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He finds that because party leaders have more control over the legislative agenda, committees have spent more of their time conducting oversight instead. Partisanship alone does not explain this trend; changes in institutional rules and practices that empowered party leaders have created more uncertainty for committees and contributed to a shift in their policy activities. The shift toward oversight at the committee level combined with party leader control over the voting agenda means that many members of Congress are effectively cut out of many of the institution's policy decisions. At a time when many, including Congress itself, are considering changes to modernize the institution and keep up with a stronger executive branch, the findings here suggest that strengthening Congress will require more than running different candidates or providing additional resources.
From Chapter 2
Fig. 2.1. Laws Enacted by the U.S. Congress, 1981–2018. (Source: Policy Agendas Project, calculated by the author.)
Fig. 2.2. Committee Hearing Trends, 1981–2016. (Source: Policy Agendas Project Congressional Hearings dataset, which did not include a complete list of hearings from the 115th Congress as of this writing; calculated by the author.)
Fig. 2.2. Committee Hearing Trends, 1981–2016. (Source: Policy Agendas Project Congressional Hearings dataset, which did not include a complete list of hearings from the 115th Congress as of this writing; calculated by the author.)
From Chapter 2
Fig. 2.3. Committee Reported Bill Trends, 1981–2018. (Source: THOMAS/Congress.gov, calculated by the author. Panel A (top) displays the data as counts, Panel B (bottom) as proportions. The points represent the averages in each congress, the gray shaded areas represent a standard deviation above and below the averages.)
From Chapter 2
Fig. 2.3. Committee Reported Bill Trends, 1981–2018. (Source: THOMAS/Congress.gov, calculated by the author. Panel A (top) displays the data as counts, Panel B (bottom) as proportions. The points represent the averages in each congress, the gray shaded areas represent a standard deviation above and below the averages.)
From Chapter 2
Fig. 2.4. Legislative Hearing Ratio Averages, 1981–2016. (Source: Policy Agendas Project, calculated by the author. House hearing ratios are displayed in the left panel and Senate hearing ratios in the right. House Rules Committee data throughout the book only include those bills in its original jurisdiction.)
From Chapter 2
Fig. 2.5. Committee Markup Averages, 1981–2018. (Source: THOMAS/Congress.gov, calculated by the author. House markup ratios are displayed in the left panel and Senate markup ratios in the right.)
Fig. 2.6. House Committee Legislative Hearing Trends, 1981–2016. (Source: Policy Agendas Project, calculated by the author.)
Fig. 2.7. Senate Committee Legislative Hearing Trends, 1981–2016. (Source: Policy Agendas Project, calculated by the author.)
From Chapter 2
Fig. 2.8. House Committee Reported Bills Trends, 1981–2018. (Source: THOMAS/Congress.gov, calculated by the author.)
Fig. 2.9. Senate Committee Reported Bills Trends, 1981–2018. (Source: THOMAS/Congress.gov, calculated by the author.)
Fig. 2.10. Average Workload in Legislative Hearings, 1981–2012. (Source: Policy Agendas Project Congressional Hearings dataset, compiled by the author. The 112th Congress was the last complete set of hearings when these data were collected.)
Fig. 3.1. Multiply-Referred Bills in the House of Representatives, 1981–2016. (Source: Congressional Bills Project, calculated by the author; the 114th Congress was the last set of data available as of this writing. House Rules Committee data exclude those bills it receives for the purposes of devising a debate rule.)
Fig. 3.2. Multiply-Referred Bills across House Committees, 1981–2016. (Source: Congressional Bills Project, calculated by the author; the 114th Congress was the last set of data available as of this writing. House Rules Committee data exclude those bills it receives for the purposes of devising a debate rule.)
Fig. 3.3. Multiply-Referred Bills for Each House Committee across Time, 1981–2016. (Source: Congressional Bills Project and Congress.gov, calculated by the author. House Rules Committee data exclude those bills it receives for the purposes of devising a debate rule.)
Fig. 3.4. Open Debate Rules in the House of Representatives, 1981–2016. (Source: Sinclair 2007 [97th–108th Congresses] and Congress.gov [109th–114th Congresses]; the former calculated by Donald Wolfensberger, the latter calculated by the author. The Wolfensberger calculations only refer to “restrictive” rules that include closed, modified closed, and modified open rules in the same statistic.)
Fig. 3.5. Senate Cloture Motions and Majority Party Leader Involvement, 1981–2018. (Source: Senate.gov, calculated by the author.)
From Chapter 3
Fig. 3.6. Resolving Intercameral Differences through Conference Committee, 1981–2018. (Source: Congress.gov, calculated by the author.)
Fig. 3.7. Total Subcommittees and Oversight Subcommittees in Congress, 1981–2018. (Source: Congressional Directory, history.house.gov, www.senate.gov/committees/committee_assignments.htm; compiled by the author.)
From Chapter 3
Fig. 3.8. Predicted Values for House Legislative Activity, Multiple vs. Primary Referral Era. (Note: Y-axes are on the logarithmic scale due to transforming beta regression results.)