Campaigns and the Unknown
Let’s talk about what we know and what we don’t know about our representatives in Congress.
First, what we know. For any candidate for Congress, I think we basically only know two things: party affiliation, and what they’ve said on the campaign trail. Party affiliation is a convenient shortcut to understanding a candidate’s positions. A Republican candidate presumably supports the kinds of things that Republicans generally support. A Democratic candidate presumably supports the kinds of things that Democrats generally support. If they supported completely different positions, they would have run under different party labels.
Party affiliation is supplemented by the actual campaign – what the candidate claims to support or oppose. This is presumably the more meaningful measure of what the candidate is all about – the issues that drive them, the kinds of things they want to do in Congress, the areas where they may disagree with party positions, the candidate’s character and judgement, etc. And this is presumably what most people use to evaluate a candidate and decide whether or not to vote for them (though, of course, plenty of people just use the party affiliation shortcut, and nothing more).
(As an aside, I’ll add that some candidates may have actual voting records from a state legislature or other public service that might indicate their policy positions. That information may certainly go into a voter’s decision, but it varies a lot from candidate to candidate and is often difficult to find. Plenty of “outsider” candidates have no such record to examine.)
Now let’s look at all the unknowns involved here. First, there’s the candidate’s silence. A candidate is not going to be able to state a position on every conceivable issue. If the candidate has never made a statement about agriculture policy, then voters simply won’t know where that candidate stands on the issue. Second, there’s the candidate’s vagueness. The candidate may claim to support some general principle in the abstract, like “border security.” But that doesn’t really tell voters anything about what particular policies the candidate favors. There are lots of ways to translate “border security” into legislation – which ones will the candidate actually vote for?
Third, there is basically no way to evaluate a candidate’s priorities. If a candidate supports policy A and policy B, what will they do if faced with a choice between one or the other? It’s possible that a candidate might address this on the campaign trail, but it’s very unlikely. There are no consequences when campaigning – candidates can always say that they favor both policies equally and decry any attempt to compare them as a false choice. We don’t know how they’d vote when push comes to shove, because pushes and shoves never meet on the campaign trail.
Relatedly, we have absolutely no idea where the candidate stands on any potential compromise between preferred policies. During the campaign, candidates tend to be absolutists – I will fight tooth and nail for [X]! In Congress, however, they might easily be faced with the choice of accepting 90% of [X]. Or 75%. Or 50%. Do we have any inkling which of those (if any) will be acceptable to the candidate? Most likely not. No candidate is going to go out on the campaign trail and state unequivocally that 50% of their preferred policy is good enough for them. Voters want to see firm commitments, not wishy-washy equivocation.
Discovery and the Legislative Process
Now let’s look at what our representatives find when they come to Congress. They find (at least in theory) a system that attempts to convert general principles into tangible policies. During the campaign, the candidate is immersed in an environment of vagueness – abstract principles and broad promises. Congress, on the other hand, is an environment of concrete decision-making – of specific ideas reflected in precise legislative text. On the campaign trail, there are no hard choices or uncomfortable compromises. But in Congress, there are real votes with real consequences.
The legislative process can thus be seen as a process of discovery. At the individual Member level, it’s a matter of discovering where their true convictions lie. In the consequence-free environment of the campaign, they have claimed to support any number of things. Now that they’re in Congress, which of those things will they actually vote for? Which were they serious about, and which were just empty rhetoric? Through the legislative process, we can discover where our representatives actually stand.
We can also discover where our representatives’ priorities lie. The legislative process is, in theory, a dynamic one that tests the strength of different proposals and different combinations. If a Member’s preferred policy can’t get a majority, what compromises will be acceptable? What are they willing to trade away in order to advance a separate policy? Where will they hold firm and refuse to accept half a loaf?
And finally, we can determine where the body as a whole stands on the issues of the day. The decisions made by the House or the Senate represent the views of its members in the aggregate. An effective legislative process tests the will of the body to move in one direction or another. Some proposals will obtain majorities in their favor. Others will not. A free and open debate can sift through all the different ideas and iterations and drive Members to points of compromise and consensus. This is representative democracy in action.
Ideal Versus Reality
Of course, Congress does NOT currently enjoy an effective legislative process. Its processes have broken down. Power is concentrated at the top, the committee system is moribund, and rank-and-file Members have few opportunities to advance their legislative goals. As a result, the process of discovering where our elected officials stand has broken down. Voters are given fewer and fewer datapoints by which to assess what their representatives truly believe. Members run for re-election on records that barely exist and contain almost no useful information. We’re left once again with the consequence-free world of campaign rhetoric and partisanship.
I would identify the following parliamentary principles as those whose routine violation contributes to the current abysmal state of congressional decision-making (these principles are derived from current practice in the House, but most likely apply in some fashion to the Senate as well):
Agenda-Setting: The most obvious way that Members of the House are prevented from expressing their policy preferences is the restrictive process by which bills are chosen to come to the floor. The leadership of the majority party sets the agenda, and the procedural rules of the House allow few opportunities for anyone else to place items before the body. There are some obscure rules (like Calendar Wednesday) whereby committee chairs could bring up legislation from their committees. And there is the discharge petition, whereby any group of 218 Members can advance a measure to the floor. But these are cumbersome processes that are difficult to use and easy to derail. It is the Speaker and the Rules Committee that effectively control all the gates to the floor. Even majority party Members have little recourse but to try to plead with their leaders to permit the consideration of their bills. There is no independent parliamentary right under the current rules. Do we know what Members would actually put on the floor for votes if they were empowered to do so? We do not.
Take-It-Or-Leave-It Votes: Related to the majority leaderships’ agenda-setting power is the power to structure how bills are considered. The Rules Committee decides not only what comes up for a vote, but how it will come up – how much debate time, what amendments will be permitted, etc. Often, the Rules Committee will simply report a “closed” rule – perhaps an hour or two of debate and no amendments whatsoever. This effectively creates a take-it-or-leave-it proposition for Members. This might be the only chance a Member has to weigh in on, say, transportation policy. But all the voters see is a single vote, for or against. Would a different proposal have garnered more support? Are Members voting for the bill because of the inclusion of [X], or despite its inclusion? Are Members enthusiastically supporting this measure, or are they grudgingly accepting it because it is the only bill on this topic they’ll ever see? We just don’t know.
Omnibus Measures/Germaneness: One fundamental rule of legislative procedure is that the body should only take up one issue at a time. This is sometimes difficult to achieve in practice, but legislatures usually have germaneness rules to prevent Members from attaching unrelated items to narrowly-drawn bills. However, the House often does not abide by this principle, and much of its major legislating is accomplished through massive “omnibus” measures that combine numerous unrelated items. Legislating in this fashion obscures the motivations and preferences of Members and inhibits the discovery of their true positions. Members may claim they voted for the bill because it contained [X], or voted against it because it didn’t contain [Y], but all the voter sees is a single vote on final passage. That one datapoint is impossible to unpack, and thus gives the voter no useful information in trying to evaluate where their representative actually stands.
Layover Requirements: Another fundamental rule of legislative procedure is that Members should be given time to read and study the legislation they are to vote on. Yet this is another principle that is often violated in the House. Members constantly complain that they are not being given enough time to “read the bill.” This state of affairs again introduces uncertainty in evaluating the beliefs of our representatives. Did they vote for the bill only because they were rushed and didn’t fully understand its provisions? Was something slipped into the bill without their knowledge before they voted on it? Or are they using a rushed process to avoid responsibility for some item in the bill they claim to oppose but secretly support? We cannot know.
Committee Process: Often, when people describe “regular order” in the House, they identify committee deliberation as a key step in the process. And for good reason: Members can do a lot of the grunt work of legislating in efficient, small-group committee discussions. Indeed, in these smaller forums, there is the greatest ability to study legislative text in depth, test a plethora of ideas against one another, take numerous votes on a variety of different iterations, and attempt to come to some sort of consensus (or, at the very least, a well-informed decision). Skipping the committee process eliminates even more datapoints from our evaluation of our representatives’ positions. If committee members had been permitted to freely deliberate and fashion some sort of compromise, would the House have accepted it? We just don’t know.
Conclusion
It’s always hard to know if we will be well-represented in this representative democracy of ours. Our representatives may fight for our priorities, or they may sabotage them. They may be honest about their political beliefs, or they may lie. They may claim to be willing to vote one way, but when the rubber meets the road, vote the other way instead. But the problem is not back-stabbing politicians inadequately representing their constituents. It’s the fact that bad legislative processes prevent voters from discovering what they need to know to hold any politician accountable.
If we want this experiment in self-government to succeed, the public should take a much closer look at the legislative processes used in Congress. Even the most well-intentioned, honest, capable representative we send will be forced into a system that restricts and obscures their actions. Most will come to enjoy the fact that Congress now resembles the campaign trail in most respects. Campaign rhetoric can echo in the empty chamber (just keep the C-SPAN cameras on, please), there are no consequences or compromises, and all decisions are made by…..someone else.
The good news is that this isn’t rocket science. It’s just parliamentary procedure. Rules can be re-written, and they’ve been re-written plenty of times before. The House has a choice, every two years, whether to continue on the path it’s on, or change course. Up until now, there has always been an inertia that keeps a majority in favor of keeping the House more like a political campaign and less like a legislature. But there will come a time when Members will prefer to take up their proper role in our representative democracy. Perhaps that time is now.
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