Congress in Context

John Haskell, Sara Grove, Marian Currinder

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367097714
• eBook ISBN: 9780429974991
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The U.S. Congress is by the far the least popular (and most misunderstood) branch of the federal government. Congress in Context de-mystifies the institution, giving students a comprehensive and practical understanding of Congress and the legislative process. This book takes a different approach to the study of Congress than other texts. Usually Congress is treated in isolation from the rest of the government. But the Framers of the Constitution explicitly intended for the branches of government to be interdependent. Congress in Context introduces readers to Congress's critical role in the context of this interdependent system. Using the metaphor of a board of directors, the authors explain the three key roles of Congress within the federal government (authorizing what government does, funding its activities, and supervising how it carries out the laws Congress passes) and shows students how Congress interacts with the rest of the government to exercise these powers.

The thoroughly expanded and revised second edition features brand-new chapters on Congress and the courts and Congress and interest groups. It also includes expanded coverage of Congress's relationship with the executive branch, campaign finance, and today's major budget issues. Grounded in the latest political science literature coupled with contemporary examples, Congress in Context offers students an informed yet accessible introduction to how the legislative branch carries out its duties.

THE NATURE AND ORIGINS OF CONGRESS

1

CHAPTERS

1 Congress as the Board of Directors

2 The Two Congresses: Lawmaking and Representation

3 The House and Senate: Party Leadership and Committees

4 Congressional Elections

1

CHAPTER

Congress as the Board of Directors

The US Congress is by far the least popular branch of the federal government. It is also probably the least understood. Even some high-ranking officials in the executive branch do not understand the basic dynamics of the institution and how it exercises its power. Amazingly, experienced professional staff members in Congress itself get confused from time to time about the intricacies of the legislative process. It is the aim of this book to demystify the institution—to give the reader a practical yet sophisticated treatment of Congress and the legislative process.

Congress in Context takes a different approach than most textbooks. Usually, Congress is treated in isolation from the rest of the government. But the framers of the Constitution explicitly intended for the branches of government to be interdependent. The aim here is to introduce readers to Congress’s critical role within this interdependent system. Specifically, this book focuses on Congress in the context of its relationship with the executive branch.

FIVE EXAMPLES OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IN ACTION

The initial focus of this chapter is counterintuitive. It is to look away from Congress itself and examine a few examples of the results of the policy-making process in Washington. These examples represent the federal government in action.

Some of what the government does appears on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers every day—the president directs intelligence agencies to conduct drone attacks on suspected terrorists, agencies respond to Hurricane Sandy, a new health care entitlement is implemented, and so on. Although most government activities are far more mundane than these front-page headlines, make no mistake about it: the federal government is literally everywhere, involved in our lives and communities in innumerable ways, big and small. The scope of the government is almost impossible to fathom. It is a $3.5 trillion enterprise that accounted for more than 23 percent of the entire US economy in 2012—easily the largest single entity on the planet.

The following examples might not make headlines, but they do typify the federal government’s ongoing involvement in the lives of its citizens.

Example 1: Keeping Tabs on the Salmon Population

During his 2012 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama quipped: “The Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they’re in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them while they’re in saltwater. I hear it gets even more complicated when they’re smoked.”¹ The president was on to something. These fish have a complex life cycle, spanning periods spent in both freshwater and saltwater. They begin life inland and eventually find their way to the ocean. After maturing, they reverse course, heading back upriver to where they were born in order to reproduce and ultimately die.

Due to the ecological and economic importance of the salmon population, in 1965 Congress passed the Anadromous Fish Conservation Act, which assigned the Fish and Wildlife Service, part of the Department of the Interior, the main responsibility for the freshwater salmon habitat.² In 1973 the Endangered Species Act gave the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), an agency in the Commerce Department, jurisdiction over populations and conditions for salmon in saltwater.

If anything, the president downplayed the complexity of federal regulations regarding salmon.³ In some circumstances, in the Columbia River Basin, for example, other agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Army Corps of Engineers, have a role. NOAA is also responsible for maintaining sustainable populations of other fish popular at restaurants and grocery stores, including tuna, swordfish, and halibut. The Sustainable Fisheries Act (1996) charged NOAA with balancing the sustainability of fish populations with the economic concerns of communities on the coasts and the interests of recreational anglers.

Example 2: Funding Basic Science for Medical Purposes

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the Department of Health and Human Services conducts and supports through grants basic scientific research into a wide range of diseases, including cancer, mental illness, HIV/AIDS, addictive disorders, and many others. Scientists literally all over the country, at universities, hospitals, and other places, are conducting experiments with NIH grants. The agency was established in the Public Health Service Act of 1944, which gave it wide latitude to research illnesses and disabilities. It currently has 27 institutes covering nearly every imaginable area of medical science.

Although the NIH’s programs are highly popular and often receive generous funding from Congress, approximately $32 billion in 2012, the agency is not without controversy. In particular, interest among NIH-funded scientists in studying the use of embryonic stem cells that could potentially be used to regenerate heart and lung tissue has drawn the sustained attention of Congress and recent presidents. A 1995 law severely restricted the latitude of the agency in the conduct of this research.

Example 3: Planning for Cyber War

According to the Washington Post, the Department of Defense has a project called Plan X. “The five-year, $110 million research program will begin seeking proposals [in the summer of 2012]. Among its goals will be the creation of an advanced map that details the entirety of cyberspace. … Such a map would help commanders identify targets and disable them using computer code delivered through the Internet or other means. Another goal is the creation of a robust operating system capable of launching attacks and surviving counterattacks.”⁴

The agency at the Defense Department (DOD) responsible for the program is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It was established in law in 1958 following the Soviet launch of Sputnik (the first satellite), which produced concern that the United States was falling behind in science to our greatest foe. DARPA’s mission was “to prevent technological surprises for the United States and maintain its technological superiority.”⁵

Congress generally sees fit to allow the agency a great deal of discretion in what it does, given the speculative as well as secretive nature of its work. There are indications that DARPA will dedicate approximately $1.54 billion overall from 2013 to 2017 for projects broadly described under the heading “cyber offense.”

Example 4: SPOTting Suspicious Airline Passengers

Everyone knows that airline passengers have to go through intensive security before boarding a plane. This process was fully federalized following the attacks on September 11, 2001, after the creation in law of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). But not everyone is aware of the Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) program. Congress first directed funds toward research related to behavioral observation and security in a 2005 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appropriations bill. In 2009 Congress designated $172 million specifically for screening programs such as SPOT and has continued to fund the program, in particular for the training and utilization of behavioral detection officers (BDOs).

When passengers pass through metal detectors, they are likely unaware they may be watched by a BDO. According to the TSA, BDOs are a nonintrusive way to “detect individuals exhibiting behaviors that indicate that they may be a threat to aviation and/or transportation security.”⁶ As of 2013, BDOs were stationed in 161 airports in the United States.

Example 5: Helping Students Pay for College

A major thrust of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society was to enhance the federal role in education at all levels—from elementary schools to universities. Since the passage of the Higher Education Act in 1965, the US government has been in the business of subsidizing student loans for college, principally through Stafford and Perkins Loans. These programs were administered by the then Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; the Department of Education Organization Act (1979) created a separate Department of Education, which took over responsibility in 1980.

In 2010 the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) was passed into law. With SAFRA, subsidized loans would no longer be jointly administered by the government and private industry, but rather would be handled by the federal government alone. This was justified by studies indicating that the government would save some $68 billion over 10 years by taking private industry out of the equation.⁷ In addition, in the aftermath of the Great Recession, Congress halved the interest rates on these loans effective until mid-2013 when compromise legislation put in place a variable rate system.

* * *

As one might conclude from just these few examples, the federal government takes on an amazingly wide range of responsibilities. For our purposes, it is important to look a little more closely at exactly who is doing the work described in these examples.

In the first example, it is NOAA in the Commerce Department and the Fish and Wildlife Service in the Interior Department. The second involves an agency in the Department of Health and Human Services, the NIH. In the third case, it’s DARPA in the Department of Defense doing the work. The fourth example shows us the TSA at the Department of Homeland Security at work, and in the fifth example, student loan programs, it is the Department of Education.

What all of these government agencies and departments have in common is that they are in the executive branch of government. The legislative branch, the US Congress, manages no federal programs and is not out there getting its hands dirty dealing with salmon and laboratory science. It is the vast executive branch that does the work of government. In a sense, Congress does not do anything at all. And the fact is that, perennial cynicism about a “do-nothing Congress” notwithstanding, in our federal system, the legislative branch was not meant to do anything.

CONGRESS AS THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Laying Down the Law

If Congress is not meant to do the work of government, then what exactly is its role? As political scientist James L. Sundquist put it, Congress operates as the “board of directors” of the federal government.⁸ A board of directors can take many different forms, depending on the type of entity it governs in the business or nonprofit world. In a college or university, for example, a board of trustees holds ultimate power.

Congress’s board-of-directors function more closely resembles that of a corporation. A corporation that issues stock is owned by its shareholders, who select the members of the board. In fulfilling its function—typically establishing the policies of the corporation and approving the corporation’s budget—the board is answerable to those shareholders. The board gives wide latitude to those who are responsible for the day-to-day management of the corporation.

Congress’s situation is very similar. The members are chosen by the voting public and are held accountable by regular and frequent elections. Congress sets forth in law the policies that guide the government, just as the corporate board sets forth company policy, and Congress is in charge of determining the budget for the government. Given the immense size and complexity of the government, Congress must usually give a great deal of discretion to the president and the lower-level executive branch agency officials in running day-to-day operations.

There is one major difference between Congress and its corporate counterpart: except in extraordinary circumstances, Congress does not get to choose the president, while the corporate board gets to choose the chief executive officer, who is fully answerable to it. An institutional rivalry between the legislative and executive branches was intentionally built into the federal government, a rivalry fostered by having members of Congress and the president separately elected.

Congress has tremendous leverage in the separated system of government. To put it succinctly, as the board of directors, it has three powers as set forth or implied in the Constitution:

1. Congress authorizes in law the activities of the government—which is to say the executive branch

2. Congress passes laws to fund what the executive branch does

3. Congress, when it sees fit, supervises the executive branch (a function usually referred to as oversight)

Congress was not designed to manage fisheries or conduct research on infectious diseases; it was designed to decide, based on its collective wisd...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Features
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• PART 1. THE NATURE AND ORIGINS OF CONGRESS
• PART 2. INSIDE CONGRESS
• PART 3. CONGRESS AND OTHERS
• Appendix: A Century of Congress
• Glossary of Key Terms
• Index