Evaluating congressional reform: Deregulation revisited

An evaluation of the changes in Congress's structure that occurred in the 1970s requires attention to three dimensions of its performance as a policymaking institution: representation of interests, deliberation, and conflict resolution. Considered this way, the changes seem to have enhanced some aspects of congressional capacity (especially the representation of broadly-based interests) but to have diminished others (especially deliberation and conflict resolution on issues that are salient to mass constituencies). The resulting strengths and weaknesses help to explain differences in congressional performance on trucking deregulation and natural gas deregulation in the late 1970s and early 1980s. To some degree, they have altered the opportunities, strategic considerations, and central skills for policy analysts who seek to influence congressional decisions.     

Subprime catalyst: Financial regulatory reform and the strengthening of US carbon market governance

The 2008 financial crisis has had an important, but neglected, impact on carbon market governance in the United States. It acted as a catalyst for the emergence of a domestic coalition that drew upon the crisis experience to demand stronger regulation over carbon markets. The influence of this coalition was seen first in the changing content of draft climate change bills between 2008 and 2010. But the coalition's more lasting legacy was its role in shaping the content of, and supporting, the passage of the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the Dodd–Frank bill) in July 2010. Although that bill was aimed primarily at bolstering financial stability, its derivatives provisions strengthened carbon market regulation in significant ways. This policy episode demonstrates new patterns of coalition building in carbon market politics as well as the growing links between climate governance and financial regulatory politics. At the same time, the significance of these developments should not be overstated because of various limitations in the content and implementation of the Dodd–Frank bill, as well as the waning support for carbon markets more generally within the US since the bill's passage.     

Oak Leaves and the origins of the 1927 Radio Act: Comment

The Radio Act of 1927 was enacted so as to pre-empt the common law property rights then being asserted over radio waves, thus facilitating a political equilibrium where broadcasters and regulators shared license rents. The Oak Leaves case of November 1926, awarding AM frequency rights to a private broadcaster on the homesteading principle, helped motivate Congress, steering it towards a “public interest” licensing law. The Twight paper, while ostensibly critiquing this now standard view in the law and economics literature, actually endorses it. The existing history stands corroborated, uncorrected.     

Preparing members of congress to make binary decisions on complex policy issues: The 1986 tax reform bill

Throughout 1985 and 1986, the House Committee on Ways and Means undertook a major revision of the federal income tax law. The product was the landmark Tax Reform Act of 1986. Because of the magnitude of the changes contained in this bill, the committee sought new ways of obtaining and disseminating necessary information. This article discusses the congressional policy-making process, the different kinds of information used in congressional decision making, and some new procedures employed by the committee during House action on the 1986 tax reform legislation.     

The Congress and fiscal policy

Although the common belief is that the Congress has paid little attention to fiscal policy, the same kinds of political-economic models which have been used to explain presidential budgetary policy may be used equally well to explain congressional budgetary behavior. The Congress' fiscal policy appears to be systematically sensitive to both economic and political factors. Changes in the unemployment rate have a major impact on congressional budgetary policy. As for political factors, the President's lead is followed most closely on revenue proposals and not at all on the expenditure side. The electoral cycle, in particular the off-year congressional election year, is also important; inducing larger deficits and smaller increases in revenues. When the influences on congressional fiscal behavior are compared with those on presidential behavior, the sources of the generally more expansionary congressional fiscal policy are identified. Congressional budget deficits increase in response to increased rates of unemployment but are insensitive to increases in inflation. In contrast, presidential budgets are heavily influenced by inflation and the growth in personal income — increases in each resulting in smaller proposed deficits — as well as by unemployment rates. In years in which both unemployment and inflation are increasing, the combination of the two (assuming a one percentage point change in each) implies an increase in the congressional deficit of $6.7 billion but a decrease in the president's proposed deficit of $2.5 billion. The implications of this study are a challenge to the literature which makes the President the central actor in macro-economic policy.     

Congress, the Deficit, and Budget Reconciliation

President Clinton's veto of the 1995 reconciliation bill, the largest and most ambitious such legislation ever passed by Congress, was the first time a reconciliation bill was ever rejected by a president. It was also the first reconciliation bill in two decades to include a tax reduction rather than a tax increase. The fate of this bill, and its scope and contents, suggest the need to assess the evolution of reconciliation within the congressional budget process. In the early 1980s, Congress altered budget reconciliation procedures, putting in place a powerful new capability for deficit reduction. Reconciliation became the primary means within the budget process of restraining entitlement spending and increasing taxes as part of congressional efforts to reduce the deficit. Gramm-Rudman-Hollings magnified certain problems Congress encountered in using reconciliation to control entitlements, producing increased pressure to cut discretionary spending. While the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 included new authority to use reconciliation to restrain entitlements, congressional spending priorities combined with the Peace Dividend to maintain the relative sanctuary entitlement programs have enjoyed. The limits of reconciliation as a deficit reduction tool, both in terms of increasing revenues and curtailing entitlements, are detailed. The inherent procedural advantages accorded to entitlements are contrasted with the treatment of discretionary programs, explaining in part the widening gulf between these two categories of spending. Congress has attempted, without success, to find alternatives to reconciliation. The failure of the seven-year, deficit-eliminating reconciliation bill of 1995 may indicate that certain Limits on the use of reconciliation may have been reached.     

Broadcasting system in Italy: Evolution and perspectives

Italian public broadcasting service (RAI) has had a monopoly until the middle of the 1970s. The peculiarity of public monopoly in broadcasting is its tendency to secure political rather than economic rents. The dangers that public monopoly causes to consumers (viewers-listeners), has not emerged at least until the mid-seventies for the simple reason that broadcasting has been conceived under the ideological umbrella of public good rather than in terms of opportunity costs. A law limiting monopoly has taken fourteen years to be passed so that the proliferation of private radio and television stations has orgininated the subrogatory intervention by the Constitutional Court. From 1975 to 1989 regulation has tended to perpetuate RAI's monopoly, in a context which was very different from the one in which the RAI was established. It is no wonder, therefore, that reforms have been motivated by RAI's financial crisis in the seventies and eighties, and not by political choices. The 1990 law puts a stop to public monopoly in broadcasting giving rise to what now appears to be a duopoly, but which in 1990 to many seemed to introduce a contestable market able to respond to both consumers' demand and technological innovations more efficiently, so ensuring more freedom of information.     

The Federal Antideficiency Act at 150—Where Do We Stand?

The Antideficiency Act of 1870 codified Congress's power of the purse to curb unauthorized agency spending. Is it still working? This paper analyzes all violations of the Act over 12 years by agency and type, causes and consequences, and how violations were detected. The number of violations has trended down slightly. While agency preventive controls have failed, detective controls are working. Employees and agencies are comfortable self‐reporting violations, which are neither pervasive nor material. The risk of violations increases during fiscal year transitions and periods of change. The Act remains effective at stopping unauthorized and overspending, but does not address wasteful spending.     

Mobilizing the Public Against the President: Congress and the Political Costs of Unilateral Action

Prior scholarship overlooks the capacity of other actors to raise the political costs of unilateral action by turning public opinion against the president. Through a series of five experiments embedded in nationally representative surveys, we demonstrate Congress's ability to erode support for unilateral actions by raising both constitutional and policy‐based objections to the exercise of unilateral power. Congressional challenges to the unilateral president diminish support for executive action across a range of policy areas in both the foreign and domestic realm and are particularly influential when they explicitly argue that presidents are treading on congressional prerogatives. We also find evidence that constitutional challenges are more effective when levied by members of Congress than by other actors. The results resolve a debate in the literature and suggest a mechanism through which Congress might exercise a constraint on the president, even when it is unable to check him legislatively.     

U.S. Congressional Campaign Communications in an Internet Age

New technologies – with perhaps the most notable being radio and television – often change the face of political campaigns. The Internet, and particularly campaign websites with their concomitant technologies (e.g. interactive and multimedia features), has evolved at a faster rate than any other prior innovation. This raises a critical question: have website technologies altered how congressional candidates campaign? We address this question with a novel dataset from 2008. Not only do we chart technological change on sites over the course of the campaign but we also explore how and when candidates use certain technologies. We discover two critical and, to our knowledge, novel points. First, congressional candidates use these technologies to a much lesser extent than one may suspect. Second, their scant usage is driven by how certain technologies limit control of the candidate's message, the candidate's status in the race and other key variables such as the employment of campaign consultants. In sum, the Web 2.0 era (which began around 2008) does not appear to have dramatically altered congressional campaigns.     

Federal Preemption of State Regulation of Insurance: End of a 200-Year Era?

This article examines state regulation of insurance, focusingon congressional and judicial attempts to displace state regulatoryprimacy over insurance. After describing the early period ofstate insurance regulation from the U.S. Supreme Court's decisionin Paul v. Virginia to the Court's overruling of that decision,the article examines the McCarran-Ferguson Act and the post-McCarranenvironment, including examples of judicial preemption of stateinsurance laws. Finally, the article considers the system ofinsurance regulation envisioned in H.R. 1290, the most recentcongressional attempt to displace state insurance regulation,and state initiatives to counter federal regulation. AlthoughH.R.1290 purports to setup a dual regulatory scheme, the broadpreemption language in the bill would allow federal regulatorsto preempt virtually all state insurance laws. Moreover, thedecisions of the Supreme Court in Garcia v. San Antonio MetropolitanTransit Authority and Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Councilwould leave no political or judicial forum for states to debatethe extent and impact of federal preemption     

THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT'S EFFECTS ON PATIENTS,PROVIDERS, AND THE ECONOMY: WHAT WE'VE LEARNED SO FAR

As we approach the tenth anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, it is important to reflect on what has been learned about the impacts of this major reform. In this paper, we review the literature on the impacts of the ACA on patients, providers, and the economy. We find strong evidence that the ACA's provisions have increased insurance coverage. There is also a clearly positive effect on access to and consumption of health care, with suggestive but more limited evidence on improved health outcomes. There is no evidence of significant reductions in provider access, changes in labor supply, or increased budgetary pressures on state governments, and the law's total federal cost through 2018 has been less than predicted. We conclude by describing key policy implications and future areas for research.     

Political choice and the child labor statute of 1938: Public interest or interest group legislation?

Federal regulation of child labor (unlike that passed in early nineteenth century England) did not materialize until the New Deal of the 1930s. The present paper examines, using anecdotal and empirical evidence, the motives underlying the passage of depression-based child labor legislation embodied in the Senate vote on the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Our study, which utilizes both dichotomous and trichotomous probit models of the vote, finds evidence that there were critical and dominantprivate as opposed to public interests behind the restrictions that the FLSA placed on child labor and the exemptions that it established.     

THE INTER-STATE COMMISSION*

Abstract: The Inter-State Commission (ISC), although required by Australia's Constitution, has been in existence from 1913 to 1920 only. In 1975 the Labor government introduced a bill to set up the Commission. The bill was passed in a heavily amended form, but the legislation was not proclaimed by the incoming coalition government. A brief history of the "first" ISC raises the question of whether the High Court would ever have accepted the regulatory powers that the Labor government wished to invest in the late Commission. The ISC envisaged by the Labor government's bill would have had strong powers of regulation, arbitration and investigation over interstate and overseas transport. The Senate left it with weakened investigative powers only. Our Federal system encourages many government practices which are not in the interests of the community as a whole. However, while the ISC's role in curbing these practices would have been beneficial, the States have shown themselves too powerful politically to accept such policing, even if the High Court had allowed the ISC to do so. The ISC as conceived by Labor's bill would not have been politically viable, but the ISC as provided for in the Act would be worth setting up, as it would have several advantages over existing investigative mechanisms. It would have more experience and competence than ad hoc inquiries, and its continued existence would make it difficult to shelve its reports. Its statutory basis, broader terms of reference and its ability to force organizations to divulge information would all serve to make it a better investigative body than the Bureau of Transport Economics.     

Determinants of legislative success in House committees

We examine the factors that are associated with whether a bill passes the committee stage in the U.S. House of Representatives. Probit results for the 97th and 98th Congresses show that a bill is more likely to pass (1) if the sponsor chairs the committee that considers the bill or a subcommittee of that committee; (2) the higher the number of Democratic cosponsors who sit on the committee; (3) if the bill has bipartisan cosponsorship from members who sit on the committee that considers the bill. However, in the multivariate probit model including the above mentioned variables, other variables previously found to be important, e.g., the total number of cosponsors, whether or not the sponsor sits on the committee that considers the bill, and the party affiliation of the sponsor, are not statistically significant. Also a variable related to a public choice model of committee behavior, the difference between the sponsor's ideology (as measured by ADA score) and the ideology of the committee's median member, has no effect on a bill's probability of committee passage.     

Congressional dysfunction: An information processing perspective

The public's approval of Congress is at an all time low. The parties seem to have taken the legislative process hostage for their own electoral gain. Whereas traditional arguments about congressional dysfunction focus on polarized voting coalitions or outputs – particularly legislation – in this article we highlight congressional information processing and how it has changed in this highly partisan era. By coding congressional hearings according to the kind of information on which they focus, we find that members of Congress are receiving one‐sided information to a greater degree and are spending less time learning about potential solutions. We use these results to make numerous recommendations for improving how Congress gathers its information.     

Signed but Not Ratified: Limits to U.S. Participation in International Environmental Agreements

Why does the United States sign environmental treaties but not ratify them? U.S. presidents have negotiated and signed several environmental treaties that ultimately could not obtain Senate ratification. This article considers two alternative explanations. First, presidents may face divided government and upcoming elections; elections can increase uncertainty regarding ratification, because they upset majorities and change congressional preferences on issues. Such factors may have caused “involuntary” defection from international environmental cooperation. Second, compensation and compromise on enabling legislation could satisfy enough senators and their constituents to allow the legislation's passage. Failure to secure ratification may be a result of the president's overestimating the potential for negotiating a policy package capable of creating sufficient support to obtain Senate ratification. I compare domestic constraints on U.S. participation in three international environmental negotiations—climate change, biodiversity, and chemicals—to assess the alternative explanations. The cases exemplify how domestic institutions affect international environmental cooperation.     

The regulation and deregulation of televison: a British/West European comparison

This article compares and contrasts the systems of regulation and deregulation in the British and West European television industries. Although all television systems were affected by the information revolution and neo-liberal political economy in the 1980s,in many respects the British experience was Unique. The evolution of a mixed public/private system over forty years and the unique position of the BBC as a source of skilled labour and as a cultural benchmark for the entire industry,placed it in a stronger position than other public service systems to meet the new challanges to its hegemony. The British television industry demonstrates the tenacity of well-estabilished social structures and policy-making behaviour. This will be shown by reviewing the history of the recent Broadcasting Act. The European dimension of broadcasting policy and regulation is discussed in terms of the EC Directives and support for high defination television. This shows that the aim of protecting European industry and culture is not dissimilar from the ambitions of national regulation at an earlier stage.     

Winning Coalition Formation in the U.S. Senate: The Effects of Legislative Decision Rules and Agenda Change

Recent empirical work has brought a renewed attention to the effect congressional rules of procedure have on the size of winning coalitions. Specifically, scholars have posited that legislative success hinges on the support of legislators identified by institutionally defined decision rules. Under these theories, supermajority decision rules in the U.S. Senate lead to larger, more inclusive coalitions on final passage. In this article, I reevaluate these claims by controlling for changes in the legislative agenda and the roll‐call voting record. I find that the aggregate size of winning coalitions is highly responsive to the underlying legislative agenda, the size of the Senate's majority party, and the manner in which researchers treat unrecorded votes. Further, my findings suggest that any connection between changes in the Senate's voting rules and the size of winning coalitions is spurious. Eric Schickler and Gregory J. Wawro have authored a response to this article, and Anthony J. Madonna has authored a rejoinder to this response. Both are available as Supporting Information .     

Demographic change and the demand for environmental regulation

Environmental regulation in the United States has increased pollution abatement expenditure as a percentage of gross national product from 1.7 percent in 1972 to an estimated 2.6 percent in the year 2000. This rise in regulation has coincided with demographic and economic changes that include rising educational levels, a growing minority population, an aging population, and decreasing employment in polluting industries. This paper examines whether these trends have contributed to increasing aggregate demand for environmental regulation. New evidence on voting on environmental ballots in California, local government environmental expenditures across the United States, and 25 years of congressional voting on environmental issues is examined to document the demographic correlates of environmental support. Minorities and the more educated are more pro‐green, whereas manufacturing workers oppose environmental regulation. While demographics help explain observed differences in environmental support and thus can help predict long trends in the “average voter's” environmentalism, environmentalism varies substantially year to year unrelated to population demographics. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.