The Congressional Endgame

Interchamber Bargaining and Compromise

Josh M. Ryan

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780226582238, 9780226582061
• eBook ISBN: 9780226582375
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Congress is a bicameral legislature in which both the House and Senate must pass a bill before it can be enacted into law. The US bicameral system also differs from most democracies in that the two chambers have relatively equal power to legislate and must find ways to resolve their disputes. In the current landscape of party polarization, this contentious process has become far more chaotic, leading to the public perception that the House and Senate are unwilling or unable to compromise and calling into question the effectiveness of the bicameral system itself.

With The Congressional Endgame, Josh M. Ryan offers a coherent explanation of how the bicameral legislative process works in Congress and shows that the types of policy outcomes it produces are in line with those intended by the framers of the Constitution. Although each bargaining outcome may seem idiosyncratic, the product of strong leadership and personality politics, interchamber bargaining outcomes in Congress are actually structured by observable institutional factors. Ryan finds that the characteristics of the winning coalition are critically important to which chamber "wins" after bargaining, with both conference committees and an alternative resolution venue, amendment trading, creating policy that approximates the preferences of the more moderate chamber. Although slow and incremental, interchamber negotiations serve their intended purpose well, The Congressional Endgame shows; they increase the odds of compromise while at the same time offering a powerful constraint on dramatic policy changes.

CHAPTER ONE

Does Bicameralism Work in the Modern Congress?

People are trying to remain open for negotiation, but I don’t really know how we ever reconcile where the House is and where the Senate is.

—Sen. Mary Landrieu, speaking about climate change legislation, June 23, 2009

In the summer of 2017, Republicans in the Senate believed they had finally hit upon a successful strategy to repeal and replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly called the ACA or Obamacare). The House had previously passed a very conservative bill that stood little chance of attracting even fifty-one votes in the Senate, so the Senate had spent the last few months searching for a bill that could both pass the chamber and receive sufficient support in the House.1 After not being able to agree, the process looked dead until the party leadership advanced the idea of “skinny repeal,” a bill that, among other things, would have repealed the ACA’s mandate that Americans must purchase insurance on the private market. The bill avoided other controversial topics, such as cuts to Medicaid, but most policy experts agreed that it would have destabilized the health care market, potentially causing the system to collapse.

The idea behind skinny repeal was to pass something to move the chambers to a conference committee, where the details could be hammered out and, eventually, a take-it-or-leave-it offer could be sent back to both chambers. Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, called the bill “terrible policy and horrible politics.” Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, implored the House, “Just give us the assurance that whatever we pass tonight will go to conference, so the good ideas . . . can get scored and have a chance to be argued.”2 Senators were concerned that the House might pass the bill without any modifications, and in fact there would have been little stopping the chamber from doing just that. Paul Ryan’s qualified statement that the House would be “willing” to go to conference3 reassured the senators enough that both Graham and Johnson ended up voting for the bill hours later, though John McCain, along with Senators Collins and Murkowski, cast dramatic no votes that sank the plan.

The Senate was right to be concerned. Skinny repeal would have given the House majority much of what it wanted. If policy experts were correct, and the Obamacare markets collapsed, the law would have effectively been repealed. The bill also prevented the House from taking additional tough votes on specific, popular provisions and placed much of the blame on the Senate. Procedurally, this would not have been all that uncommon. The chambers frequently pass legislation without modifying the bill, especially when postpassage bargaining is likely to be difficult and costly. Even if the House agreed to conference, there was no guarantee the committee would produce a satisfactory compromise, and the House could have then voted for skinny repeal. Despite these important policy implications, there is, at present, little theory that offers guidance on how these different paths to resolution might work, and what types of policy might be produced.

Or, consider the 2014 Farm Bill, which was successfully enacted after a conference committee. The Farm Bill’s reauthorization is not the type of legislative activity that typically attracts media headlines. The bill, which must be passed every five years, is Congress’s main vehicle for agricultural and food policy and is an important, if wonkish, legislative item. Among other things, each Farm Bill renewal manages crop subsidies and insurance programs, implements trade regulations that allow American crops to be sold overseas, and imposes environmental and conservation regulations on farmers. Passage has traditionally been bipartisan because the bill authorizes spending for key constituencies across many legislative districts and because it does not deal with any hot-button social issues. The 2002 version of the bill, enacted only a few weeks after the previous version expired, passed with 280 votes in the House and 64 votes in the Senate and was approved in both chambers after a conference committee negotiated the bill for about three months. Most of the opposition to the bill was driven by conservative Republicans concerned about earmarks and the overall cost of the legislation.4 The 2008 version was enacted with large bipartisan majorities and required Congress to override a presidential veto.5

The 2014 process, by contrast, took over two years to complete and faced stiff opposition from members of both parties in the House and Senate. Because of a historical need to generate urban support for farm programs and rural support for a poverty-based food program, the Department of Agriculture is responsible not only for farm policy but also for implementation of the federal food stamp program known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). In fact, in 2014, the SNAP program was by far the largest portion of Farm Bill spending, responsible for about $756 billion of the overall bill cost of $956 billion. In 2014 both chambers agreed on cutting funding for SNAP but disagreed strongly about how much to cut. The Democratic-led Senate, as is typical, substituted their own language into the House-passed version of the bill and agreed on a cut of about $4 billion while the Republican-led House had previously cut food stamp funding by nearly $21 billion. For months, the chambers could not even agree to meet, and the bill languished without action during the summer and fall of 2013.

Observers were unsure which chamber would be successful during conference negotiations and looked to the public pronouncements of the leadership, the conferees, and key members. House Republicans originally wanted to separate food stamps from farm subsidy reauthorizations, presumably to make it easier to cut food stamps in the future, but that was a nonstarter for the Senate and would have likely triggered a presidential veto. Instead, the chambers squared off over the size of food stamp cuts, with both sides seemingly committed to their position. In the end, the bill was much closer to the Senate’s preference, with cuts of about $8 billion in food stamps but with some additional funding for food banks, much to the dismay of many House Republicans, some of whom voted against the final version of the bill, despite support from both the Republican Speaker and Majority Leader.

Bicameral negotiations significantly and fundamentally affect policy outcomes and comprise a crucial and necessary step in the lawmaking process in Congress. Yet, most existing theories, and the accompanying empirical research on congressional action, do not adequately take into account the central role of bicameralism in lawmaking or the implications thereof. While there is a substantial literature on how congressional committees develop legislation, how party leaders push or block bills, and how the president uses his influence to affect legislative outcomes, the ability of conferees to drastically change legislation after initial passage and with virtually unlimited autonomy is underappreciated. For cases like the Farm Bill reauthorization, political science offers little help in understanding how conference committee negotiations take place, how chambers resolve their differences, or how and why one chamber is likely to be more successful in achieving its preferences. Each conference outcome seems idiosyncratic, seemingly determined by the shrewdness of one chamber’s bargainers or by a more impassioned and resolute group of members.

In this book, I argue that conference committees and an alternative resolution mechanism—amendment trading—can be explained by a coherent theoretical framework. Rather than focusing on ad hoc explanations driven by individual statements, personality-driven politics, or leadership characteristics, bargaining outcomes are structured by the same institutional factors that structure other bargaining situations. Stronger bargainers are those that are more willing to walk away from a deal because they receive a larger share of the benefits from not compromising. When the House and Senate disagree on legislation, one chamber can receive more of what it wants as a result of institutional factors that empower it during the bargaining process. Legislative failure is caused by the costs of negotiating a compromise and by the uncertainty of what the winning coalitions within each chamber will accept.

Constitutional Design and Bicameral Bargaining in the Modern Congress

Bicameralism with two truly equal chambers is relatively rare among democracies. Even those countries with a two-chambered legislature typically provide substantial proposal or amending rights to only one. The House and Senate, despite some minor differences in their constitutional roles, are equal partners in the legislative process, and this unique institutional design gives each chamber the same ability to shape legislative outcomes.

When writing the Constitution, Madison and others sought to create a stronger national government that would not fall victim to the same problems that plagued the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation. It was too difficult to reach agreement in that system, and, importantly, the national government had no power to compel the states to act, a situation that made the country economically and militarily weak. Madison makes the case in Federalist 39, arguing that a more vigorous national government is not only necessary but unavoidable if the country is to succeed. Despite the necessity of a stronger central government, there was substantial fear that the new congress would be too strong and would too quickly and recklessly carry out the whims of the majority (Hammond and Miller 1987). Madison recognizes this danger in Federalist 48, pointing out that, “[T]he legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity, and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.”

Bicameralism offers one protection against overreach. Through a two-chambered legislature, the framers sought to create additional institutional checks against the nefarious intentions of a legislative majority determined to use its lawmaking power as a tool of tyranny. As Madison famously said in Federalist 51, “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” The design of the Senate in particular, with longer terms and appointment by state legislatures, was seen by many framers as a necessary curb on the more imperious tendencies of the House (Binder 2003). In Federalist 62 Madison recognizes the tension inherent in a bicameral congress, saying, “No law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence, first, of a majority of the people, and then, of a majority of the States. It must be acknowledged that this complicated check on legislation may in some instances be injurious as well as beneficial.” But he notes that the Senate “doubles the security to the people, by requiring the concurrence of two distinct bodies in schemes of usurpation or perfidy, where the ambition or corruption of one would otherwise be sufficient.” Not only were the framers aware that bicameralism would slow down and complicate lawmaking, they explicitly endorsed this effect.

Thus, Madison justified the creation of a bicameral legislature on the grounds that it would take action but not too quickly, be responsive to the people without falling victim to majority tyranny, and make policy changes when both the citizens (the House) and the states (the Senate) agreed. Madison and the other framers also expected bicameralism to promote conservative lawmaking; that is, policy change would be made not just slowly but also incrementally even though popular, legitimate, or desirable legislation would have a harder time winning approval. Still, they advocated for such a system, claiming the inherent status quo bias of a bicameral legislature promotes stability, a desirable result in republican government. In Federalist 62 Madison says of laws, “if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow,” the effects would be “calamitous.” He goes on to say, “Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed? Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uniformed mass of the people.” Legislative stability was clearly an important goal of the designers and informs our understanding of how Congress operates today. Unlike parliamentary systems, where action is not only swift but also quite dramatic, American lawmaking seems to be characterized by slow and incremental action.

Is Bicameralism Effective?

Bicameralism almost certainly achieves the first goal of the framers by making it harder to accomplish policy change. As compared to a unicameral system, it promotes the status quo and makes policy action slower and more difficult to accomplish (Muthoo and Shepsle 2008; Tsebelis and Money 1997). The logic behind this claim is simple. In bicameral systems, instead of one chamber agreeing to policy change, two must agree. While it is difficult to show empirically that bicameralism reduces legislative productivity, some indirect evidence has been found. In the American context, there is support for the claim that legislative gridlock is more likely as the preferences of the two chambers diverge (Binder 2003).

As William Riker (1992) points out, bicameralism is often criticized on normative grounds. Populists condemn the system because it is not as responsive to public demands as unicameralism. Additionally, most bicameral systems include an “upper” chamber that is not proportionally representative and therefore magnifies the power of the minority (Heller 2007). Minority coalitions that are overrepresented may have a disproportionate influence on policy and, in many cases, allow the minority a veto over policy change supported by the other chamber (Cutrone and McCarty 2006). Riker (1992), in finding that bicameralism prevents lawmaking in the absence of a stable majority (as opposed to unicameralism), says that bicameralism is, “now, unfortunately, often regarded as a rather old-fashioned constitutional structure.”

But, more importantly, does bicameralism justify the trade-off made by the framers that, despite its more onerous structure, it helps moderate or limit policy change? There are some good reasons to be skeptical. First, the Senate no longer represents states “as political and coequal societies” (Federalist 39), as senators are directly elected by the people and, hence, more influenced by popular passions. Though six-year terms still distance senators from their constituents more than the two-year terms of House members, there is no doubt senators have become more responsive to the public than the framers originally imagined.

Second, political parties play a much more important role now than during the founding and in recent years have been more consequential than at perhaps any time in American history. The rise of partisan polarization is well documented in both the House and the Senate, and, as members become more ideologically separated and parties grow more powerful, it is unclear whether one chamber is able to moderate the other’s more extreme preference or whether an ideologically strong and unified party can force its positions on an ideologically moderate or heterogeneous chamber.

In recent years, this debate about whether institutional rules help produce moderation or extremity has been at the forefront of political science research and popular accounts of Congress. Legislative fights between House Republicans and Senate Democrats were common in the 112th and 113th Congresses over virtually all important legislative proposals. The inability to resolve interchamber disagreements led, at least indirectly, to a government shutdown in 2013. Even in the 115th Congress, with unified Republican government, interchamber compromise was difficult. Polarization has also led political observers to wonder whether the institutional design of Congress is up to the challenges of governing such an enormous and complex country during periods of intense partisanship. Unicameral chambers are seen by many as more effective and efficient institutions, and calls to reform Congress are common. Indeed, the New York Times reported in 2012 that developing countries designing new constitutions look to European parliamentary systems rather than the American system for a simple reason: it is simply too difficult to get things done.6

Summary of the Findings

In this book, I focus not on the amount of legislation passed, though bargaining failure has implications for legislation productivity, but on the resolution process itself and how it changes bills. That is, what outcomes are to be expected given the preferences of winning coalitions in both the House and the Senate? In answering this question, I also explore the different types of resolution mechanisms used and whether their effects on bills differ. Despite the apparent procedurally difficulty the chambers have resolving their differences, they are remarkably successful. More than 90 percent of legislation on which the chambers begin the bargaining process is ultimately sent to the president. I also explain why some bills fail, even when they are passed with large bipartisan majorities in their respective chambers.

Broadly, I find that the result of House-Senate negotiations is a bill that approximates the more moderate chamber’s preference but that neither chamber receives exactly what it wants, especially from a conference committee. This occurs because more moderate coalitions are more willing to walk away from the resolution process, giving it enormous sway over the conferees. As a result, the conferees ensure the preferences of these coalitions are met, resulting in more moderate policy outcomes. This is true even under conditions of strong partisan control of the House and Senate, when the leadership might be expected to exert its influence over individual members. I find little evidence that legislative outcomes depend on the partisan strength or control of the institutions.

A similar dynamic applies to the other major resolution process used by Congress, amendment trading or “ping-ponging.” In this process, the chambers make iterative policy proposals to each other until agreement is ultimately reached. There has been virtually no research on this process, but some observers, including some members of Congress, seem to think this empowers the party leadership to create more ideological bills (Sinclair 2012). The empirical tests of bill outcomes in this book, for perhaps the first time, examine amendment trading’s effects on policy outcomes. Again, I find little evidence that parties dominate the process, even in recent congresses and during unified partisan control of the chambers.

The theory predicts that the institutional rules of conferences and amendment trading produce different outcomes despite their overall moderating effects, though the empirical evidence for both is very similar. The conferees are empowered to create a take-it-or-leave-it proposal, which cannot be changed, while amendment trading is a sequential process that involves the revelation of preferences across multiple policy offers. The result is that conference bills sometimes allocate more than might be expected to the more extreme chamber, while amendment trading also favors the more moderate chamber, though policies...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• chapter 1  Does Bicameralism Work in the Modern Congress?
• chapter 2  Postpassage Resolution in Historical and Contemporary Context: Process, Procedures, and Controversies
• chapter 3  A Bargaining Theory of Postpassage Resolution
• chapter 4  Bargaining Frequency and the Use of Conference Committees or Amendment Trading
• chapter 5  Conferee Discretion and Bill Failure in Conference Committees
• chapter 6  Conference Committees and Policy Change after Passage
• chapter 7  Bill Failure and Policy Change as a Result of Amendment Trading
• chapter 8  Conclusion: Postpassage Resolution and Legislative Outcomes
• Notes
• References
• Index