Reconcilable Differences?: Congress, the Budget Process, and the Deficit - Softcover

Gilmour, John B. B.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520069439 ISBN 13: 9780520069435

Verlag: University of California Press, 1990

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John B. Gilmour is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Washington University.

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Reconcilable Differences?

Congress, the Budget Process, and the DeficitBy John B. Gilmour

University of California Press

Copyright © 1990 John B. Gilmour
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780520069435


Introduction

In its dealings with budgetary issues since 1980, Congress has acted uncharacteristically, upsetting longstanding expectations and contradicting contemporary theories of congressional behavior. Members of Congress are seekers of reelection, we are told, and the quest to retain their offices leads them to decentralize the organization of Congress because, through their work in committees, representatives can best engage in the activities most likely to get them reelected. In policy making we have come to expect Congress and its members to favor legislation that confers tangible benefits upon constituents and districts, while scrupulously avoiding choices that impose costs or hardships directly upon constituents.

Despite these widespread expectations, members of Congress have undermined their committee system by developing an overarching, all-encompassing budget process that allows congressional majorities to exercise an unprecedented degree of control over committees. Moreover, since 1980 Congress has come to rely on budgetary negotiations and decision making that take place largely or entirely outside the normal committee structure of Congress. In some cases the budget process has

enabled congressional floor majorities to adopt comprehensive budgets on the floor and to enforce their preferences on reluctant committees. In other cases party leadership and committee chairs have agreed on the general outlines of budget policy and used the budget process as a means of implementing these group decisions. Either way, the budget process disrupts the ordinary sequence of the legislative process. Normally the committees go first, determining their own agenda and presenting legislative proposals to the rest of the chamber. Under the new budget process entities outside committeesb whether gatherings of committee chairs, summit meetings, or committed majoritiesb effectively can set the agenda for committees and direct them to draft spending resolutions or tax increases.

Two episodes from recent history suggest the nature of the new budgetary order in Congress. First, in 1981, the initial year of the Reagan presidency, a unanimous Republican party in the House was joined by a substantial number of "boll weevil" Democrats; they succeeded in enacting the president's budget recommendations in their entirety, despite the objections of committees with jurisdictions over programs and despite the best efforts of the majority party leadership to thwart the administration's budget proposals. Republicans were able to achieve this remarkable feat only because of the budget process, particularly the new "reconciliation" procedure, which enormously consolidates congressional procedure and reduces the influence of committees.

Second, spurred on by the Black Monday stock market crash of October 19, 1987, in which the Dow Jones average fell by more than 500 points in one day, Democrats and Republicans of both the House and the Senate met with leaders from the administration and negotiated

a package of deficit reductions worth some $30 billion. Committees in both chambers then proceeded to draft legislation implementing the decisions reached in the interbranch "summit" meetings. Such summit meetings, almost commonplace in the 1980s, were basically nonexistent before 1980. The initiation of reconciliation is linked with that of interbranch budgetary negotiations: reconciliation allows committed floor majorities to impose their will on committees, making it possible to enforce negotiated agreements. Without an enforcement device, it makes little sense to negotiate agreements.

These developments contrast starkly with Woodrow Wilson's classic discussion of Congress. A century ago, Wilson asserted that Congress conducts its "business by what may figuratively, but not inaccurately, be described as an odd device of disintegration ." In Wilson's view, Congress qualified as "disintegrated' because its work was conducted by the partsb the committeesb and not the whole. "Congress in session," he continued, "is Congress on public exhibition, whilst Congress in its committee-rooms is Congress at work." Furthermore, he wrote, "the chairmen of the Standing Committees do not constitute a cooperative body like a ministry. They do not consult and concur in the adoption of homogeneous and mutually helpful measures; there is no thought of acting in concert. Each committee goes its own way at its own pace."1 Subsequent observers have seen little to cause them to disagree with Wilson's assessment. Innumerable observers of Congress have found it to be a committee-centered body in which negotiations are conducted in committee and important

Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1973), chap. 2, pp. 57b 98.

decisions are not made on the floor. Authors often condemn the fragmented structure of Congress; sometimes they applaud it, and occasionally they are even ambivalent. But whatever view they take of fragmentation and committee autonomy, they do not dispute their existence.

There has also been common agreement on congressional policy-making tendencies. At least since Schattschneider wrote about the politics of the Smoot-Hawley tariff, scholars have contended that Congress favors narrow, assertive interests, over broader, less well-mobilized interests.2 This tendency manifests itself in the congressional enthusiasm for water projects and public works,3 agriculture subsidies, food stamps,4 merchant marine subsidies, tariffs,5 tax exclusions,6 veterans' benefits, and Social Security.7

But in 1980, an election year, Congress did the unthinkable when it voted to increase taxes and cut spending. In 1981 Congress passed the largest spending cut ever enacted. In 1982 Congress defied conventional wisdom

E. E. Schattschneider, Politics, Pressure, and the Tariff (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1935).

John A. Ferejohn, Pork-Barrel Politics: Rivers and Harbors Legislation, 1947b 1968 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974).

John A. Ferejohn, "Logrolling in an Institutional Context: A Case Study of Food Stamp Legislation," in Congress and Policy Change , ed. Gerald Wright, Leroy Rieselbach, and Lawrence Dodd (New York: Agathon Press, 1986), pp. 223b 253.

Schattschneider, Politics, Pressure, and the Tariff.

Stanley Surrey, "How Special Tax Provisions Get Enacted," Harvard Law Review 70 (1957): 1145b 1182. Of course, the tax reform of 1986 suggests that tax politics is not necessarily controlled by those seeking tax expenditures. But the story of the 1986 tax bill fully confirms the view that members of Congress cater to special interests. Jeffrey Birnbaum and Allan Murray, Showdown at Gucci Gulch (New York: Random House, 1987).

Martha Derthick, Policymaking for Social Security (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1979).

when it cut spending and enacted the largest tax increase in history. Normally we expect Congress to pass difficult legislation only with presidential support, but in passing the 1982 tax bill, the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, Congress and the president reversed roles, as the legislative branch persuaded an otherwise reluctant...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of California Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1990
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0520069439
• ISBN 13: 9780520069435
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
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