Sean Q Kelly

Self-Selection Reconsidered: House Committee Assignment Requests and Constituency Characteristics

Distributive theory is perhaps the dominant paradigm for understanding committee organization and behavior in Congress. Central to distributive theory is the assertion that members will self-select to committees based on constituency related concerns; however, few studies have tested this assumption and those that have focus primarily on the behavior of House Democrats. We use committee request data from both Democratic and Republican members, combined with district-level census data, to determine whether committee requests are empirically related to district-level characteristics. Our findings suggest mixed support for the self-selection hypothesis. While there is some support for the self-selection hypothesis, members’ requests for committee assignments often are not related to district-level characteristics. In addition, we examine the degree to which the party committees-on-committees accommodate requests, finding that the degree of accommodation has been overestimated by previous studies.

Leading the Senate in the 110 th Congress

The 2006 midterm elections were nothing short of stunning. Republicans lost control of both chambers of Congress. More surprising than Democratic gains in the House were their gains in the Senate. In order to achieve a majority in the Senate the Democrats needed to reelect all of their incumbents and elect Democrats in three out of four competitive states, all of which had supported George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential elections (Missouri, Montana, Tennessee, and Virginia). Riding a wave of public discontent associated with the presidents Iraq War policy, Democrats beat incumbents in Missouri, Montana, and Virginia to take a slim one-seat majority in the Senate. Democrats organized the Senate in the 110 th Congress, with the support of two independents—Bernie Sanders (VT) and Independent Democrat Joseph Lieberman (CT). The authors thank Doug Harris for encouraging us to pursue this project and including it in the forum. Our analysis benefits from our separate experiences as participant-observers in the Senate. While a Presidential Management Intern, Frisch served in the Senate Office of Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ); Kelly was an APSA Congressional Fellow and worked for the Senate Democratic Leadership in the Democratic Policy Committee. nominate data used in this paper are made available by Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal at www.voteview.com . Data on campaign contributions were supplied by Jamie Pimlott to whom we owe a debt of gratitude.

Appropriations to the Extreme: Partisanship and the Power of the Purse

On July 15, 2010, senators filed into the Appropriations Committee meeting room. They were there to vote on 302(b) spending levels, which dictate the amount that each subcommittee has to spend on programs within their subcommittee’s jurisdiction. Then chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HI) laid his proposal before the committee. Historically, votes on such allocations were not controversial, having been worked out by the chair and ranking member prior to the meeting. However, things were different this time. Senate Republican leader and Appropriations Committee member Mitch McConnell (KY) who typically does not attend such meetings responded with lower allocation spending numbers, claiming that in the absence of a Budget Resolution, it was up to the Appropriations Committee to show leadership on reducing spending. Inouye suggested spending levels that fell between their two proposals. It appeared that the two sides were moving toward a compromise. Typically, 302(b) allocations are made on a bipartisan basis. What happened next shocked a senior Senate Appropriations Committee staffer: “[Ranking Republican member] Senator Cochran said ‘well that seems like a good deal to me.’ He said that, and he stared daggers at McConnell; and McConnell just threw him under the bus and said ‘No.’ [Republican] members all fell into line behind Senator McConnell … a lot of them didn’t like it … but they felt they had to support the leadership.”1 Thirty-eight billion dollars separated the two sides: “In the broader scheme of things it’s irrelevant… but those are ideological issues that are creeping into the debate,” said a former Senate Appropriations staffer. Inouye ended up passing the allocation on a straight party line vote. That year none of the 12 spending bills needed to fund the government’s operations passed the Senate by the start of the fiscal year.

A Review of “The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office”: Blumenthal, David, and James A. Morone. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009 (hardcover); 2010 (softcover). 500 pages.

I have a few reservations about the book, but they are not major enough to tarnish the very real merits of what Hatcher has accomplished. The text, though brief, is overly repetitive on a few points such as the central thesis. There is also too much defensiveness about the multiple methodologies chosen; they make sense without apology. A few concepts (“path dependence” comes to mind) are not explained well enough at first use, but are explained later on. Also, the DWNOMINATE scores, which are very familiar to scholars dealing with Congress, are not self-evidently interpretable the way she presents them and could be explained with an extra paragraph at first use. I wonder about the status of two other potential constraints not discussed: the relation of the majority leader to the minority leader and the relation to the House leadership. I am sure these are not as important as the four constraints on which she focused, but it would be useful to have a judgment on whether they deserve any consideration. Professor Hatcher has dealt straightforwardly and inventively with a somewhat slippery and previously ill-defined office. Her general framework of looking at the office as defined by a series of internal and external constraints holds up well. She has amassed and intelligently used much relevant data, and findings are presented clearly and persuasively.