Congress: Legislative Effectiveness Exam 2

• The chapter discusses the legislative effectiveness of Congress and its members in governing, policy making, and the budget.
• It aims to evaluate Congress's governing responsibility from a macro level and explore the effectiveness of individual senators and representatives in lawmaking and constituent representation.

Institutional Effectiveness

• Institutional effectiveness is based on lawmaking, oversight (Chapter 4), and constituent service (Chapter 10).
• Congress must perform activities to keep the government operating and meet its fiscal and statutory obligations.
• These activities include authorizations, annual budgets and appropriations, monitoring the federal debt, and enacting major legislation.

Authorizations

• Authorizations involve establishing or renewing federal programs, agencies, policies, and adjusting the purpose or mission of an existing program or agency.
• Appropriations legislation specifies the exact funding level of previously authorized programs and agencies.
• Appropriations grant agencies the authority to incur obligations and make payments of the federal treasury.
• Authorizations can be short-term or permanent, and their expiration date typically means an end to funding.

Budget and Appropriations Process

• Elements of the budget process include authorizing legislation, budget resolution, and appropriations legislation.
• A concurrent budget resolution does not require the president's signature and serves as a target cap on overall spending.
• The budget resolution doesn't always pass, and there's no real consequence for the budget being late
• Appropriations acts must be passed annually to fund federal departments, agencies, and government activities.
• Most of the budget is mandatory, including the national debt, contractual obligations, and entitlement spending.
• Appropriations are outlined in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution.
• The House of Representatives has the constitutional authority to originate revenue bills and subcommittees consider appropriations bills.
• Individual appropriations bills are reported to the full Appropriations Committees, considered on the House and Senate Floors, and debated and adopted by the respective chambers.
• House and Senate conference committees reconcile differences, with members drawn from the Appropriations committees.

Congress’s Responsiveness

• Ways to examine Congress's responsiveness to the needs of society include the time members of Congress put into lawmaking, total bills enacted, and lawmakers' responsiveness to citizens.
• Congress’s time spent lawmaking can be measured in Days in session
• Mayhew's research examined whether divided government experiences fewer landmark enactments than unified government.

Individual Effectiveness

• Measures of individual effectiveness include bill sponsorship count in each term and the proportion of bills introduced that are enacted.
• Inherent and acquired traits of lawmakers that lead to legislative success include being a member of the majority party, ideology, tenure, specialization, committee leadership, number of staff, and natural ability.
• Senate is more responsive to the policy proposals of ideologically moderate lawmakers.
• Natural ability includes networking, hustle, hard work, luck, and the ability to read the political winds.