The Legislative Process, policy making and govt. institutions

1. The Legislative Process, policy making and govt.institutions Seminar #1, Unit #6 Prof. Christopher L. Howard

2. Legislative Process • The Legislative Process • How Bills Become Laws or Not • By Robert Longley, About.com Guide • As part of its legislative process, the United States Congress considers thousands of bills each session. Yet, only a small percentage of them will ever reach the top of the president's desk for final approval or veto. Along their way to the White House, bills traverse a maze of committees and subcommittees, debates, and amendments in both chambers of Congress. • The following is a simple explanation of the process required for a bill to become a law. For a complete explanation, see... "How Our Laws Are Made" (Library of Congress) Revised and Updated by Charles W. Johnson, Parliamentarian, United States House of Representatives. • Step 1: IntroductionOnly a member of Congress (House or Senate) can introduce the bill for consideration. The Representative or Senator who introduces the bill becomes its "sponsor." Other legislators who support the bill or work on its preparation can ask to be listed as "co-sponsors." Important bills usually have several co-sponsors. • Four basic types of legislation are considered by Congress: Bills, Simple Resolutions, Joint Resolutions, and Concurrent Resolutions. • A bill or resolution has officially been introduced when it has been assigned a number (H.R. # for House Bills or S. # for Senate Bills), and printed in the Congressional Record by the Government Printing Office. • Step 2: Committee ConsiderationAll bills and resolutions are "referred" to one or more House or Senate committees according their specific rules. • Standing Rules of the US SenateRules of the US House of Representatives • http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscongress/a/legprocess.htm

3. Process Cont. • Step 3: Committee ActionThe committee considers the bill in detail. For example, the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and Senate Appropriations Committee will consider a bill's potential impact on the Federal Budget. • If the committee approves the bill, it moves on in the legislative process. Committees reject bills by simply not acting on them. Bills that fail to get committee action are said to have "died in committee," as many do. • Step 4: Subcommittee ReviewThe committee sends some bills to a subcommittee for further study and public hearings. Just about anyone can present testimony at these hearings. Government officials, industry experts, the public, anyone with an interest in the bill can give testimony either in person or in writing. Notice of these hearings, as well as instructions for presenting testimony is officially published in the Federal Register. • Step 5: Mark UpIf the subcommittee decides to report (recommend) a bill back to the full committee for approval, they may first make changes and amendments to it. This process is called "Mark Up." If the subcommittee votes not to report a bill to the full committee, the bill dies right there. • Step 6: Committee Action -- Reporting a BillThe full committee now reviews the deliberations and recommendations of the subcommittee. The committee may now conduct further review, hold more public hearings, or simply vote on the report from the subcommittee. If the bill is to go forward, the full committee prepares and votes on its final recommendations to the House or Senate. Once a bill has successfully passed this stage it is said to have been "ordered reported" or simply "reported." • Step 7: Publication of Committee ReportOnce a bill has been reported (See Step 6:) a report about the bill is written and published. The report will include the purpose of the bill, its impact on existing laws, budgetary considerations, and any new taxes or tax increases that will be required by the bill. The report also typically contains transcripts from public hearings on the bill, as well as the opinions of the committee for and against the proposed bill. • Step 8: Floor Action -- Legislative CalendarThe bill will now be placed on the legislative calendar of the House or Senate and scheduled (in chronological order) for "floor action" or debate before the full membership. The House has several legislative calendars. The Speaker of the House and House Majority Leader decide the order in which reported bills will be debated. The Senate, having only 100 members and considering fewer bills, has only one legislative calendar. • http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscongress/a/legprocess.htm

4. Process slide #3 • Step 9: DebateDebate for and against the bill proceeds before the full House and Senate according to strict rules of consideration and debate. • Step 10: VotingOnce debate has ended and any amendments to the bill have been approved, the full membership will vote for or against the bill. Methods of voting allow for a voice vote or a roll-call vote. • Step 11: Bill Referred to Other ChamberBills approved by one chamber of Congress (House or Senate) are now sent to the other chamber where they will follow pretty much the same track of committee to debate to vote. The other chamber may approve, reject, ignore, or amend the bill. • Step12: Conference CommitteeIf the second chamber to consider a bill changes it significantly, a "conference committee" made up of members of both chambers will be formed. The conference committee works to reconcile differences between the Senate and House versions of the bill. If the committee cannot agree, the bill simply dies. If the committee does agree on a compromise version of the bill, they prepare a report detailing the changes they have proposed. Both the House and Senate must approve the report of the conference committee or the bill will be sent back to them for further work. • Step 13: Final Action - EnrollmentOnce both the House and Senate have approved the bill in identical form, it becomes "Enrolled" and sent to the President of the United States. The President may sign the bill into law. The President can also take no action on the bill for ten days while Congress is in session and the bill will automatically become law. If the President is opposed to the bill, he can "veto" it. If he takes no action on the bill for ten days after Congress has adjourned their second session, the bill dies. This action is called a "pocket veto." • Step 14: Overriding the VetoCongress can attempt to "override" a presidential veto of a bill and force it into law, but doing so requires a 2/3 vote by a quorum of members in both the House and Senate • http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscongress/a/legprocess.htm

5. Committees • In a typical session of Congress, well over 10,000 pieces of legislation are introduced for consideration. "Legislation", when used as a verb, means the consideration and enactment of laws. In practice, many will be considered, few will be enacted. During the 105th Congress, for example, 13,882 pieces of legislation were introduced. Out of all of those, only 354 (2.6%) ended up getting a presidential autograph to become enacted laws. What happened to all the rest? Some were voted down, some got vetoed, but the vast majority died in the intricate system of Congressional Committees. • Before any bill is even debated by the full membership of the House or Senate, it must first be considered and approved by the appropriate House committee or subcommittee, or Senate committee or subcommittee. Both House and Senate may also appoint special select committees to consider bills relating to specific issues. • How Bills are Assigned to CommitteesDepending on its subject and content, each proposed bill is sent to one or more related committees. For example, a bill introduced in the House allocating federal funds for agricultural research might be sent to the Agriculture, Appropriations, and Budget Committees, plus others as deemed appropriate by the Speaker of the House. • Perhaps the busiest committee in Federal Government, the House Ways & Means Committee must consider every bill introduced in the House that in any way deals with federal revenue. In fact, almost two-thirds of the entire annual Federal Budget requires the approval of Ways and Means. • http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscongress/a/congcommittees.htm

6. Make-Up of Committees • Political Makeup of CommitteesWhile all committees have members from both the Democratic and Republican parties, the distribution is almost never equal. Generally, the majority party sets the proportion of minority members to majority members. However the exact method by which committee membership is determined is extremely complicated. For a more detailed explanation, try reading “Introduction and Reference to Committee,” from the Library of Congress. • Considering the number of bills and resolutions proposed, the number of committees, and the ever-present influence of party-partisan politics, it's pretty amazing that any bills ever makes it all the way to the President's desk. Maybe, it's a case of survival of the fittest. After all, the very purpose of our Congressional committee system is to make sure that only "good" laws are enacted. Does it work? Not all the time. Some good laws don't make it, while some bad laws do. Yet, without the committee system, or something like it, we could wake up to, "Good morning America! Here are your 13,882 new laws for the year • http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscongress/a/congcommittees.htm

7. Committee Actions • Where do things get done in Congress? Usually in committee. Each chamber of Congress has committees set up to perform specific functions, enabling the legislative bodies to accomplish their often complex work more quickly with smaller groups. • There are approximately 250 congressional committees and subcommittees, each charged with different functions and all made up of members of Congress. Each chamber has its own committees, although there are joint committees comprising members of both chambers. Each committee, going by chamber guidelines, adopts its own set of rules, giving each panel its own special character. • In the Senate, there are standing committees for: • environment and public works; • http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscongress/a/committees.htm

8. Standing Committee • These standing committees are permanent legislative panels, and their various subcommittees handle the nuts-and-bolts work of the full committee. The Senate also has four select committees charged with more specific tasks: Indian affairs, ethics, intelligence and aging. These handle housekeeping-type functions, such as keeping Congress honest or ensuring the fair treatment of American Indians.Committees are chaired by a member of the majority party, often a senior member of Congress. Parties assign their members to specific committees. In the Senate, there is a limit to the number of committees on which one member may serve. While each committee may hire its own staff and appropriate resources as it sees fit, the majority party often controls those decisions. • The House of Representatives has several of the same committees as the Senate: • agriculture, • energy and commerce, • natural resources, • science and technology, • Committees unique to the House include House administration, oversight and government reform, rules, standards of official conduct, transportation and infrastructure, and ways and means. This last committee is considered the most influential and sought-after House committee, so powerful that members of this panel cannot serve on any other committees without a special waiver. The panel has jurisdiction over taxation, among other things. There are four joint House/Senate committees. Their areas of interest are: printing, taxation, the Library of Congress, and the U.S. economy. • Most congressional committees deal with passing laws. During each two-year session of Congress, literally thousands of bills are proposed, but only a small percentage is considered for passage. A bill that is favored often goes through four steps in committee. First, executive agencies give written comments on the measure; second, the committee holds hearings in which witnesses testify and answer questions; third, the committee tweaks the measure, sometimes with input from non-committee members of Congress; finally, when the language is agreed upon the measure is sent to the full chamber for debate. Conference committees, usually composed of standing committee members from the House and Senate who originally considered the legislation, also help reconcile one chamber's version of a bill with the other's. • Not all committees are legislative. Others confirm government appointees such as federal judges; investigate government officials or pressing national issues; or ensure that specific government functions are carried out, like printing government documents or administering the Library of Congress. • http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscongress/a/committees.htm

9. Government Institutions • A federal government is the common government of a federation. The structure of federal governments varies from institution to institution. Based on a broad definition of a basic federal political system, there are two or more levels of government that exist within an established territory and govern through common institutions with overlapping or shared powers as prescribed by a constitution. • Central government or union government is the government at the level of the sovereign state. Usual responsibilities of this level of government are maintaining national security and exercising international diplomacy, including the right to sign binding treaties. Basically, the central government has the power to make laws for the whole country, unlike the situation with local governments. • Central government-within this structure are the government ministries and departments and agencies to which the ministers of government are assigned. Central government also works alongside agencies to help with tax collection. • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_government

10. Rise of U.S. Institutions • A rising sun? • At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin famously observed that he had been trying to determine throughout the debate whether a sun painted on George Washington's chair was rising or setting. "But now at length," he said, "I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun." • And with that, the Founders created a nation upon the fundamental principle of trust. They had an untested belief in the ability of people to lead themselves -- to choose leaders from their own ranks and to hold those leaders accountable. • Even our currency, once backed by the promise of precious metal, is today built upon a faith-based system called "fiat" -- a Latin term meaning "let it be done." • In a dictatorship, people can lose faith in institutions and the apparatus of state can step in. But democracy can't survive without faith in its institutions because the people, by definition, create and control them. • While there were surely crises of faith during the Civil War, the Progressive Era and others times of tumult, the early 20th century was marked by a reflexive sense of trust in the nation's institutions. Even as Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal vastly expanded the government safety net, a new breed of private charities and social reformers didn't bother waiting on government to help the poor, infirm and abused. • But things started to change in the mid-20th century, when polls showed a steady decline on the question of whether Americans trusted government in Washington to do what is right. • 70% trusted government in 1958 • From 1958, when more than 70 percent said they trusted government most or all of the time, the trend line steadily drops until it hits the mid-20s in the post-Watergate era. • The trust line creeps up for a few years -- without getting nowhere near the 1958 mark -- and plunges again in 1994, the year President Bill Clinton's • http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.ssf/2010/06/government_national_institutio.html

11. Institutions Cont. • political faltering caused Democrats to lose control of Congress after more than 40 years in power. • Just two months ago, a Pew Research Center poll showed that only 22 percent of the public say they can trust the government in Washington always or most of the time, among the lowest measures in a half a century. • "This spill has just got to make matters worse," said Pew pollster Andy Kohut. "People are asking, Who's in charge? Why can't they plug it? What going on here?" • Just 25 percent of the public has a favorable opinion of Congress. Favorability ratings also have fallen significantly for seven of 13 federal agencies included in the Pew survey, including the Environmental Protection Agency. • Faith in institutions across the board has fallen since the 1970s, at least among the sample of institutions tracked by Gallup: churches, the U.S. Supreme Court, banks, public schools, newspapers, Congress and organized labor. • One of the least-trusted institutions is big business, no surprise after corporate wrongdoing and lax government oversight combined to help create the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Sixteen percent of Americans said they had a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in big corporations in 2009, compared to 32 percent 30 years prior. • The only exception to this trend is the military, which has increased from a 54 percent favorability rating in the post-Vietnam era to 82 percent this year. • Part of the problem: Americans today might expect too much of government and other institutions. Take the oil spill, for example. Accidents happen and, right or wrong, the government is not in the drilling or drill-capping business. • "On a psychological level, people are less likely to take responsibility for things these days," said Lou Manza, professor of psychology at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pa. "So if something goes wrong, it's somebody else's fault and somebody has to fix it." • http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.ssf/2010/06/government_national_institutio.html

12. Elite Theory • In elite theory as developed by political scientists like Michael Parenti, all sufficiently large social groups will have some kind of elite group within them that actively participates in the group's political dynamics. When a group is arbitrarily excluded from the larger society, such as in the case of the racism that was widespread in the United States prior to the success of the American Civil Rights Movement, then elite members of the excluded group may form a counter-elite to fight for their group's interests (although they may be fighting for those interests only to the extent they mesh with the counter-elite's interests). Of course, the dominant elite can neutralize the counter-elite through the classic divide-and-conquer strategy of admitting key members of the counter-elite into the elite. Another popular tactic is to assassinate the counter-elite. Without their leaders the downtrodden revert to helplessness. It has been argued[who?] that certain Black civil rights leaders have been killed to prevent common Blacks from demanding reparations for slavery, etc.[citation needed] • Elitism usually draws envy and resentment from the lower classes and the counter-elite. There are cases where elites arguably use this resentment of an elite to maintain their position. This is very criticized from the Communist point of view. • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite

13. Influence of Elites • In political science and sociology, elite theory is a theory of the state which seeks to describe and explain the power relationships in contemporary society. The theory posits that a small minority, consisting of members of the economic elite and policy-planning networks, holds the most power and that this power is independent of a state's democratic elections process. Through positions in corporations or on corporate boards, and influence over the policy-planning networks through financial support of foundations or positions with think tanks or policy-discussion groups, members of the "elite" are able to exert significant power over the policy decisions of corporations and governments. A recent example of this can be found in the Forbes Magazine article [1] (published in December 2009) entitled The World's Most Powerful People, in which Forbes purported to list the 67 most powerful people in the world (assigning 1 "slot" for each 100,000,000 of human population). • Elite theory stands in opposition to pluralism in suggesting that democracy is a utopian ideal. It also stands in opposition to . • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_theory

14. Power Elites • A power elite or The Grand Elite, in political and sociological theory, is a small group of people who control a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, and access to decision-making of global consequence. The term was coined by Charles Wright Mills in his 1956 book, The Power Elite, which describes the relationship between individuals at the pinnacles of political, military, and economic institutions, noting that these people share a common world view. • The power elite is described as consisting of members of the corporate community, academia, politicians, media editors, military service personnel, and high-profile journalists. Individuals identified as belonging to the power elite include David Rockefeller, Averell Harriman and Robert McNamara.[1] • Mills argues in his book that the US power elite consists of members of society characterized by consensus building and the homogenization of viewpoints. This power elite has historically dominated the three major sectors of US society: economy, government, and military. Elites circulate from one sector to another, consolidating their power as they go.[2] • [edit] Social structure • The power elite are the leadership of the upper class, able to shape the economy through their simultaneous access to both state and corporate power. • Unlike the ruling class, a social formation based on heritage and social ties, the power elite is characterized by the organizational structure through which its wealth is acquired. According to Mills, the power elite is "the managerial reorganization of the propertied classes into the more or less unified stratum of the corporate rich."[3] Domhoff further clarified the differences in the two terms: "The upper class as a whole does not do the ruling. Instead, class rule is manifested through the activities of a wide variety of organizations and institutions... Leaders within the upper class join with high-level employees in the organizations they control to make up what will be called the power elite."[4] • Mills wrote that the power elite refers to "those political, economic, and military circles, which as an intricate set of overlapping small but dominant groups share decisions having at least national consequences. Insofar as national events are decided, the power elite are those who decide them."[5] According to Mills, the governing elite in the US primarily draws its members from three areas: (i) the highest political leaders (including the president) and a handful of key cabinet members and close advisers; (ii) major corporate owners and directors; and (iii) high ranking military officers. The elite occupies what Mills terms the top command posts of society.[6] • Such positions give their holders enormous authority over governmental, financial, educational, social, civic, and cultural institutions. A small group is thus able to make decisions and take actions that touch everyone. • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_elite

15. Wrapping It Up • Legislative Process • Committees • Committee Actions, standing and subcommittees • Institutions of Government • Elites and Power Elites