Introduction
As American children begin another year of school, Congress is
ending its two-year session, making it time for a final report
card. In the critical area of congressional reform -- the steps
Congress took to fix its internal problems -- mostly failing grades
are in order.
The tumultuous elections of 1992 led to the largest freshman
class of legislators in decades; for most of them, reforming the
troubled institution they were about to join was a central campaign
issue. Lawmakers, conceding that their institution was plagued by
numerous internal problems, created a special committee -- the
Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress -- to reform the
institution. Even though that committee's proposals were
disappointingly mild, they were fought bitterly by entrenched
interests within Congress and ultimately were sabotaged by
congressional leaders who stopped most reforms from even coming up
for a vote. In retrospect, it appears that the Joint Committee
process was designed to fail; and, with a few notable exceptions,
Members of Congress expended little time or energy on reforms
outside that process. Among the disappointments of the last two
years, Congress:
Failed to improve its misleading budget procedures;
Did not fully apply all relevant federal laws to itself;
Failed to eliminate congressional perquisites that are used to
influence elections;
Advanced campaign finance reform that would give incumbents even
more advantages in elections;
Failed to rationalize the ineffective committee system;
Failed to eliminate party politics from internal congressional
administration;
Failed to eliminate deceptive voting practices through
truth-in-voting reforms; and
Failed even to address congressional term limits.
This general pattern of failure is the result of opposition from
an entrenched leadership which dominated a large freshman class
that, despite campaign promises, appeared to care little about
reform issues. This pattern, however, was interrupted occasionally
by a few individual and institutional bright spots. The House
passed a bill applying various employment laws to Congress (a bill
now being championed in the Senate by Republican Charles E.
Grassley of Iowa and Democrat Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut), and
a few subcommittees and non-legislative committees were eliminated.
Some members of the Joint Committee, such as David Dreier (R-CA)
and Jennifer Dunn (R-WA), distinguished themselves on numerous
reform fronts; other Members of Congress, such as Robert Andrews
(D-NJ), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), and Bill Zeliff
(R-NH) have capitalized on specific reform opportunities. But these
legislators unfortunately are not typical. Indeed, if Congress were
a school, most of the class would need to be held back in order to
take remedial classes on reform.
Congress's Reform Committee
House: F Senate: F
The central focus of congressional reform must be the quality of
legislation that Congress produces; that is, are laws the product
of sound policy choices made in a genuinely representative fashion?
Judged by this standard, the process that Congress set up to reform
itself (like its routine lawmaking procedures), was destined to
fail. Despite rhetorical support for the reform process from nearly
every Member of Congress, obstacles within the process stacked the
deck against reform.
The Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, created to
review and recommend changes in the way Congress operates,
originally had no freshman members -- despite the fact that
one-quarter of House Members and 14 of 100 Senators were
first-termers. Only after one of its members left Congress to enter
the lobbying sector was a freshman Representative appointed to the
24-member committee. The fact that the committee was stacked with
senior members (their average tenure was over fourteen years)
reflects a central problem of Congress's seniority system: junior
members rarely are granted seats on important legislative
committees and are given little opportunity to do their central
job, helping to write legislation. They therefore must focus on
seeking repeated re-election -- and frequently on accomplishments
unrelated to legislation -- in order to acquire committee positions
with significant legislative influence. The overwhelming number of
senior lawmakers guaranteed that the Joint Committee would reflect
the attitudes and interests of career politicians.
If the outcome of the reform process had matched the rhetoric of
the Members who testified before the Joint Committee, it would have
been a success. Over the first six months of 1993, the Joint
Committee held 36 hearings and heard testimony from 243 witnesses
-- including 170 federal legislators -- about what was wrong with
Congress. Most witnesses encouraged the committee to produce a bold
package of reforms and pledged their strong support; Speaker of the
House Tom Foley, for instance, said: "I have come to believe that
this is a process that not only can work but must work. I pledge to
you my willingness to support you in any way that I can, and I wish
you well." (Congressional Record, August 10, 1994, p. H-7332.)
Despite this rhetorical support, however, the Joint Committee's
recommendations would have to go through the very legislative
process that the committee had been set up to reform -- a process
which created countless opportunities for other committees to
bottle up, ignore, or fatally modify reform legislation with no
guarantee that it would ever reach the floor of the House and
Senate. Awareness that any reform plans would have to be acceptable
to other committees encouraged a timid atmosphere that produced
tepid half-measures coupled with schemes to evade pressing
issues.
For instance, the committee never seriously considered the
reforms that are most prominent in public discourse, such as term
limits, a balanced budget amendment, and line-item veto power for
the President. Members decided to bypass such difficult questions
as ethics reform, application of laws to Congress, and committee
restructuring by calling for more study or for others to handle the
issue.
Although the extensive hearings held in the first six months of
the 103rd Congress were supposed to culminate in a summer
legislative mark-up, the House leadership repeatedly refused
throughout the latter half of 1993 to permit the committee to meet
in order to report out legislation. This delay eventually led to a
November meeting where frustrated Senate members of the Joint
Committee split off and held their own mark-up, thus further
weakening prospects for a strong reform bill that would permit
committee members to form a united front in its defense. The House
half of the committee, finally scheduled to meet during the last
week of the 1993 session (after which its authority would expire),
was split by a series of party-line votes that left few genuine
reform proposals intact. Instead, House members produced a bill
larded with feel-good but nonbinding resolutions and nearly
meaningless reforms, such as recodifying House rules and preventing
cosmetic changes in Members' statements in the Congressional
Record.
Republican committee members, who could have killed the package
on a party-line vote, were divided on whether the resulting package
was worth any additional effort. Based on a commitment from
Chairman Lee Hamilton (D-IN) to bring the entire Joint Committee
package to the floor with "generous" opportunities for members of
both parties to amend it, two Republicans -- Vice Chairman David
Dreier (R-CA) and Bill Emerson (R-MO) -- voted to report out the
committee product.
Although the Joint Committee's proposals were disappointing
overall, the House and Senate reports did include some useful
reforms. Particularly, proposals for a two-year budget process and
limits on committee memberships likely would have led to greater
deliberation and some reduction in redundancy. Further, the
committee's proposals could have served as the basis for debate and
votes on more significant reforms in the House and Senate. The
bill's forced march through House and Senate committees, however,
gave defenders of the status quo opportunities to destroy even
these few useful reforms. Entrenched interests in both bodies
mobilized to fight the Joint Committee's already weak product.
Committee chairmen opposed provisions that might eliminate
committees. Appropriations Committee members were against a
biennial budget process.
The Black Caucus spoke out against committee assignment
limitations.
The House Democratic Study Group demanded abolition of the
Senate filibuster before any House reform could take place.
The Senate Rules Committee stripped the two-year budget process
proposal and the committee reforms from their bill, and watered
down the provisions on application of laws to Congress while adding
new powers for the Majority Leader and the Appropriations
Committee.
In the House, Speaker Foley decided to break the reform package
into separate pieces, making it harder to pass each particular
reform.
Faced with such legislative roadblocks, the reform bill's
momentum crumbled. As a result, the only proposition Congress has
even considered is the House-passed Congressional Accountability
Act (see section on "Congressional Coverage," on page 8).
Congressional leaders, all too aware of how to capitalize on
anti-reform legislative dynamics, were able to slice away at the
package's provisions and prospects. If reformers did not understand
this initially, the leadership's opposition to and destruction of
their efforts certainly should have taught them. This anatomy of
the Joint Committee's procedural failures carries within it a
central lesson: any serious reform measure will encroach on so many
power bases and entrenched interests that the only hope of success
lies in bypassing existing committees and seeking votes on the
floor of the House and Senate.
Commitment to Reform
House: F Senate: F
Despite low and steadily sinking public regard for Congress (as
of August 1994, only 14 percent of the public generally trusts it
to do the right thing, down from 24 percent two years earlier
(Associated Press Poll taken August 26-30 by ICR Survey Research.))
coupled with broad public support for a wide-ranging spectrum of
proposed reforms, individual Members -- with a few exceptions --
have failed to take the initiative to reform Congress.
One problem is that Congressmen apparently are not even
discussing reform to any significant degree. Among the 5,400 "Dear
Colleague" letters -- internal communications among Members of
Congress -- sent between June 1993 and June 1994, congressional
reform was mentioned only 27 times, ranking 37th among 38 topics.
(Congressional Connection database service.) For every "Dear
Colleague" that dealt with the issue, there were over 26 that dealt
with health care and over 16 that dealt with crime. Even when
addressing constituents, Congressmen rarely mention reform. A
Heritage Foundation review of twenty Congressmen's mass mailings
found crime addressed 44 times, health care 40 times, and senior
citizens' and veterans' concerns a total of 26 times, while
congressional reform was mentioned in only 4 instances.
This inaction is startling, given the much-vaunted reform
orientation of the huge freshman class of 1992. Freshman members of
both parties released reform proposals early in 1993, but few
Members have been active since that time. Freshman Democrats were
sidetracked after Speaker Foley forced them to vote on a
wide-ranging package of anti-reformist rule changes immediately
after being sworn into office in January of 1993. Promising that
the reforms the freshmen proposed eventually would receive a vote,
Foley was able to secure 53 of 55 freshman Democrats' votes on the
rules package. The resulting reform package, however, was derived
heavily from leadership-supported proposals on campaign and
lobbying reform. The 27 freshman reform proposals were steered into
one, then another committee of the House Democratic Caucus, which
eventually reported five to the full caucus for further review. As
of this writing, not one of these proposals has been voted on by
the full House.
Freshman Republicans approved a package that contained hard-
hitting reforms like term limits, appropriations reform, franking
reductions, supermajority voting requirements for tax increases,
and a balanced budget amendment. As a class, however, GOP freshmen
have been surprisingly quiet, perhaps because of the oft-delayed
promise of action on a Joint Committee reform package. The
existence of the Joint Committee provided a convenient
justification for inaction by congressional leaders, who argued
frequently that since the committee was exploring some particular
reform, there was no need for action by the rest of Congress.
There were several notable exceptions to this general lack of
commitment, however. Representative Jim Inhofe (R-OK) led the 103rd
Congress's most successful crusade for reform: eliminating the
secrecy of the names on House discharge petitions. Although Inhofe
lacked relevant committee memberships, his willingness to fight
within the House as well as outside of it (he spent hours
discussing House rules on talk radio shows around the country)
eventually forced a lopsided 384-40 vote in favor of full
disclosure. This reform empowered rank-and-file Members, who -- if
they constituted a majority -- could now force a vote on
legislation despite a committee chairman's wish to block it. By
providing a way to bypass committees, discharge reform spurred
committee action. When Judiciary Committee Chairman Jack Brooks
(D-TX) saw that 185 of the necessary 218 Members had signed the
discharge petition for an aircraft liability reform bill (a bill he
had blocked for eight years), he allowed the legislation through
his committee. The measure received rapid approval and is now law.
It had enjoyed broad support for nearly a decade, but the discharge
petition had been the missing ingredient.
Representatives Robert Andrews (D-NJ) and Bill Zeliff (R-NH)
introduced the "A to Z Spending Cuts Plan" that would trigger a
special congressional session devoted to spending cuts. Over 200
Members signed the discharge petition for this measure; although
the A to Z plan was not considered, strong support for the petition
forced House leaders at least to advance weaker budget reform
proposals (see next section).
Other reformers were successful in drawing public attention to
abuses of congressional processes. Representatives David Dreier (R-
CA) and Jennifer Dunn (R-WA) were particularly persistent in trying
to secure House action (and then in publicizing House inaction) on
recommendations of the Joint Committee. Representative Mike Crapo
(R- ID) introduced "truth-in-voting" reforms that would make
individual Members more accountable for the legislative votes they
cast (see "Truth in Voting," below). In the Senate, Charles E.
Grassley (R-IA) has repeatedly attempted to force Congress to apply
to itself the same laws it passes for the rest of the country. He
and Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) currently are fighting for a
Senate vote on a measure that would apply numerous laws to
Congress, albeit under internal enforcement.
Despite the congressional leadership's furious resistance to
reform and its ability to punish recalcitrant reformers,
rank-and-file Members might have been more successful in promoting
change had more of them been strongly committed to that goal. For
the most part, that commitment was not apparent in the 103rd
Congress.
NOTE: The failing grade does not apply to a few reform achievers
like the Members mentioned above, who deserve special commendation
for their efforts.
Budget Reform
House: C Senate: F
Congress's track record on managing the federal budget is not
good. For too long, federal legislators have relied on disguised
spending increases, votes to cut spending that actually save no
money, and legislative gimmicks that circumvent Congress's own
spending caps. Although the House of Representatives did pass a few
tentative reforms, its efforts barely merit a passing grade,
especially since its votes were taken so late that it is nearly
certain the Senate will not pass companion measures.
The House took one healthy step, however: it passed legislation
that, if approved by the Senate, would stop hidden automatic annual
spending increases. These yearly "baseline" increases are
calculated by government economists, who estimate how much the
federal government will need next year to do everything it did the
previous year, adjusting for economic and demographic changes.
"Baseline budgeting" permits spending to grow at a remarkable rate;
the Medicare baseline, for example, typically increases over 12
percent annually. (See James K. Glassman, "A Bit of Creative
Accounting Makes the Budget a Fraud," The Washington Post, July 30,
1993, p. B1.) When legislators announce spending cuts, they use
these inflated baseline figures, making it possible for Congressmen
to claim credit for cutting spending while simultaneously
engineering large spending increases. Eliminating this fraudulent
practice has long been a goal of Representative Chris Cox (R-CA),
who made replacement of baseline budgeting the centerpiece of his
Budget Process Reform Act. This summer, the House passed H.R. 4604,
the Full Budget Disclosure Act sponsored by Representative John
Spratt (D-SC), which would base budgets on the previous year's
actual spending and force legislators to justify spending increases
rather than claim credit for phony spending cuts.
The House also passed another useful budget reform this
Congress: a measure to place tighter controls on emergency
spending. Because funding for emergencies is not subject to limits
which apply to regular appropriations, well-placed legislators
habitually add pork- barrel items to emergency appropriations. For
instance, the $6.2 billion requested by President Clinton last year
for California earthquake relief was transformed into $11 billion
by the time Congress finished adding such obviously non-disaster
items as funding for a New York train station and pay raises for
federal employees. The House-passed Emergency Spending Control Act,
if passed by the Senate, would make such budgetary sleight of hand
a thing of the past by requiring that non-emergency spending in an
emergency bill comply with overall spending caps.
Unfortunately, deceptive voting remains common. Two notable
reform procedures were blocked by House leaders despite broad
public and congressional support. The first was designed to solve
the problem of phony spending cuts. Although Members of Congress
routinely trumpet the amounts they cut from appropriations bills,
these funds are not used to reduce the deficit. Instead, they are
recycled by appropriations subcommittees into other programs. Over
$1.3 billion in cuts was diverted in this fashion during 1992
alone. The Deficit Reduction Lock Box Act, H.R. 4057, introduced by
Representatives Mike Crapo (R-ID) and Charles E. Schumer (D-NY),
would earmark individual appropriations cuts for deficit reduction
instead of allowing them to be recycled into further spending. The
Lock Box Act, one portion of Representative Crapo's program of
truth- in-voting reforms, currently has 151 cosponsors.
The A to Z Spending Cuts plan, cosponsored by Representatives
Robert Andrews (D-NJ) and Bill Zeliff (R-NH), would provide for a
special session for votes on whether to defund a wide array of
spending programs; successful spending cuts would be directed to
deficit reduction. The plan, which has 230 sponsors, nearly
achieved passage but fell 14 signatures short of the 218 needed for
a vote on the House floor. It was blocked by massive resistance
from congressional barons who oppose any limits on Congress's
spending power, but the vigorous efforts of A to Z proponents
forced the leadership to allow consideration of the mild budget
reforms discussed above. As Representative Gerald Solomon (R-NY)
characterized it, "Instead of A-to-Z real spending reforms, we are
going to have C-Y-A process reforms."
While useful, internal procedural reforms such as A to Z and the
Lock Box are less effective than constitutional reforms to limit
Congress's spending power. A balanced budget amendment to the
Constitution and a line-item veto that would permit the President
to strike wasteful federal spending from legislation provide the
best prospects for ridding the federal budget of its pro-spending
bias. (Republican House candidates will pledge on September 27 to
support votes on these two constitutional reforms, as well as other
reform issues, if they elect the leadership of the House in the
104th Congress.)
The Senate debated a balanced budget amendment but narrowly
failed to muster the two-thirds majority needed for passage. In the
House, even though 337 Members (far more than two-thirds) voted in
favor of some version of a balanced budget amendment, procedural
tricks used by the leadership ensured that no one version would
receive enough support to go forward. The House did pass a weakened
version of a line-item veto (the Enhanced Rescission Act) that
would permit the President to propose spending cuts, but those cuts
could be blocked by a majority in either the House or the Senate.
(A genuine line-item veto would require two-thirds of both houses
to override presidential cuts.) Senate Appropriations Committee
Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-WV), however, killed the measure in the
Senate. Some action on budget reform will be necessary for the
Senate to receive a passing grade.
Congressional Coverage
House: B Senate: F
Congress refuses to obey many of the laws it imposes on ordinary
Americans. Nearly a score of federal laws -- including the Civil
Rights Act, Americans With Disabilities Act, and Family and Medical
Leave Act -- either do not cover Congress at all or apply to
Congress differently than to the rest of the country. Congress's
habit of exempting itself from laws that burden citizens,
businesses, and state and local governments is fundamentally
undemocratic and makes legislators careless about the regulatory
and financial costs of legislation. Unlike private sector
employees, congressional employees who allege wrongdoing by their
employers face a slow, secretive, internal congressional process
fraught with possibilities for political interference. Appeal
rights are insufficient and jury trials nearly impossible.
Popular outrage at this double standard led to various
legislative proposals purporting to solve this problem. The most
popular, the Congressional Accountability Act, was sponsored by
Representatives Christopher Shays (R-CT) and Dick Swett (D-NH),
eventually garnering 250 cosponsors. When the Joint Committee on
the Organization of Congress split into House and Senate groups,
House members incorporated a watered-down version of the
Shays-Swett legislation in the reform bill they produced. Senate
leaders appointed a Bipartisan Task Force on Congressional Coverage
which -- instead of designing legislation -- issued a report
advocating half- measures. Nine months later, that report still has
not been publicly released.
In August of 1994, the House passed a somewhat improved version
of the Congressional Accountability Act. The Act gives aggrieved
congressional employees a choice between Congress's internal
hearing system (with an eventual right of appeal to federal
appellate court) or a lawsuit in federal district court with the
possibility of a jury trial. It also incorporates ten specified
employment-related laws and permits addition of other employment
statutes.
Although the Congressional Accountability Act is an important
step forward, significant weaknesses remain. Under the Act, a newly
created Office of Compliance would propose unique regulations for
Congress "that specify the manner in which the laws... shall
apply." (H. R. 4822, section 5 (c) (1) (A).) This means that
Congress still will not be following the same laws as the rest of
the country. Congress will write its own regulations, different
from those faced by the private sector, and it will judge for
itself whether those regulations are sufficient, even as the
private sector continues to face often hostile enforcement of
regulations over which it has little control. Furthermore, the
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was stripped from the bill when
it was considered in the House Administration Committee. As
Representative John Boehner (R-OH) has contended, the House Bank
and Post Office scandals might have been headed off if FOIA had
been applied to Congress. Applying FOIA to Congress also could
expose such other abuses of power as use of the congressional frank
to influence elections and improper special- interest
communications from Members to federal agencies. Finally, the
Congressional Accountability Act's application of the Occupational
Safety and Health Act (OSHA) to Congress lacks fines and allows
Congress to delay any necessary repairs for a year or more after a
violation is discovered. Private businesses ordinarily are not
granted years to cure a violation of federal health and safety law.
Unfortunately, Senate agreement to the Congressional Accountability
Act appears unlikely. The principal Senate objection is that the
new compliance office would have authority over both the House and
Senate; many Senators prefer separate House and Senate offices.
Even if the Act should become law, however, its cozy enforcement
regime and coverage loopholes leave much room for improvement.
Nonetheless, recognition that Congress must obey the laws it
imposes on other Americans makes the Congressional Accountability
Act one of the most important reforms to achieve any success in the
103rd Congress. Although the Act is flawed, its enactment would be
a significant step forward -- especially in establishing the
principle that Congress is not above the law.
Pay, Perks, and Staff
House: F Senate: F
Congress has become an "incumbent protection society" (The term
is Alan Ehrenhalt's; see The United States of Ambition (New York:
Random House, 1991), p. 230.) by using taxpayer-supplied public
funds for private political purposes. Weekend trips back to the
district are funded by one official account, staff who routinely
perform campaign-style work (for example, drumming up media
coverage) by another. Television and radio studios in congressional
office buildings are funded by taxpayers and used by officeholders
to compose and broadcast programs aired in their districts. Perhaps
most important, the congressional frank -- "free mail" sent to
constituents -- is worth roughly $160,000 per year for each Member
of Congress, an amount greater than the average House challenger's
entire campaign budget.
Congress works hard to protect its perquisites, including
Members' salaries -- which now exceed $133,000 a year. "Ethics
reform" legislation passed in 1989, for instance, provides for
yearly cost of living adjustments (COLAs) in congressional pay,
which means that each Member of Congress receives an annual pay
raise without ever having to vote on the question. Congress's
pension system is one of the most expansive in the country, roughly
twice as generous as any in a Fortune 500 corporation. Legislation
to repeal the COLA or otherwise reform congressional pay and
benefits languishes with little support. Representative John
Boehner (R-OH) has brought suit against the COLA procedure, arguing
that it violates the 27th Amendment's stricture against
congressional pay raises without an intervening election; so far,
his efforts have been unsuccessful. For the most part, other
congressional "perks" remained untouched this session as well.
As of mid-September, Representative Jim Lightfoot (R-IA) was
attempting to force a vote eliminating the COLA scheduled for
December 1994. Lightfoot's commendable effort would fix the problem
for one year only, however, since his amendment would be attached
to an appropriation measure.
The number of congressional employees -- long a subject of
public ire -- did see some small improvement. Congress employs an
army of aides, now numbering over 27,000, (Norman Ornstein, Thomas
Mann, and Michael Malbin, eds. ,Vital Statistics on Congress
1993-1994 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1993), table
5-1, p. 127. Hereafter referred to as VSOC.) and its staff is by
far the largest of any legislature in the world. (VSOC, p. 121.) In
the last thirty years, operating costs have ballooned by 800
percent. (VSOC, p. 124.) With critics arguing that huge
congressional staffs lead to inefficient and intrusive government,
the House of Representatives has promised to reduce its staff by 4
percent. Its first round of staff cuts, however, relied heavily on
eliminating peripheral positions, such as interns and
administrative staff (for example, those who distribute office
furniture and supplies). In an especially cynical move,
Representative Charlie Rose (D-NC), Chairman of the House
Administration Committee, transferred control over congressional
food services employees to private contractors while ensuring that
the services and employees would remain -- leaving the same number
of employees on Capitol Hill, but reducing the official payroll.
While non-legislative staff shouldered the vast majority of
cosmetic reductions, highly paid personal and committee aides who
function as shadow Congressmen escaped nearly unscathed.
The enormous subsidies for congressional mail, which increase
the federal budget and tilt federal elections in favor of
incumbents, also remained essentially unchanged. Lawmakers should
answer constituent queries, but over nine-tenths of franking costs
derive from mass mailings initiated by Congressmen, not from
responses to constituents. (Senator Pete Wilson, "The Congressional
Frank: A Simple Case of Abuse," Heritage Lecture No. 221, September
29, 1989, p. 1.) Although previous Congresses have cut franking
accounts and required disclosure of Members' total expenditures,
such reforms as limiting the mention of the sender's name to eight
per page and capping his pictures at two per page only raise
questions about what prior abuses had occurred. Republicans have
pressed repeatedly for further reform of franking, but Rose has
refused to hold any committee meetings on the subject this election
year. The political uses of the frank were illustrated during the
tumultuous 1992 elections, when three of the four heaviest House
users of the frank lost their reelection bids. On average, the four
sent out over a million mass-mailed letters apiece. ("Use of
Franking Privilege," The Washington Post, October 22, 1992, p.
A29.) Although these mailings failed to save them, they demonstrate
that those in greatest political peril often use the frank the
most.
One change symbolizes the whole of congressional reform this
session. Congress has come under fire for reserving select parking
for Members at Washington airports. Shortly after a Senate vote
narrowly rejecting a proposal to eliminate the special parking
arrangement, signs acknowledging that the spaces were reserved for
Congressmen were mysteriously altered to read "Restricted Parking:
Authorized Users Only." Although one can argue that Members need
special airport parking spaces because of frequent travel, cosmetic
changes that attempt to divert attention from Congressmen's special
status without changing the situation are especially cynical.
The solution to these problems is as easy to understand
intellectually as it is difficult to implement politically: further
regulate or eliminate congressional "perks" susceptible to
electoral abuse. If Congressmen want a pay raise, make them vote on
it. If they need a broadcast studio to communicate with their
districts, make them find one in the private sector. If they want
to send what amounts to political mailings to voters in their
districts, make them pay for it out of campaign funds; abolition of
these unsolicited mailings by members of the House alone would help
level the playing field for challengers and save taxpayers roughly
$58 million every congressional session. (Estimate from National
Taxpayer's Union news release, April 4, 1994.) A rule that Members
of Congress could respond to, but not initiate, constituent
correspondence would do more for campaign reform than any measure
currently being debated in Congress. Finally, real cuts -- on the
order of 25 percent -- from committee and personal staff are
essential for congressional reform. (The House Republican pledge
discussed in note 5 above also includes a commitment to reduce
committee staff by a third.)
Campaign Finance Reform
House: F Senate: F
In 1992 -- a year noted for anti-incumbent sentiment -- over 88
percent of incumbents running for reelection to the House or Senate
were victorious. (In the previous decade, the average reelection
rate among House incumbents was over 95 percent. (VSOC, tables 2-7
and 2-8, pp. 58-59.)) Incumbent dominance of congressional
elections was acknowledged by President Clinton, who claimed that
his campaign finance plan "levels the playing field between
challengers and incumbents and pays for it by taxing lobbyists and
not the American people." ("Statement by the President... on
Finance Reform," Office of the Press Secretary, May 7, 1993, p. 2.)
The President's plan and similar congressional proposals (H.R. 3
and S. 3), however, fail to meet this standard. On the central test
of campaign finance reform -- giving challengers a fair chance --
these proposals flunk.
Instead of leveling the electoral playing field, campaign
finance reform legislation passed by the House and Senate (though
not in final form) would enhance incumbents' already formidable
advantages, many of which are funded by the American taxpayer.
These advantages snowball when it comes to campaign contributions,
because donors prefer to give to likely winners. Special interest
group political action committee (PAC) donations to incumbents
especially outpace those to challengers, and the House-passed
version of campaign finance reform would heighten this advantage by
prohibiting challengers from offsetting their lack of PAC
contributions with large donations from individuals. Because the
House scheme limits the number of donations greater than $200 that
a campaign can accept, challengers in effect would be forced to
scramble for funds in $200 increments to match the showers of
$5,000 PAC gifts that go to incumbents.
Most of the taxpayer-funded advantages enjoyed by incumbents
(see "Pay, Perks, and Staff" above) are ignored by the campaign
finance reform bills. There is a ban on election-year mass mailings
in the Senate bill, for example, but this probably will be
eliminated if the bill goes to conference. Instead, these bills
limit the amounts that congressional candidates can spend. Since
these spending caps are equal for challengers and incumbents ,
however, they add even more to incumbents' built-in advantage. Two
decades ago, the Supreme Court declared that spending limits are an
unconstitutional limit on First Amendment freedoms; (Buckley v.
Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976).) that is why the bills call their limits
"voluntary." But candidates who exceed those limits are penalized
harshly by such measures as punitive taxation and awards of
hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal subsidies to opponents.
Since incumbents 'advantages make their effective spending limits
far higher than those of challengers, this penalty amounts to an
ingeniously pro-incumbent ploy. Incumbents will not have to exceed
the limit -- challengers will.
Challengers who try to avoid the problem by running cheaper
campaigns will be effectively disarmed, because it takes a
substantial amount of spending just to reach parity with
incumbents' taxpayer- funded privileges, to say nothing of their
natural advantages in media access and name recognition. $600,000,
the proposed spending limit for House candidates, is set just where
challengers start to become dangerous. While a quarter of House
challengers who spent between $400,000 and $600,000 were victorious
in the 1992 general elections, over half of the those who spent
over $600,000 won their races. Spending limits will shackle
challengers by blocking them from reaching effective spending
parity with incumbents, who can tap public resources for private
political purposes.
The dangers of the campaign reform plans do not stop with their
profoundly anti-competitive, challenger-stifling provisions. They
also include direct attacks on free speech and citizen
participation in elections. President Clinton, for instance,
proposed to pay for his plan's public campaign financing by taxing
corporations for the exercise of their First Amendment rights to
petition the government. The Senate bill attempts to conceal its
public funding by forcing candidates who do not abide by spending
limits to pay punitive taxes -- for exercising their First
Amendment rights -- at the top corporate rate of 34 percent on all
campaign receipts, with the proceeds being funneled to those who
obey the spending limits.
This double-barreled attack on freedom of speech is only the tip
of the iceberg. Robert Peck of the American Civil Liberties Union
has argued that there are at least a dozen unconstitutional
provisions in the House bill that stifle political expression. For
instance, it regulates political expression so broadly that a
citizen who wished to buy a sign supporting or opposing a political
candidate could become ineligible to do so by requesting a copy of
the candidate's platform. ("The Devil in Campaign Finance Reform,"
speech given at the Conference on Campaign Finance, American
University Law School, February 10, 1994.) The Senate bill also
restricts free speech. An amendment offered by Democratic Senator
Robert Graham of Florida, for example, would require anyone who
sends out a "communication to the general public" about a
congressional candidate to file copies with the state and federal
governments. Graham's amendment is drafted so carelessly that fines
could be levied for a letter to the editor of a newspaper, for a
union mailing, or even for a holiday newsletter to family and
friends which comments on a political candidate.
In short, the regulation of campaigns envisioned in these bills
is intended not to enhance political discourse, but to restrict
political activity to the advantage of incumbents while doing
nothing about the handicaps facing challengers. This is precisely
the opposite of what real campaign reform should accomplish. The
only redeeming value of these competing campaign reform packages is
that, because the House and Senate cannot agree on their details,
they appear unlikely to pass.
Committee Reform
House: F Senate: F
In 1947, Congress had 38 committees and subcommittees; today,
there are 266. Over the last two decades alone, committee staffs in
the House of Representatives have grown by 158 percent. The growth
of committees and their attendant staffs insulates Congressmen from
policy choices and hinders the legislative process by ensuring that
important legislation, because it will have to pass through more
committees, will be subjected to more special-interest group
influence. Although committee reform was one of the major announced
goals of the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, that
panel ultimately proposed only minor tinkering with the committee
system.
The House did make some minor progress in downsizing committees.
In early 1993, it eliminated fifteen subcommittees and four select
committees. The latter were obvious targets for elimination because
they lacked the power to craft legislation -- the central reason
committees exist. But real committee reform remains unexplored.
Committees function too frequently as legislative roadblocks,
especially when the tenure of their committee chairmen -- who have
the power to set the agenda -- is measured less easily in years
than in decades. Over 90 percent of House committees, for instance,
are chaired by Members who have served at least ten terms in
office. Among the popular measures perennially bottled up by
hostile committee chairmen are the balanced budget amendment, the
line-item veto, term limits, and product liability reform. While
House Republicans have adopted a rule to limit the tenure of their
top committee members, House Democrats -- who control the
committees -- have refused to adopt a similar measure. The majority
party's refusal to enact rules that would ensure turnover ensures
that most chairmen will continue to have little experience in
public life outside of government work.
Because committee members typically will be willing to put more
energy into defending their committees than other legislators will
devote to abolishing them, the likelihood of collective decision-
making to eliminate more committees is minimal. Furthermore, the
experience of the Joint Committee suggests that the chairmen of all
endangered committees, recognizing their common interest in the
status quo, will join to block any serious committee reform. The
most promising route to committee reduction is to reduce the number
of each Members' committee memberships. When Members are given
seats on too many committees, their legislative participation
typically is confined to frantic journeys between different
committee hearings where, in an attempt to sound informed, they
read questions to witnesses written by their staffs. House Members
should be limited to memberships on two major committees and four
subcommittees thereof; panels whose memberships drop by half
because of these restrictions should be eliminated. Senators should
be limited to membership on three committees along the same lines
with legislators' preferences thus determining what committees
would be eliminated.
Not only does an excess of committees and committee memberships
harm deliberation, it also leads to proxy voting, a practice in
which one Member casts votes for another. Although the Rules of the
House and Senate prohibit one Member of Congress from casting
another's vote on the floor, no such prohibition applies in
committees, where proxy voting is a frequent practice. In the first
year of the 103rd Congress, for instance, proxies were used in
every legislative vote in such important House committees as Energy
and Commerce, Judiciary, and Public Works and Transportation. Proxy
voting encourages members to vote on legislation without ever
hearing arguments for or against it and makes a mockery of
representative government.
Finally, committees that handle public business often prevent
public access. Legislative committees that handle the nation's
business routinely close their doors to observers by majority vote.
Although confidentiality is defensible in cases involving such
sensitive matters as national security, such subjects are rarely
the reason committee meetings are closed. The two House committees
that close their doors most frequently are Ways and Means and
Appropriations, both of which must make politically controversial
choices about federal taxation and spending.
The attempt to establish an open-meeting rule in the Joint
Committee's reform bill failed on a party-line vote. Although there
was some provision for weakening the force of proxy votes in the
Senate version of the bill, that bill's demise suggests that no
such reform will take place. In short, opportunities for reductions
in size and membership, elimination of proxy voting, and
establishment of an open meeting rule for committees were
ignored.
Nonpartisan House Administration
House: F Senate: N/A
Scandals in the House Bank and Post Office were significant
catalysts for congressional reform. In the wake of federal
indictments related to drug dealing in the House Post Office,
Majority Whip Richard A. Gephardt (D-MO) conceded that the House of
Representatives' administrative functions had been penetrated with
"abuses and management inefficiencies," (Congressional Record,
April 9, 1992, p. H-2547.)and pledged to fix these problems by --
among other steps -- creating a new congressional office with
an nonpartisan Director of Nonlegislative and Financial
Services, subject to bipartisan oversight. Gephardt promised that
patronage employees in the House restaurant and computer operations
would vanish once responsibility for them was transferred to
the nonpartisan administrator and the bipartisan oversight
structure. The political patronage system has produced incompetent
but unfireable employees and allowed partisan abuse of public
resources, including distribution of sensitive information in a
partisan fashion, running political errands on public time (such as
picking up campaign contributions), and using congressional
equipment for political campaign mailings. Implicit in promises of
reform was the idea that the opportunities for massive patronage
and corruption that this army of aides represented would vanish
under nonpartisan administration.
Over two years after these reforms, however, the patronage
system remains fundamentally unreformed. The problem lies with an
oversight subcommittee which must ratify decisions of
the nonpartisan administrator for him to act. Though the
subcommittee has equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats, any
deadlock has the effect of granting decision-making powers to the
congressional leadership. If the Chairman of House Administration
dislikes any subcommittee outcome, he can simply raise the issue in
the full committee, which routinely defers to its Chairman:
Representative Charlie Rose, who can -- and often does -- veto any
change that threatens the majority party's political preferences.
The first Director, Leonard P. Wishart, attempted to fulfill the
office's duties but was repeatedly rebuffed.
After responsibility for employees in charge of office equipment
and supply was transferred to Wishart, he reviewed payrolls and
found that two employees who had been hired under the patronage
system were being paid inflated salaries for the work they were
doing. In order to make their salaries commensurate with their
duties, Wishart submitted suggested salary changes. Rose refused to
approve the changes.
Rose bypassed the Director by introducing a resolution in his
committee to contract out the House Restaurant System, despite the
fact that the restaurant system had been under the Director's
authority for nearly a year.
Rose refused to cede control over House Information Systems
(HIS) -- the House's internal computer operations -- even though
the legislation that created the Office of the Director mandated
that HIS would be transferred to the nonpartisan office.
Apparently, the patronage possibilities were simply too tempting to
ignore. As of July 1993, HIS had 277 employees drawing an average
yearly salary of $48,400, which is sharply higher than the average
House employee's paycheck. A party-line deadlock in the oversight
subcommittee continues to block HIS transfer.
Wishart resigned abruptly in early 1994, suggesting in his
letter of resignation that some Members were attempting to undercut
serious moves toward neutral congressional administration. His
interim replacement, Randall Medlock, apparently sees himself as a
partisan functionary not subject to bipartisan oversight. He has
refused to provide information on franking costs to House
Republicans, for instance, explaining that Rose had ordered him to
keep the data confidential. More recently, Medlock extended a food
service contract for a House cafeteria without obtaining the
required subcommittee approval. In stark contrast to the elaborate
bidding process required for federal contract rewards -- which was
followed when the House contracted out the rest of its $9.3 million
in food service business earlier this year -- the
million-dollar-a-year contract was extended to the Skenteris family
of North Carolina for an additional five years without competitive
bidding. The contract originally had been awarded in 1993 by Rose
to his former constituents without competitive bidding. (Alice A.
Love, "Republicans Blast Renewed Contract for Ford Cafeteria," Roll
Call, September 14, 1994, p. 14.)
Abusively partisan administration of the House will not be
eliminated without pressure by an informed public, and
congressional leaders make it difficult or impossible to find out
how they manage their internal affairs. For instance, the Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA), which applies to much of the federal
government, excludes Congress. Both the principle that Congress
should be subject to the laws it writes for everyone else and the
public's right to know demand that Congress comply with FOIA.
Knowing in advance that its internal operations would be subject to
outside scrutiny would encourage Congress to conduct its affairs
with probity.
Partisan abuse of staff will continue as long as the underlying
problem remains unsolved. The House needs to do what it promised:
hire a professional administrator who is not turned into a pawn in
a continuing effort to maintain partisan advantage. That
administrator must have as his central priority the
professionalization of administrative tasks -- especially including
House Information Services -- and be under the direction of the
bipartisan oversight committee, not a partisan committee chairman.
A deadlock in the oversight subcommittee should lead to a vote on
the floor for difficult cases, replacing unilateral action by the
House Administration Committee. This would force partisan disputes
to be debated openly. Until the commitment to nonpartisan
administration under bipartisan oversight is honored, reforms
remain cosmetic and the Director remains an arm of the
congressional leadership.
The House and Senate both have refused to open their internal
operations and finances to the public through the Freedom of
Information Act, and the House has taken a step backward from
reform by refusing to implement its promise of nonpartisan
administration. These policies are scandalous and are likely to
breed even more scandals.
Truth in Voting
House: F Senate: N/A
When constituents judge the job performance of Congressmen,
voting records are a central factor. But Members of Congress, well
aware that their political support can stand or fall with the votes
they cast, have rigged the system to avoid accountability for the
choices they make. In some cases, they make decisions without ever
voting on them. In others, they use procedures that make their
votes deceptive or meaningless.
A favorite tactic of the congressional leadership is to
manipulate the rules by which the House of Representatives conducts
its legislative business. While the rules of the House are
generally fair, they are routinely ignored and can be waived at any
time by a bare majority vote. A special rule for each piece of
major legislation is crafted in the Rules Committee and then
ratified by the full House. More often than not, these special
rules prevent pertinent amendments from being considered, making it
possible for legislators to claim they favor popular policies while
lamenting the lack of opportunity to vote on them. For the last six
years, a majority of special rules have limited amendment
opportunities, and the problem continues to grow: the percentage of
restrictive rules mushroomed from 15 percent in the 95th Congress
(1977-1978) to nearly three-quarters of all legislation in this
Congress. (Congressional Record, August 10, 1992, p. H-7330.)
An even greater abuse of the legislative process is the
leadership's practice of producing legislation and then forcing
votes almost immediately, so that legislators do not have a chance
to read a bill before voting on it. Although House Rules require
that legislation be available to Members three days before a vote,
this rule is often waived. Copies of the 3,000-page, $496 billion
tax increase that Congress passed in 1993 were available to Members
for roughly twelve hours; any Congressman who wanted to read the
bill would have had to scan 250 pages per hour, making decisions at
the rate of nearly $700 million per minute. More recently, the
crime bill's revised conference report was passed under a rules
waiver only a few hours after it was put together, and the text was
unavailable to most Members until the day after House passage.
Another procedural trick creates opportunities for Congressmen
to vote for popular measures without actually advancing them in the
legislative process. Under a "king-of-the-hill" rule, Members can
vote on a long string of competing legislative proposals, but only
the last one to receive a majority vote becomes law. When a
balanced budget amendment was considered under a king-of-the-hill
rule in the House, many more than the required two-thirds voted for
the amendment, but it ultimately failed to pass. The rule permitted
Members to divide their votes among four different proposals,
ensuring that any Member who wanted to take credit for a balanced
budget vote could do so without any risk that the House would pass
the measure. A recent king-of-the-hill vote on the crime bill
permitted Members to vote in favor of narrowing appeal rights for
death row inmates and then, moments later, to vote in favor of
expanding them. The legislative significance of such contradictory
procedures is dwarfed by their electoral importance, as legislators
can compile a voting record suitable for nearly any audience.
Just as some procedures enable Members to vote without
legislative consequences, others allow them to take real action
without votes. For example, House Members have rigged the budget
process so that they now no longer have to cast a vote on raising
the debt limit if the overall federal budget is out of balance.
Instead, a procedural vote on the budget is deemed to have
legislative significance. Last year, a similar procedure was used
to enact new deficit targets for future years without an actual
vote. Whatever one thinks of the wisdom of such choices, the
procedure used to make them (or, more precisely, to avoid making
them) cheats representative democracy.
Representative Mike Crapo (R-ID) has introduced truth-in-voting
legislation that would abolish several of these deceptive
procedures; although the bill has 83 cosponsors, the House so far
has declined to act on it. (For a more extensive discussion of
truth in voting, see Dan Greenberg, "It's Time for Truth in
Voting," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 977, February 23,
1994.)
The House needs a five-day waiting period before voting on
legislation, which would create more time for analysis and
improvement; a two-thirds requirement to waive House rules, which
would dampen the current trend towards their subversion; and
elimination of such deceptive voting procedures as the automatic
debt limit hike and the king-of-the-hill rule. Although some
Members doubtless have an interest in keeping the legislative
process as rapid and secret as possible, this is not an interest
that should be respected.
One of the few successful reforms in this Congress was
Representative Jim Inhofe's (R-OK) success in eliminating the
secrecy of the signatures on House discharge petitions (as
discussed in "Commitment to Reform," earlier in the paper).
Disclosing the signatures on these petitions reveals which Members
of Congress actually support up-or-down votes on legislation that
House leaders wish to sidetrack. Because this reform changed House
Rules and will lead to more votes on controversial questions,
Congress's performance on truth-in-voting reforms merits a barely
passing grade.
Term Limits
House: F Senate: F
The changes in the legislative process, congressional perks, and
internal administration discussed above are attempts to solve
Congress's central problem: abuse of power. For too long,
incumbents have been able to conceal the policy choices they make
through deceptive voting and accounting procedures and cement their
reelection by using taxpayer-funded perks. Congressional reform
must be crafted and passed by Congress, and incumbents' experience
permits them to design legislation which evades -- or, in some
cases, contradicts -- its stated goals. (See the discussion of
congressional coverage and campaign finance reform above.) Term
limits, the best prospect for real congressional reform, come from
outside of Congress; across the country, strong public support for
term limits (74 percent in one recent poll (Americans Talk Issues
poll, January 1994.)) is counterbalanced only by furious resistance
from elected officials.
Term limits are the best solution to many of Congress's larger
problems. Limiting the terms of federal legislators would change
the composition of Congress by attracting candidates with
demonstrated expertise in something besides politics. Limits would
change legislators' incentives: citizen-legislators would serve
briefly, focus their energies on solving a few discrete problems,
and go home. They also would ensure congressional turnover and
mandate nonpartisan representation that better reflects the
sentiments of the electorate. Ever-present concerns about
reelection would be removed from Congress by the
deprofessionalization that term limits would bring to American
politics.
Despite strong public support for limiting congressional terms,
Congress has refused to act. Term limits have passed overwhelmingly
in every state that permitted its voters a choice, but the House
Judiciary Committee has held only two inconclusive hearings on term
limits -- two more than were held in the Senate, where limits came
up for a vote only once; a proposed amendment to the campaign
finance reform bill, which would have limited candidates who
accepted public campaign funds to two terms, failed 39-57.
Generally, legislators prefer to fight term limits in private,
through litigation and by delaying votes on term limit proposals.
The Senate, for example, voted in 1993 to authorize its legal
counsel to argue against term limits in an Arkansas case that
questioned their constitutionality -- a case currently before the
Supreme Court. Such use of public resources for political purposes
is especially galling when it flies in the face of the unambiguous
majority of the voters. Speaker Foley has blocked a House vote on
term limits until their constitutionality is "decided by the
courts." ("This Week with David Brinkley," November 8, 1992, ABC
transcript.) The Speaker's constitutional scruples do not apply
universally, however; he championed campaign finance reform
legislation in the 103rd Congress despite significant questions
about its encroachment on First Amendment rights. Congress
frequently has approved constitutionally disputable legislation
with special provisions for expedited judicial review. Furthermore,
Foley is by no means a neutral party in this case, having sued the
voters of his own state in an effort to overturn their 1992 vote in
favor of term limits.
There are defenders of term limits in Congress, where over 100
House Members have signed a discharge petition that would wrest
control over term limits legislation from the Judiciary Committee.
That committee is controlled by Texan Jack Brooks, a Member of
Congress since the Truman Administration who is currently running
for a 22nd term. The elimination of senior committee Members' power
to bottle up for decades any ideas they oppose will be one of the
most salutary effects of congressional term limits. House
Republicans already have imposed term limits on their top committee
members through an internal party caucus rule. (The House
Republican pledge discussed in note 5 above also includes a
commitment for a floor vote on term limits.)
Congress should allow a vote on, and approve, an amendment to
the Constitution that establishes term limits. This vote should be
free of the procedural roadblocks that characterized the deceptive
voting procedures used by the House earlier this session to foil
the balanced budget amendment. Until Congress takes action, it
deserves opprobrium for ignoring the most significant political
mass movement the United States has seen for decades. (For a more
extensive discussion of term limits, see Dan Greenberg, "Term
Limits: The Only Way to Clean Up Congress," Heritage Foundation
Backgrounder No. 994, August 10, 1994.)
Conclusion
Students who fail their coursework are forced to repeat a grade.
Ideally, incumbents who fail at their assignments should face an
even harsher punishment: removal from office. The 103rd Congress,
swept into office by promises of reform made to the American
people, has failed to deliver on a broad array of measures. The
104th Congress, which will be elected this fall, in the next two
years should:
Create a legislative process which permits up-or-down votes on
important reforms;
Eliminate misleading budget procedures;
Fully apply all relevant federal laws to itself;
Eliminate congressional perks that are used to influence
elections;
Pass campaign finance reform that gives a fair chance to
challengers;
Rationalize the ineffective committee system by limiting
memberships;
Eliminate party politics from internal congressional
administration;
Pass truth-in-voting reforms to eliminate deceptive voting
practices; and
Limit congressional terms.
Individual Members of Congress should make such reforms their
top legislative priority. Continued inaction will contribute to
further decline in public approval for -- and public legitimacy of
-- Congress. The 103rd Congress gets poor marks on its reform
record, especially considering its tremendous initial promise. But
like every recipient of a poor report card, Congress can learn from
it that there is tremendous room for improvement.