observation George B. Galloway, History of the House of Representatives (Wash­ ington, D.C., 1 9 6 2), p. 59J McConachie, Congressional Committees, pp. 3-33. O Galloway, ojd. cit., pp. 5 9-6 9. 9Ibid., pp. 6 8-7 0. that "Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition, whilst Con­ gress in its committee rooms is Congress at work,"^ could have been made with accuracy 60 years before he wrote. From the outset, the House devised a means for division of labor and specialization, and very early in its history made its
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