Chapter 6: Congress - The Logic of American Politics PDF

6 Congress KEY QUESTIONS CHAPTER OBJECTIVES Why do members of the House and Senate follow complex, 6.1 Describe the requirements and arcane rules and precedents in processing legislation even po...

6 Congress KEY QUESTIONS CHAPTER OBJECTIVES Why do members of the House and Senate follow complex, 6.1 Describe the requirements and arcane rules and precedents in processing legislation even powers of Congress and how when such devices keep majorities from getting their way? the congressional electoral system works. Congressional incumbents rarely lose elections. Why, then, are they obsessed with the electoral implications of nearly 6.2 Identify the factors that create everything they do? advantages and disadvantages in congressional electoral Why have the House and Senate become so much more politics. polarized along partisan and ideological lines over the past several decades? 6.3 Discuss the racial and ethnic makeup of Congress, and Why have congressional party leaders grown more powerful discuss whether this mirrors and committees less powerful over the same period? the electorate. 6.4 Explain six basic problems of legislative organization. On December 18, 2019, history had its eyes on the U.S. House of Representatives as its members lined up almost perfectly 6.5 Relate the institutional along party lines to impeach President Donald J. Trump, only structures in the House and Senate that help members the third time that Congress had taken this dramatic step. overcome barriers to collective Throughout that fall, the impeachment inquiry had roiled the action. House and the nation. Democrats investigated allegations that 6.6 Describe the lawmaking the president and his top aides pressured Ukraine and illegally process and how it operates withheld military aide to our ally to push its president to produce under “regular order.” damaging information that Trump could use against Joe Biden in 6.7 Understand how the the 2020 campaign. In November, the gripping hearings held by public views Congress and the House Intelligence Committee were watched by more than 10 develop your own view of its million viewers a day, making celebrities—or villains, depending performance. on the viewer’s perspective—of the witnesses from the Trump administration who provided evidence against the president. On the day of the final vote, Democratic representative Adam Schiff, who led the inquiry, warned that not only had the president abused his power in the past but that “the president and his men plot on. The danger persists. The risk is real. Our democracy is at peril.” For his part, the president tweeted 231 232 Part II: The Institutions of Government back “THIS IS AN ASSAULT ON AMERICA, AND AN ASSAULT ON THE REPUBLICAN PARTY!!!!” This was blockbuster politics playing out in full public view, culminating in a historic impeachment vote that was shaped by intense partisan polarization and sent the two branches of government into the collision course of an impeach trial during an election year.1 The next day, December 19, 2019, was a far less dramatic one in Congress but A joyful House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Ways and Means Chair Richard arguably no less historic. With their Neal speak at a news conference about the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement trade deal at a December 2019 news conference. leading parts in the impeachment Mark Wilson/Getty Images drama behind them, members of the House moved back to the legislative process that characterizes their typical, though far less thrilling, work. Lawmakers seemed to switch into different roles, with their rhetoric more subdued and their positions no longer dictated by their party affiliations. Yet the issue they took up on the day after impeachment was arguably weightier, landing Congress on the front page of newspapers yet again—the passage of a new North American trade deal that brought partial fulfillment of one of President Trump’s key campaign promises. The United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement, or USMCA, replaced the NAFTA free trade deal that for the past twenty-six years had reduced tariffs, increased the flow of goods, and shaped the flow of jobs across the continent. The new deal replaced free trade with managed trade, marking a significant shift in how the United States positioned itself in the world and promising potential payoffs to manufacturing in America. Still, this was a tempered approach that won support in all three nations because it did not lurch too far too quickly and in both American parties because it was not fought out in televised hearings or over Twitter. Democrats were able to secure the labor and environmental protections they sought, while the president and the more populist Republicans allied with him on trade were able to create export quotas designed to protect domestic factories and farms. According to one observer, “On the whole, USMCA is not the kind of sweeping, game-changing deal that Trump often boasted he would produce. Indeed, it was quietly negotiated over many months by just the kind of professional economists and diplomats that the president often scorns.”2 Its passage by a 385–41 margin in the House—with both President Trump and House  Chapter 6: Congress 233 Speaker Nancy Pelosi claiming credit for the deal—was stunning in juxtaposition to the impeachment vote that had occurred just the day before. What do these events begin to tell us about the contemporary Congress? These paired episodes reveal how differently Congress can operate, depending on the political circumstances and the policy disputes at play, even within the same forty-eight- hour period. To paraphrase Dickens, it was the most polarized of times, it was the least polarized of times, with a day of very public rancor followed by a day of private dealmaking in this tale of two Congresses. On impeachment, only two Democrats voted against Article I, which charged President Trump with abuse of power and passed by a 230–197 margin, with a third Democrat joining them to cross party lines and oppose Article II, obstruction of Congress. One of those Democrats, freshman Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, announced that he would switch parties to become a Republican. For their part, Republicans lined up steadfastly behind their president to oppose impeachment, with Justin Amash, the Michigan lawmaker who supported impeachment, switching from being a Republican to an independent. Partisan divisions were so strong on this vote, then, that two representatives changed parties rather than stay on the wrong side of the line. By contrast, large majorities of both parties came together to support the USMCA trade deal, with only thirty-eight Democrats, two Republicans, and independent representative Amash opposing it. While trade policy had often brought divisions within each party, lawmakers from both parties representing swing districts all felt strong electoral pressure to deliver some progress on the issue. The trade deal, a political compromise supported by labor as well as business groups, was the perfect way for representatives to demonstrate that they could respond to public demands for policy movement. But there could be no compromise over impeachment; this was an issue that, by its nature, posed an all-or-nothing choice. And with voters polarizing over impeachment, representatives who wanted to honor the electoral connection were generally pushed to vote the party line. As this chapter shows, the congressional parties have become highly polarized in recent decades. Democratic members now routinely line up on the left side of political issues in Congress, and Republican legislators are consistently on the right-hand side of the spectrum. On controversial, high-profile issues such as impeachment, this leads to prominent party line votes, but the everyday work of Congress more often finds issues of consensus that closely resemble the trade deal. No matter what the issue, electoral politics influences almost everything members of Congress do, collectively and individually. On both impeachment and trade, legislators heard from their constituents and sought to cast a vote that they could defend in their run for reelection. Another common theme in the two episodes was the prominent role played by President Trump. When Congress takes up issues that are vital to the chief executive’s interests, the president will always feature, either in the foreground or the 234 Part II: The Institutions of Government background, in negotiations and final votes. The election of President Biden in 2020 will greatly impact how Congress operates in the next session. This chapter explores these themes while explaining how and why the House and Senate operate as they do. It also looks at how these institutions have evolved in response to the changing motives and opportunities, personal and political, of the politicians elected to them. Any such discussion must be prefaced, however, by a review of the constitutional design of Congress and the extensive powers granted it by the Framers. Congress in the Constitution The basic structure of Congress is the product of the Great Compromise at the Constitutional Convention, described in Chapter 2. Balancing the demands of the large states for national representation against those of the small states for protection of states’ rights, the Framers established in the Constitution a House of Representatives, with seats allocated by population and members elected by the citizenry, and a Senate composed of two members from each state chosen by the state legislature. Bicameralism (two houses) also resolved another dispute. Delegates to the convention disagreed about the appropriate degree of popular influence on government. Using the bicameral structure, they were able to devise a mixed solution. Representatives would be “popularly” chosen in biennial elec- tions held in even-numbered years. Broad suffrage—the qualification for voting was to be the same as for the “most numerous Branch of the State Legislature” (Article I, Section 2)— and short tenure were intended to keep the House as close as possible to the people. The Senate, by contrast, would be much more insulated from transient shifts in the public mood. Senators would be chosen by state legislatures, not directly by the voters. The term of office was set at six years, and continuity was ensured by requiring that one- third of the Senate’s membership stand for election every two years. The Senate could thus act as a stable, dispassionate counterweight to the more popular and radical House, pro- tecting the new government from the dangerous volatility thought to be characteristic of democracies. As James Madison put it in Federalist No. 62, “The necessity of the Senate is... indicated by the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions.” The Senate also incorporated remnants of state sovereignty into the new national government. Qualifications for office also reflected the Framers’ concept of the Senate as the more “mature” of the two chambers (senate is derived from the Latin senex, old man). The minimum age for representatives was set at twenty-five years; for senators, thirty years. Representatives had to be citizens for at least seven years; senators, for nine years. Both were required to reside in the state they represented. Representatives do not have to live in the districts they serve, but in practice they almost always do. These are the only qualifica- tions for office specified in the Constitution. The property-holding and religious qualifi- cations included in many state constitutions were explicitly rejected, as was a proposal to  Chapter 6: Congress 235 forbid a member’s reelection to office after serving a term. The Articles of Confederation had included a reelection restriction, but the Framers thought it had weakened Congress by depriving it of some of its ablest members. Powers of Congress As we saw in Chapter 2, the Constitution established a truly national government by giv- ing Congress broad power over crucial economic matters. Article I, Section 8, autho- rizes Congress to impose taxes, coin and borrow money, regulate interstate and foreign commerce, and spend money for the “common Defence” and “general Welfare.” Tacked on at the end of this list of specific powers is a residual clause authorizing Congress “to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.” Accepted by many delegates as an afterthought, this nec- essary and proper clause—often known as the elastic clause because it “stretches” the powers of Congress—has proved to be the single most extensive grant of power in the Constitution, giving lawmakers authority over many spheres of public policy (covered in Chapter 3). Congress was given significant authority in foreign affairs as well. Although the presi- dent is designated commander in chief of the armed forces, only Congress may declare war, raise and finance an army and a navy, and call out the state militias “to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions” (Article I, Section 8). The Senate was granted some special powers over foreign relations. In its “advice and consent” capac- ity, the Senate ratifies treaties and confirms presidential appointments of ambassadors. The Senate also confirms the president’s nominees to all federal courts and top execu- tive branch positions. These powers reveal that, in part, the Framers viewed the Senate as an advisory council to the executive, modeled on the upper chambers of some state leg- islatures. But they also reflect the Framers’ belief that the more “aristocratic” and insulated of the two houses would keep a steadier eye on the nation’s long-term interests. The Senate’s constitutional check on appointments has been challenged in practice, though, by a tac- tic that President Trump has frequently used when that chamber—which is controlled by Republicans—has balked at confirming some of his nominees. When Trump’s nominees have lacked support in the Senate, he has installed them in “acting” positions or given them “delegation authority” without a Senate vote. This has included an acting director of national intelligence and deputy directors who have been delegated the authority to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the National Park Service, each lacking Senate consent. “If an appointee cannot gain the support of the Senate,” argued the chair of the House Armed Services Committee after the president pulled a top Pentagon appointee ninety minutes before his confirmation hearing and instead delegated authority to him, “then the president should not put that person into an identical temporary role. This evasion of scrutiny makes our government less accountable and prioritizes loyalty over competence.”3 In distributing power between the House and the Senate, the delegates sought a proper balance of authority. One bone of contention was the power to raise and spend money. Some delegates wanted to give the House, as the chamber closer to the people, 236 Part II: The Institutions of Government the exclusive authority to enact legislation to raise or spend money; the Senate would be allowed to vote on House bills but not amend them. The final compromise required merely that bills raising revenue originate in the House, with the Senate having an unre- stricted right to amend them. The House was given no special mandate to initiate spend- ing bills, but it has assumed that right by custom as an extension of its special authority over revenue bills. Despite its many legislative powers, Congress does not have exclusive authority over legislation. The president may recommend new laws and, in emergencies, call Congress into special session. Most important, the president has the power to veto laws passed by Congress, killing them unless two-thirds of each chamber votes to override the veto. Increasingly, Congress has resorted to using the legal system to defend its constitutional prerogatives. Congress rarely went to court against the executive branch throughout much of American history, but after the Watergate scandal the House created a general counsel office to file lawsuits allowing it to do things like defend a subpoena if the White House tried to block it. House Democrats used the office to compel disclosures from the Bush admin- istration in 2008, while House Republicans used it to sue the Obama administration for documents in 2012. The House filed nine lawsuits in 2019 alone when the Trump adminis- tration opposed numerous subpoenas and calls for witnesses to testify. “It is unprecedented,” observed Charles Tiefer, who had served as a longtime House lawyer, that year. “The chal- lenges for the House counsel ebb and flow over time, but this is like nothing else in history.”4 The Electoral System Two choices made by the Framers regarding the electoral system have profoundly affected the development of Congress. First, members of Congress and presidents are elected sep- arately. In parliamentary systems like those found in most European countries, govern- ment authority rests with the legislature, which chooses the chief executive (called the prime minister or premier). Thus voters’ choices for legislators depend mainly on voter preferences for leader of the executive branch. In the United States, voters are presented separate choices for senator, representative, and president. Second, members of Congress are elected from states and congressional districts by plu- rality vote—that is, whoever gets the most votes wins.* Some parliamentary systems employ proportional representation, which gives a party a share of seats in the legislature match- ing the share of the votes it wins on Election Day. For example, if a party’s share of votes enti- tles it to eighty-five seats, the first eighty-five candidates on the party’s slate go to parliament. The voters, then, choose among parties, not individual candidates, and candidates need not have local connections. Party leaders under this system are very powerful because they con- trol parliamentary careers by deciding who goes on the list and in what order. American legislators are elected from territorial units, not party lists. Parties do matter in congressional elections, and with rare exceptions, only major-party nominees have any *In the past, some states elected some or all of their U.S. representatives in statewide “at-large” districts. A 1964 Supreme Court decision, Wesberry v. Sanders, ended the practice by requiring that districts have equal popu- lations. One state, Georgia, requires an absolute majority of votes to win general elections to Congress. If no candidate wins such a majority, a runoff election is held between the top two finishers.  Chapter 6: Congress 237 chance of winning (covered in Chapter 12). But the parties do not control nominations. Almost all congressional nominees are now chosen by voters in primary elections— preliminary contests in which voters select the parties’ nominees. Candidates thus get their party’s nomination directly from voters, not from party activists or leaders. Congressional Districts After the first census in 1790, each state was allotted one House seat for every 33,000 inhabitants, for a total of 105 seats. Until the twentieth century the House grew as popula- tion increased and new states joined the Union. Total membership was finally fixed at its current ceiling of 435 in 1911, when House leaders concluded that further growth would „ MAP 6.1 Apportionment’s Winners and Losers Since 1950, the South and West have been gaining House seats at the expense of the Northeast and Midwest NEW HAMPSHIRE 1950: 2 2010: 2 change: 0 1950: 3 VERMONT 2010: 2 WASHINGTON change: -1 1950: 7 1950: 1 MAINE 2010: 10 2010: 1 MONTANA NORTH DAKOTA change: 0 MASS. change: +3 1950: 2 1950: 2 1950: 14 2010: 9 2010: 1 2010: 1 MINNESOTA change: -5 change: -1 change: -1 1950: 9 NEW OREGON 2010: 8 YORK R. I. OREGON 1950: 4 change: -1 WISCONSIN 1950: 43 1950: 2 2010: 2 2010: 5 IDAHO SOUTH DAKOTA 2010: 27 change: 0 change: +1 1950: 2 1950: 10 1950: 2 2010: 8 MICHIGAN change: -16 2010: 2 WYOMING CONNECTICUT 2010: 1 change: -2 1950: 18 1950: 6 2010: 5 change: -1 change: 0 1950: 1 change: -1 2010: 14 2010: 1 change: -4 PENNSYLVANIA change: 0 IOWA 1950: 30 2010: 18 NEW JERSEY NEBRASKA 1950: 8 OHIO change: -12 1950: 14 2010: 12 change: -2 NEVADA 1950: 4 2010: 4 INDIANA 1950: 23 DELAWARE 1950: 1 2010: 3 ILLINOIS change: -4 1950: 25 1950: 11 2010: 16 W.VA. 1950: 1 2010: 1 change: 0 2010: 4 change: -1 2010: 9 change: -7 1950: 6 change: +3 UTAH 2010: 18 MARYLAND 1950: 2 COLORADO change: -7 change: -2 2010: 3 1950: 7 2010: 4 1950: 4 KANSAS change: VIRGINIA 2010: 8 change: +2 2010: 7 1950: 6 MISSOURI KENTUCKY -3 change: +1 change: +3 2010: 4 1950: 11 1950: 8 2010: 6 CALIFORNIA 2010: 8 change: -2 NORTH 1950: 10 change: -2 2010: 11 1950: 30 change: -3 CAROLINA 2010: 53 TENNESSEE change: +1 change: +23 1950: 9 2010: 9 ARIZONA OKLAHOMA change: 0 SOUTH 1950: 12 NEW MEXICO 1950: 6 ARKANSAS 1950: 2 1950: 6 CAROLINA 2010: 13 1950: 2 2010: 5 change: +1 2010: 9 2010: 3 2010: 4 change: +7 change: -1 change: +1 change: -2 ALABAMA GEORGIA 1950: 9 1950: 6 MISS. 1950: 10 2010: 7 2010: 7 2010: 14 1950: 6 change: -2 change: +1 2010: 4 change: +4 TEXAS 1950: 8 change: -2 1950: 22 2010: 6 2010: 36 change: -2 change: +14 LOUISIANA FLORIDA 1950: 8 ALASKA 2010: 27 1950: 0 change: +19 2010: 1 change: +1 Added House seats HAWAII 1950: 0 2010: 2 Lost House seats change: +2 No change Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-08.pdf. Note: Alaska and Hawaii were not yet states in 1950. 238 Part II: The Institutions of Government impede the House’s work. Since 1911, states have both lost and gained seats to reflect population shifts between the decennial (ten-year) censuses. Changes in the sizes of state delegations to the House since World War II illustrate vividly the major pop- ulation movements in the United States (depicted in Map 6.1). States in the West and South have gained at the expense of the large industrial states in the Northeast and Midwest. Federal law may apportion House seats among states after each census, but each state draws the lines that divide its territory into the allotted number of districts. In 1964 the Supreme Court ruled in Wesberry v. Sanders that districts must have equal popu- lations.5 In Thornburg v. Gingles (1986) the Court ruled that district lines may not dilute minority representation but neither may they be drawn with race as the predominant consideration.6 Within Editorial cartoon of the first gerrymander in Massachusetts. these limits states can draw districts pretty much as they please. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints & If one party controls both the legislature and the governorship, it Photographs Division may attempt to draw district lines that favor its own candidates. The idea is to concentrate the opposition party’s voters in a small number of districts that the party wins by large margins, thus “wasting” many of its votes, while creating as many districts as possible where one’s own party has a secure, though not overwhelming, majority. Called gerrymandering, this process—the extensive manipula- tion of the shape of a legislative district to benefit a certain incumbent or party—sometimes produces bizarrely shaped districts. The root of this term was a district drawn in 1812 by Massachusetts legislators working with Governor Elbridge Gerry. When the painter Gilbert Stuart saw the misshapen district, he penciled in a head, wings, and claws and exclaimed, “That will do for a salamander!” Editor Benjamin Russell replied, “Better say a Gerrymander.” The constitutionality of partisan gerrymanders has been challenged in court, but so far with limited success. In Davis v. Bandemer (1986) the Supreme Court held that a gerryman- der would be unconstitutional if it were too strongly biased against a party’s candidates but has yet to declare any districting scheme to be in violation of this vague standard.7 None of the challenges to the Republican gerrymanders executed after the 2010 reapportionment (refer to Strategy and Choice box “The Republican Gerrymander in 2012”) has prevailed, but in 2018 the Court refused to stay a decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturn- ing a pro-Republican gerrymander as violating the state’s constitution. Ongoing litigation in lower federal courts will oblige the Supreme Court to revisit the issue in the near future. Racial Gerrymandering The Court’s 1986 Gingles decision, requiring that legislative district lines not discrimi- nate, even unintentionally, against racial minorities, was widely interpreted as directing mapmakers to design districts in which racial and ethnic minorities constituted a major- ity of voters wherever residence patterns made this feasible.8 Attempts to conform to this decision after the 1990 census led lawmakers to draw irregular districts in some states that gave minority voters the opportunity to elect a representative of their choice. For example,  „ MAP 6.2 Acceptable and Unacceptable Gerrymanders 1991 version (rejected by the Supreme Court) 1st District 1998 version (accepted by the Supreme Court) 1st District * * Raleigh Raleigh 12th District 12th District After the 2010 census (2012) 2016 version (currently before the Supreme Court) 1st District 1st District * * Raleigh Raleigh 12th District 12th District Sources: Congressional Districts in the 1990s: A Portrait of America (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1993), 548; Congressional Staff Directory (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1999); Congressional Districts, NationalAtlas.gov; North Carolina General Assembly. Note: North Carolina’s First and Twelfth Districts were drawn to give the state its first Black representatives in ninety-three years. Taking over from the Democrats in 2010, Republicans tweaked the district lines to create three overwhelmingly Democratic districts (First, Fourth, and Twelfth), leaving the other ten with narrower but comfortable Republican majorities. Another court challenge required a new round of redistricting for 2016, but it did not alter the Republicans’ 10–3 advantage in North Carolina’s delegation. A federal district court ruled on August 27, 2018, that the new districts reflected unconstitutional partisan gerrymander but left them in place for 2018 because there was not enough time to impose a new map. 239 240 Part II: The Institutions of Government S TR AT E GY A N D C H O I C E The Republican Gerrymander in 2012 The Republican Party has long enjoyed an than 2); the remaining fifty districts were advantage in the House because its regular balanced, with indexes between −2 and +2. After voters are distributed more efficiently across redistricting, there were eleven more Republican- House districts than are regular Democratic leaning districts, five fewer Democratic-leaning voters. The advantage exists mainly because districts, and six fewer balanced districts. This Democrats win a disproportionate share of result was clearly intended; where Republicans minority, single, young, LBGTQ+, and highly controlled redistricting, the party gained sixteen educated voters who are concentrated in urban favorable districts while the Democrats lost one districts that deliver lopsided Democratic and balanced districts were reduced by eleven. majorities. Loyal Republican voters are spread more evenly across suburbs, smaller cities, and Once the votes were counted, House election rural areas, so that fewer Republican votes are results matched district leanings with remarkable “wasted” in highly skewed districts. consistency. Only ten Democrats won Republican-leaning districts in 2012, and not a The Republicans’ sweeping national victory in single Republican won in a Democratic-leaning 2010 enabled them to strengthen this structural district. The balanced districts were divided advantage by giving them control of the almost perfectly in half. These distributions redistricting process in eighteen states with a changed only modestly in 2014 despite the total of 202 House seats. Democrats controlled Republicans’ strong showing nationally. In 2016, the process in only six states with a total of forty- with the PVI recalculated using the 2008 and seven seats. (In twelve of the remaining states, 2012 presidential votes, both the Republican the parties shared control; seven were redistricted advantage and the extremely close match by commissions, and seven were single-district of results to district partisanship remained. states.) Republican-controlled states made the In the “blue wave” election of 2018, however, most of this gerrymandering opportunity. To the Democrats’ national vote margin of 8.6 see this, we can use the Cook Political Report’s percentage points was large enough to overcome Partisan Voting Index (PVI), which is computed their structural disadvantage, delivering their as the difference between the average district- largest net gain since 1974, forty seats. They level presidential vote in 2004 and 2008 and the won twenty-four seats in Republican-leaning national presidential vote averages for these districts (mostly in upscale suburbs) as well elections.a For example, the national average of as all but two of the balanced districts to reach the Democratic presidential vote in these two their 235–200 majority. But they might have elections was 51.2 percent, so a district with a done even better if Republican gerrymanders two-election average of 54.2 percent would have had not proven so effective in several states. In a PVI of +3, whereas a district with an average of Ohio, the Democrats’ share of House votes cast 48.2 percent would have a PVI of −3. rose from 40 percent to 48 percent from 2014 to 2018, but they still won only the same four of Republicans already held a considerable the state’s sixteen seats; in North Carolina, their advantage by this measure before the 2012 vote share rose from 44 percent to 49 percent, redistricting, with 210 Republican-leaning but their seat share remained unchanged at districts (defined here as having a partisan three of thirteen; in Wisconsin, the Democratic voting index less than −2) compared with 175 vote rose from 47 percent to 54 percent without Democratic-leaning districts (index greater changing the Republicans’ 5–3 seat advantage. In  Chapter 6: Congress 241 Pennsylvania, by contrast, after the state supreme up winning nine of the state’s eighteen seats, up court determined that Republicans violated the from four in 2014, as their vote share rose from 44 state constitution and compelled new districts percent to 55 percent. Gerrymandering did not to be drawn (hence the totals in each column for preserve the Republicans’ House majority in 2018, 2018 do not match 2016), the Democrats ended then, but it did reduce their losses. CONTROL OF REDISTRICTING AND CHANGES IN DISTRICT PARTISANSHIP, 2010–2018 District partisan advantage Control of redistricting Democrat >2 Balanced Republican > 2 All districts 2010 175 50 210 2012 170 44 221 Change Minus 5 Minus 6 Plus 11 Republican control 2010 51 24 123 2012 50 13 139 Change Minus 1 Minus 11 Plus 16 Other control 2010 124 26 87 2012 120 31 82 Change Minus 4 Plus 5 Minus 5 Election results, 2012 Democrat won 170 21 10 Republican won 0 23 211 Election results, 2014 Democrat won 166 16 6 Republican won 4 28 215 Election results, 2016 Democrat won 178 13 3 Republican won 2 29 220 Election results, 2018 Democrat won 174 37 24 Republican won 4 2 194 Note: District partisan advantage is based on the Cook PVI; see text for a description. a David Wasserman and Ally Flinn, “Introducing the 2017 Cook Political Report Partisan Index,” The Cook Political Report, April 7, 2017, at https://www.cookpolitical.com/introducing-2017-cook-political-report-partisan-voter-index. 242 Part II: The Institutions of Government North Carolina legislators carved out two majority Black districts (First and Twelfth) that eventually came before the Court (depicted in Map 6.2). The Court decided in 1993 that such irregular districts went too far,9 and in 1995 that districts could not be drawn solely to benefit one race, even one that had faced past discrimination.10 Thus, the North Carolina districts had to be redrawn. Modified twice before receiving final Court approval, the districts had some of their rough edges smoothed off but retained all the earmarks of a painstaking gerrymander. The post-2010 North Carolina districts were again success- fully challenged in court on racial grounds, and the lines in place under court order for the 2016 election modified the First and radically altered the Twelfth. The North Carolina leg- islature responded by drawing new lines, this time as an explicitly partisan gerrymander intended to assure Republicans would win ten of the state’s thirteen House seats even with less than half the statewide vote. A U.S. district court ruled this map unconstitutional but not in time for new lines to be drawn before the 2018 election, in which Democratic can- didates won 49 percent of the House vote statewide but still only their current three seats. Unequal Representation in the Senate The fifty Senate constituencies—entire states—may not change boundaries with each census, but they vary greatly in size of population. Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., rep- resents nearly forty million people, whereas Senator Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., has fewer constit- uents (574,000) than does the average U.S. representative (750,000). The nine largest states are home to 51 percent of the total U.S. population, whereas the smallest twenty-six states, with 52 percent of Senate seats, hold only 18 percent of the population. Unequal Senate representation currently favors Republicans, who tend to do better in the smaller states.* Until 1913 senators were chosen by state legislatures. Most Americans had long since concluded that this method of selection was undemocratic and corrupting (between 1890 and 1905 charges of bribery shadowed Senate elections in seven states).11 But it took the reforming spirit of Progressivism at its peak to convince senators to agree to a constitu- tional amendment (the Seventeenth) providing for popular election.12 As it turned out, they had little to fear from the change; senators have been about as successful in winning reelection as they had been in persuading state legislatures to return them to office.† Congress and Electoral Politics The modern Congress is organized to serve the goals of its members. A primary goal for most of them is to keep their jobs. And because voters have the final say in their *In the 116th Congress, Republicans held 60 percent of the Senate seats in the twenty-nine states with seven or fewer House districts, whereas Democrats held 57 percent of the seats in the twenty-one states with more than seven districts. † A remaining democratic anomaly is the absence of representation of any kind, in the Senate or the House, for the six hundred thousand Americans who live in Washington, DC. Citizens living in the nation’s capital do get to vote for three presidential electors, however. They also elect a nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives (Eleanor Holmes Norton during the 116th Congress).  Chapter 6: Congress 243 hiring and firing, a career in Congress depends on members winning the voters’ endorsement at regular intervals. Reelection is not their only objective, but winning regular reelection is essential to everything else members want to achieve in office. A rewarding career in Congress is also much more likely if one serves in the majority party, so a party victory is also a major goal. Electoral imperatives thus shape all important aspects of congressional life. Candidate-Centered versus Party-Centered Electoral Politics The electoral environment that members of Congress must negotiate to win and hold their seats has undergone notable changes over time, varying between more party-cen- tered and more candidate-centered systems. During much of the nineteenth century, the system was predominantly party centered. Party-line voting was prevalent; voters based their choices on the top of the ticket—the presidential candidates in presidential elec- tion years—and on the parties’ platforms. Congressional candidates’ fates were decided by national trends they could do little personally to shape or control. Changes in the laws regulating elections and parties around the turn of the century weakened parties and encouraged ticket-splitting—that is, voting for candidates of different parties for differ- ent offices.13 The most important of these changes was the introduction of primary elec- tions for choosing the parties’ nominees and the secret ballot (covered in Chapter 12). Still, party conflicts over national policy, most notably the political battles over President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, continued to inject a strong national component into con- gressional elections until the 1950s. As the New Deal controversies faded, however, the party coalitions built around them fractured under the stress of divisive new issues, most prominently civil rights, the Vietnam War, and social issues such as abortion and the envi- ronment. Party lines became blurred, and party loyalty among voters declined. As party ties weakened, a more candidate-centered electoral process emerged. The decline in party loyalty among voters offered incumbents a chance to win votes that once would have gone routinely to the other party’s candidate. Members sought to expand their electoral base by emphasizing individual character, legislative performance, and constitu- ency services, encouraging voters to use such criteria in deciding how to vote.14 Realizing that the growth of candidate-centered electoral politics worked to the advantage of incum- bents willing to build a personal following, members of Congress voted themselves greater resources for servicing their states and districts—that is, higher allowances for staff, travel, local offices, and communication. These allowances are now worth more than $1.2 million annually per legislator in the House and up to three times as much per senator, depending on the population of the state represented.15 Electoral data demonstrate the success of these efforts. The House incumbency advantage, measured in the extra share of votes a candidate typically received by running as an incumbent (shown in Figure 6.1)16, rose from 1 to 2 per- centage points prior to the mid-1960s to an average of 8 percentage points in elections from 1966 through 2002. Since then, however, it has declined sharply and in the four most recent elections was back to the low levels typical of the 1950s.17 244 Part II: The Institutions of Government „ FIGURE 6.1 The Incumbency Advantage in U.S. House Elections, 1952–2020 (Average of Three Measures) 12.0 10.0 Vote Value of Incumbency (Percent) 8.0 6.0 4.0 2.0 0.0 1952 1954 1956 1958 1960 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020 Source: Compiled by authors. Note: Refer to endnote 17 for a description of this index. In the earlier period, incumbents were successful largely because they represented dis- tricts that voted consistently for one party’s candidates. From the mid-1960s through the 1980s, they became much more successful in winning in districts where their party did not have a natural majority. Since then, incumbents have continued to win at high rates but to an increasing extent because they represent districts with electorates that favor their parties’ candidates, incumbent or not. The changing ability of congressional candidates to win against the partisan grain, measured by their ability to win a state or district their party’s presidential candidate lost, is illustrated in Figure 6.2. Both House and Senate candidates were unusually successful in winning seats in the other party’s presidential territory in the 1970s and 1980s, but such vic- tories have since become rarer. They were particularly scarce in 2012, when only twenty-six of the 435 House districts delivered a split verdict, and again in 2016 when, for the first time in history, every Senate contest was won by the party that won the state’s electoral votes. This trend reflects the growth in party-line voting discussed in Chapter 12 and the decline in the ability of incumbents (and other candidates) to separate themselves from their party’s col- lective fate. In particular, electoral fortunes of congressional candidates are increasingly tied  Chapter 6: Congress 245 to those of their presidential candidates; the correlations between the vote shares won by presidential candidates and congressional candidates at the state and district levels have become much stronger in recent years (shown in Figure 6.3).* Congressional elections are increasingly treated by voters as national events, with presidents and presidential candidates as a major focus. The 2018 midterm election was the most nationalized, president-centered midterm election yet observed, with the correlation between the House and presidential vote two years earlier at a record 0.97 and with the smallest incumbency advantage since the 1950s (refer to Figure 6.1).18 The emergence of a more nationalized, party-centered electoral process has contrib- uted directly to the increase in the partisan and ideological polarization in the House and Senate, discussed later in this chapter, for it has given the congressional parties much more distinctly partisan electoral constituencies. For example, back in 1976, the average vote for Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter in House districts won by Democrats was 56 percent, whereas the average vote for Carter in districts won by Republicans was 45 percent, a difference of 11 percentage points. This gap has grown steadily since then; in 2016, Trump’s average vote in districts won by Republicans was 62 percent, whereas „ FIGURE 6.2 States and Districts Delivering Split Outcomes in Presidential and Congressional Contests, 1952–2020 60 50 40 Percent 30 20 10 0 56 68 72 76 84 88 96 04 08 12 16 20 52 60 64 80 92 00 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 20 20 20 20 20 20 House Elections Senate Elections Source: Compiled by authors. *Correlations take values from 0.0 (no relationship at all) to 1.0 (a perfect relationship). 246 Part II: The Institutions of Government „ FIGURE 6.3 Increased Correlations between the Presidential and Congressional Votes at the District and State Levels 1 0.8 0.6 Correlation 0.4 0.2 0 −0.2 60 64 52 20 56 68 72 76 80 84 88 92 96 00 04 08 12 16 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 20 20 20 20 20 20 Senate House Source: Compiled by authors. his average in districts won by Democrats was 33 percent, a difference of 29 percentage points. The comparable gap between states won by Republican and Democratic senators was 6 points in 1976 and 19 points in 2016. The trend toward nationalization continued with Joe Biden’s victory in 2020. With their constituencies so far apart politically, the con- gressional parties have found it increasingly difficult to find common ground. National Politics in Congressional Elections The resurgence of party- and president-centered voting over the past two decades has strengthened the national component of congressional election politics, but even during the heyday of locally focused, candidate-centered elections, national forces continued to have a palpable effect on electoral fates and thus the partisan composition of Congress. In midterm elections the president’s party almost always loses congressional seats, but the size of its losses depends in part on the performances of the national economy and the president. Losses tend to be fewer when the economy is booming and the president is pop- ular and greater when the economy or the administration’s popularity sags. Thus, George W. Bush’s leadership in the war on terrorism produced high approval ratings in 2002 that helped his party achieve small gains in the House and Senate, a rarity for the presi- dent’s party in midterm elections. With Bush’s ratings 25 points lower in 2006, Democrats picked up enough seats to take control of both chambers. In 2010 high unemployment,  Chapter 6: Congress 247 public dissatisfaction with the direction of the economy, and Barack Obama’s mediocre approval ratings cost the Democrats sixty-four House and six Senate seats. Despite a robust national economy, Donald Trump’s low approval ratings in 2018 (around 40 percent) cost the Republicans forty House seats and control of that chamber, and when President Trump lost his reelection campaign in 2020, the GOP also lost control of the Senate—with two especially surprising losses coming in the January 5, 2021, special election in Georgia after Trump made false charges of voter fraud and attacked Republican elections officials there. As these elections showed so dramatically, members of Congress can no longer disso- ciate themselves from their party’s fate, so they retain a personal stake in their party’s pub- lic image as well as the public standing of the president. Nor can they separate themselves from Congress itself, though incumbents frequently try to do so. Individual members remain far more popular than Congress collectively, but they still suffer at the ballot box when the public’s normally mild hostility toward Congress becomes intense, at least if one party controls both chambers and thus absorbs all the blame. Individual members cannot do much about such sentiments by themselves, so they often focus on personal efforts that can make a difference. Serving Constituents Recognizing that they hold their jobs at the sufferance of sometimes-fickle electorates, members of Congress are highly responsive to their constituencies. Decisions on legisla- tive issues are shaped by the potential need to explain and defend them in future cam- paigns.19 This includes future primary campaigns; for many members now representing districts safe for their parties, the biggest threat to reelection comes from primary chal- lengers. Most members also spend a great deal of time back home, keeping in touch and staying visible. They solicit and process casework, requests from constituents for infor- mation and help in dealing with government agencies. A lost Social Security check? A bureaucratic mix-up over veterans’ benefits? A representative or senator (or more pre- cisely, their staff) is ready to help. Vulnerable Senators Although senators have engaged in many of the same constituency-building activities as representatives, they have never been as successful in keeping their jobs, and now they, too, find it more difficult to win states where the other party is ascendant. Since 1946 their overall rate of reelection, 80 percent, has left them three times more likely to lose their seats than House incumbents. But because senators face reelection only one-third as often, tenure in office tends to even out between the chambers. Even when Senate incumbents do win, their margins of victory tend to be narrower than those of represen- tatives. Senate incumbents win less consistently and typically by narrower margins for several reasons. States (other than the seven with only one representative) are more popu- lous and diverse than congressional districts and are thus more likely than congressional districts to have balanced party competition. Senate races attract a larger proportion of experienced, politically talented, well-financed challengers. They also usually fit media 248 Part II: The Institutions of Government markets—formed by cities and their suburbs reached by local TV and radio stations and newspapers— better than House districts, making it easier for challengers to get out their messages. And finally, sena- tors are more readily associated with controversial and divisive issues, and they do not have the pressure of a two-year election cycle to keep them The 2018 midterm elections were the most nationalized in modern American attuned to the folks back home. history and were centered on the highly polarizing figure of President Donald Trump. Democrats’ ads sought to link the Republican to Trump and his policies in areas where both were unpopular—illustrated by this ad run in Republican Barbara Comstock’s suburban Virginia House district—while Republican candidates Representation versus trumpeted their support for Trump where he was popular. Comstock lost her Responsibility reelection bid. Screenshot via Jennifer Wexton for Congress campaign ad/YouTube Different electoral processes pro- duce different forms of representa- tion. In a party-centered electoral process, for example, legislators represent citizens by carrying out the policies promised by the party winning a majority of seats. Legislators know they will be held responsible by voters for their party’s performance in governing, so ensuring the success of their party and the government takes top priority. The candidate-centered electoral process that flourished during the long period of Democratic control prior to 1994 gave members of Congress far more incentive to be individually responsive than collectively responsible. Trends since then have reduced but by no means eliminated this imbalance, which is a primary source of Congress’s collective action problems. For example, electoral logic induces members to promote narrowly tar- geted programs, projects, or tax breaks for constituents or campaign contributors without worrying about the impacts of such measures on spending or revenues. Recipients notice and appreciate such specific and identifiable benefits and show their gratitude at election time. Because the benefits come at the expense of general revenues (money supplied by the taxes that everyone pays), no one’s share of the cost of any specific project or tax break is large enough to notice. Thus it makes political sense for members of Congress to pursue local or group benefits that are paid for nationally even if the costs clearly outweigh the benefits. Conversely, no obvious payoff arises from opposing any particular local or group benefit because the savings are spread so thinly among taxpayers that no one notices. The pursuit of reelection therefore makes logrolling—a legislative practice in which members of Congress offer reciprocal support to each other’s vote-gaining projects or tax breaks—an attractive strategy (covered in Chapter 2). But this situation creates a classic prisoner’s dilemma. When everyone follows such an individually productive strategy, all may end up in worse shape politically when shackled with collective blame for the over- all consequences. Spending rises, revenues fall, the deficit grows, government programs proliferate, and the opposition attacks the logrolling coalition—in practice, the majority  Chapter 6: Congress 249 party—for wastefulness and incompetence. Individual responsiveness leads to collective irresponsibility. Democratic candidates suffered across the board in 2010 as voters turned against the aggregate consequences of collective irresponsibility: a government they perceived as too big, too expensive, and too inept. To demonstrate that they were different, the triumphant Republicans promised to shrink government, cut taxes, and change how the government operates. In particular, many pledged to abstain from earmarks—items individual mem- bers routinely insert into spending bills or revenue bills providing special benefits to their states, districts, and campaign contributors. Although earmarks account for less than one- half of 1 percent of federal spending, they are easy targets of public criticism—“pork bar- rel” legislation always turns up projects of dubious worth—and was especially scorned by the Republican Party’s very conservative Tea Party wing, so forgoing earmarks was thought to have considerable symbolic importance. House Republicans adopted rules inhibiting earmarks, but a true end to earmarking and pork-barreling would be a remark- able transformation. Most members are convinced that delivering such local benefits pays important electoral dividends. A comment by Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., a leading voice of the Tea Party faction at the time, suggests that symbolism does not necessarily trump more practical considerations: “Advocating for transportation projects for one’s district does not in my mind equate to an earmark.”20 The budget bill passed early in 2018 was replete with provisions looking suspiciously like earmarks, and one estimate put their price at $14.7 billion, more than five times as much as in 2014.21 Who Serves in Congress? The people who win seats in the Senate and House are by no means “representative” of the American people in any demographic sense. Almost all members have graduated from college; law (41 percent) and business (39 percent) were the most common prior occupations in the 115th Congress, followed by education (19 percent). A large majority are professionals of one kind or another; only a handful have blue-collar backgrounds. Most have served in lower elected offices. The true vocation of the average member is, in fact, politics. Women and racial minorities continue to be underrepresented in Congress, though their numbers have been increasing (refer to Figures 6.4 and 6.5). In 1961 only three African Americans and twenty women held House or Senate seats; by 1981 the number of Black members had grown to seventeen, and only one more woman had been added. Growth continued to be slow until 1992, when the number of African Americans and Hispanics in the House increased sharply after the 1982 Voting Rights Act was interpreted to require states to maximize the number of “majority-minority” districts when drawing new district lines. The 1992 election also saw women candidates and campaign donors mobilized in unprecedented numbers in response to an event widely publicized in 1991: the insensitive handling by an all-male Senate committee of sexual harassment charges 250 „ FIGURE 6.4 Women in Congress: Higher Numbers but Still Underrepresented 130 120 100 80 60 Number 40 20 0 1916 1918 1920 1922 1924 1926 1928 1930 1932 1934 1936 1938 1940 1942 1944 1946 1948 1950 1952 1954 1956 1958 1960 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020 Election Year Senate House Sources: Norman J. Ornstein, Thomas E. Mann, and Michael J. Malbin, Vital Statistics on Congress 1997–1998 (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1998), 40; data for 1998–2020 compiled by the authors.  „ FIGURE 6.5 Congress Has Grown More Diverse but Has Yet to Mirror the Electorate 60 50 40 30 Number 20 10 0 1868 1872 1876 1880 1884 1888 1892 1896 1900 1904 1908 1912 1916 1920 1924 1928 1932 1936 1940 1944 1948 1952 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012 2016 2020 Election Year African Americans Hispanics Sources: Norman J. Ornstein, Thomas E. Mann, and Michael J. Malbin, Vital Statistics on Congress 1997–1998 (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1998), 38–39; data for 1998–2020 compiled by the authors. 251 252 Part II: The Institutions of Government made by college professor Anita Hill against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. In 2018, Donald Trump’s rhetoric and actions on health care, immigration, reproduc- tive rights, sexual harassment, and the environment provoked a remarkable upsurge in women’s electoral involvement on the Democratic side. Of the 254 nonincumbent Democrats winning House nominations, 128 (50 percent) were women; counting incum- bent Democrats, 181 of the party’s 427 nominees (42 percent) were women. About half of them won, and thirty-five of the sixty newly elected Democrats are women. All of these are record numbers. After the 2020 elections, the Senate included twenty-four women, five Hispanics, three African Americans, and two Asian Americans; the House included a record 123 women, fifty-five African Americans, thirty-eight Hispanics, and fifteen Asian Americans. The congressional parties differ sharply in diversity. In the 117th Congress (2021–22), women and members of racial and ethnic minority groups made up a majority of the House Democratic membership. Yet nearly 90% of the women in Congress are Democrats, highlighting a strong partisan divide in women’s representation. The 2020 elec- tion did bring a dramatic increase in the representativeness of the House GOP caucus, with the number of Republican women in the House doubling, includ- ing five Republican women of color. Overall, however, an overwhelming majority of congressional Republicans are straight white Christian men. The Emblematic of the changes in the House arriving with the new class of Democrats in the 116th Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described congressional parties thus echo, to a Democratic Socialist of Puerto Rican descent, defeated ten-term incumbent greatly exaggerated degree, demo- Joseph Crowley in the primary and then went on to win the general election to graphic differences in their electoral become, at twenty-nine, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. coalitions (covered in Chapter 12). House Television via AP Congress remained overwhelm- ingly white and male for so long because white males predominated in the lower-level public offices and private careers that are the most common stepping-stones to Congress. As women and minorities have continued, albeit slowly, to assume a larger share of state and local offices and professional careers in law and business, their representation in Congress has continued to rise as well. The gender and racial makeup of Congress makes a difference. For example, Black mem- bers led the fight for sanctions punishing South Africa for its apartheid system in the 1980s. And the influx of women has made Congress far more attentive to issues of sex discrimina- tion and sexual harassment.22 The stark differences in diversity between the Republicans and  Chapter 6: Congress 253 Democrats elected to the 116th Congress may also contribute a demographic dimension to the growing ideological polarization of the congressional