3
Reconciliation and the Emergence of Majoritarian Politics

Much of the history of Congress has consisted of battles between majorities and minorities, with minorities—in the form of committees—typically succeeding in their efforts to retain the power to obstruct, delay, and otherwise prevent floor majorities from getting their way. Repeatedly in the history of Congress, committees, by refusing to produce legislation, have been able to frustrate floor majorities. On a number of occasions efforts have been made to subordinate committees to the preferences of the majority in the chamber, but these efforts have been only minimally effective. The best known means by which a majority in the House can overcome committee obstructionism is the discharge petition, first adopted in 1910 and modified several times in the next fifteen years. Despite great enthusiasm for a rule to discharge committees of jurisdiction over legislation, very few discharge petitions have succeeded. "Calendar Wednesday," adopted in 1909 as a way of getting bills to the floor over the objection of the

Rules Committee, proved so useless that Senator George Norris denounced it as "a homeopathic dose of nothingness."^[1]

Through the budget process and reconciliation, Congress has become a majoritarian body, to a degree virtually unprecedented in modern times. Congressional majorities can adopt a comprehensive plan in a budget resolution and use reconciliation to press their decisions on committees—thus making the committees agents acting on the instructions of the whole. The normal sequence of the legislative process is profoundly altered. Normally committees act first by reporting legislation, and thus they determine the agenda of Congress. With reconciliation, the agenda for Congress, at least in the area of budgetary politics, is established by whatever group or entity is responsible for passing reconciliation instructions.

Committees still unquestionably dominate congressional organization, and they will continue in that role. Nonetheless, throughout the 1980s, the most important decisions made each year in Congress—about the nature of budget policy and the means of attaining it—have been made essentially outside the regular committee system, by the parties, caucuses, and bipartisan coalitions. When reconciliation first appeared, some observers doubted that it could long survive because it was so contrary to the normal organization of Congress.^[2] But the organization of Congress is not immutable. It takes

[1] Richard Lowitt, George W. Norris: The Making of a Progressive, 1861–1912 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1963), p. 143.

[2] In fall 1981, immediately after the massive Reagan budget victories, Allen Schick wrote: "Because Congress thrives on heterogeneity and fragmentation, it is this author's view that expanded reconciliation will not be a budget process for all legislative seasons." PS 14 (Fall 1981): 751.

the form it does for reasons that change, and when they do they can cause corresponding change in the structure of Congress. Huge deficits in the 1980s forced Congress to focus more on budgetary aggregates and less on the parts and thus encouraged members to search for organizational forms that provided a greater capacity to control the total.

This chapter documents the fact that use of the budget process since 1980 has shifted power out of committees and into majorities exerting their power on the floor. This argument involves showing that (1) budget resolutions have become important instruments for shaping policy, (2) control of the budget resolutions' content is very directly in the hands of congressional majorities, and (3) these majorities are assembled by means of negotiations conducted in extracommittee bodies.

How Reconciliation Works

The use of the term "reconciliation" is paradoxical; it implies the resolution of conflict, yet it has generated some of the most strenuous conflict in Congress in memory. The name, nonetheless, is appropriate because the purpose of reconciliation is to "reconcile" individual program spending levels with an overall budgetary ceiling.

Reconciliation's procedure is fairly simple in theory. In the spring, Congress adopts a budget resolution for the coming fiscal year, which begins October 1. The resolution establishes an overall spending ceiling as well as a distribution of that spending among functional allocations. When the allocation for a committee is below its current spending level, either spending on programs

must be reduced, or the ceilings will be exceeded. "Reconciliation instructions" are directives to specific committees to reduce spending on programs in their jurisdictions by indicated amounts.^[3] Typical reconciliation language might read: "The Senate [or House] Committee on Agriculture shall report changes in laws within the jurisdiction of that committee sufficient to reduce budget authority by $200,000,000 and outlays by $200,000,000 in fiscal year 1988."^[4] Typically, between ten and fifteen committees will be instructed to make reductions, in amounts ranging from several million to more than a billion dollars. The tax committees—Ways and Means and Finance—have also been instructed to raise revenue.

These instructions are part of budget resolutions and must be passed in identical form by both chambers, just like ordinary legislation. Reconciliation instructions are clear and unmistakable signals to committees that the body as a whole wants them to make certain changes in their programs.

After passing a budget resolution that includes reconciliation instructions, committees are supposed to go

[3] With one exception, reconciliation instructions have directed committees to reduce spending only in entitlement programs. Programs that receive authorizations and appropriations are thus not generally covered by reconciliation. In 1981 (FY 1982), authorizations as well as entitlements were reconciled. In retrospect, this was universally conceded to be a bad idea, and it has not been attempted again. By reconciling authorizations, the budget process intrudes too far into the jurisdiction of the appropriations committees, which are normally thought to be responsible for restraining spending in authorized programs. Reconciling authorizations leaves the appropriations committees with essentially nothing to do. However, for the appropriations committees to make very large reductions deprives authorizing committees of control over their programs.

[4] In most cases, committees have been instructed to make reductions over a period of three years.

to work immediately, writing legislation that will satisfy their reconciliation targets. Committees are completely free to determine how to meet their targets; their instructions concern only the amount of savings they must produce. Budget resolutions are always based upon fairly specific assumptions about how the targets might be reached, although committees are not compelled to do as the budget committees suggest. In some cases—for instance, when a committee has only one entitlement program or only one program large enough to yield the required reductions—committees have virtually no discretion in making reconciliation cuts. Normally the resolution directs committees to complete their work by a certain midsummer date. They then send their legislation to their chamber's budget committee.

The budget committees perform a purely ministerial function in assembling the various committee reports into a single, often massive, reconciliation bill. They are forbidden by the Budget Act to make substantive changes of any kind in the committees' legislation. All the reconciliation legislation from all the instructed committees, packaged together, then proceeds to the floor of each chamber where it is debated, possibly amended, and voted upon.^[5] When, as is invariably the case, House and Senate versions are not identical, a conference committee must be formed to resolve whatever differences exist. As is the case with all legislation, the president has the opportunity to sign or veto a reconciliation bill.

[5] Evidently, reconciliation bills always pass when they reach the floor, and normally they pass overwhelmingly. They are equated so unambiguously with spending restraint that few members wish to oppose them, even when opposed to particular provisions.

The Need for Reconciliation

If members want Congress to enact narrow distributive legislation, providing dams, roads, post offices, and other items of direct electoral benefit to members, the committee system of Congress is perhaps uniquely well suited for their purposes.^[6] The passage of pork-barrel legislation can occur through a decentralized committee system because little explicit coordination is required and enforcing bargains is not a problem. Norms of reciprocity and universalism—"you pass my pork-barrel bill, and I'll pass yours"—largely take care of the problem of coordination.^[7] The informality of this mode of coordination is indicated by the following exchange on the Senate floor during the debate on the National Parks and Recreation Act of 1978, a bill known as the "Park Barrel" bill because it provided for so many new projects in so many states.

"Is there any state other than Kansas that did not end up with a park?" asked Sen. Robert Dole, R-Kan.

"Did we leave you out, Bob?" asked Sen. James Abourezk, D-S.D., chairman of the Energy Subcommittee on parks and the floor manager of the bill.

[6] By "direct" benefits, I mean those provided to identifiable persons, benefitting specific constituencies—and also specific members of Congress. "Indirect" benefits are received, not in the form of a monthly check, but through a reduced deficit, for instance. Reducing direct benefits to individual A may provide an indirect benefit to individual B.

[7] Donald Matthews, "Folkways of the United States Senate," American Political Science Review 53 (Dec. 1959): 1064–1089. Barry Weingast, "A Rational Choice Perspective on Congressional Norms," American Journal of Political Science 23 (May 1979): 245–261. Kenneth Shepsle and Barry Weingast, "Political Preference for the Pork Barrel: A Generalization," American Journal of Political Science 25 (Feb. 1981): 96–111.

"I have two more years in my term," noted Dole, as laughter continued in the chamber. Sen. Clifford P. Hansen, R-Wyo., also on the subcommittee, offered Dole a little sympathy. "It is my understanding that six states—five others—did not make it." "I appreciate that," replied Dole. "We will have a meeting later."^[8]

This brief colloquy illustrates a form of coordination without central control, wherein Dole serves notice that he expects his turn will come, within two years.

The need for coordination in distributive politics is diminished by the convenient fit of narrow policies within the jurisdictions of single committees, obviating the need for intercommittee negotiations. Enforcing implicit bargains is not a source of difficulty; it is not normally a problem to get the Interior Committee to approve new parks or the Public Works Committee to recommend new public works. If anything, it is disproportionately to the benefit of members of these and other committees to report such legislation. The problem has more often been holding them back than stirring them to action.

Broader policies—such as reducing deficits, restraining spending, and enacting consistent fiscal policy—are not well served by a committee system.^[9] In large measure these goals can be attained only by altering or curtailing existing distributive policies. Doing so involves a

[8] CQ Almanac, 1978, pp. 704–705.

[9] "The rules of germaneness and of jurisdiction make intercommittee agreements difficult to arrange except in special circumstances. The informal practices of both chambers still discourage members from involving themselves in legislation considered in other committees." John Ferejohn, "Congress and Redistribution," in Making Economic Policy in Congress, ed. Allen Schick (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute. 1983), p. 135.

direct cost, and only indirect benefits, to constituents. Such policies span numerous or even perhaps all committee jurisdictions. Under these circumstances, the easy informality that allowed Dole to joke about the absence of a park for Kansas—and to assume that he would get one before the next election—must be replaced by more explicit, formal coordination. Broad legislation that overlaps several committees' jurisdictions or policies whose success depends on simultaneous, coordinated actions by multiple committees do not move well through the fragmented structures of Congress. Logically, logrolling can occur in a downward direction; it is entirely conceivable that the indirect benefits of cutting a series of programs will exceed the direct costs. But legislation enacting such an exchange will be able to pass only under special circumstances.

The problem of spending restraint in Congress can be understood as a problem of collective action. When one member must endure the sacrifice of a program dear to his or her district so that all members may benefit from deficit control, he will demand that other members make similar sacrifices. One committee will be reluctant to cut programs in its jurisdiction without an assurance that other committees are doing likewise. Senator Bob Packwood (R-Ore.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, explicitly raised this issue in 1985. "The Finance Committee," he wrote, "will meet its responsibility for achieving $51.2 billion in savings … IF ALL OTHER MAJOR COMMITTEES CAN MEET THE SPENDING CUTS TOTALS REQUIRED OF THEM ."^[10]

[10] Senate Budget Committee, First Concurrent Resolution on the Budget FY 1986, S. Rept. 99-15, 99th Cong., 1st sess. (USGPO, 1985), p. 165; emphasis in the original. The savings Packwood refers to are those recommended by the Office of Management and Budget.

Even when spending restraint is desired by members of Congress and when they are willing to exchange direct benefits to their districts in order to cut the deficit, legislators will not necessarily be able to enact deficit reduction measures. Deficit reduction legislation will normally succeed only when there is a structure to facilitate intercommittee bargaining and when the agreements so reached can be enforced. Success at cutting the budget has come in the past several years because the reconciliation procedure overcomes these defects of normal congressional organization. It is inconceivable that Dole, or Packwood, or any committee chair, would say, "Okay. I'll cut my programs this year because I know you will cut yours next year." That degree of trust does not exist in Congress. An informally coordinated reciprocity works well only when it distributes benefits, not costs.

The Budget Process without Reconciliation

Shortly after becoming the first staff director of the House Budget Committee (HBC), Walter Kravitz explained that his goal was "to make the passage of budget resolutions just as routine as the passage of appropriations bills."^[11] To some extent, the budget committees behaved like ordinary committees and passed their resolutions in a relatively routine fashion. The budget committees held hearings, received testimony from expert witnesses, wrote budget resolutions in protracted committee markup sessions, and generally acted like

[11] Quoted in John Ellwood, "Comments," in Federal Budget Policy in the 1980s, ed. Gregory Mills and John Palmer (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute, 1984), p. 378. Ellwood believes that the reconciliation process has become routinized through the use of reconciliation three years running. But the manner of its use, always different, has been anything but routine.

normal committees. When budget resolutions went to the floor, they usually passed with few amendments.

The apparent success of the budget committees disguised a fundamental weakness. Passage of budget resolutions will be routine only when they are unimportant and do not change policy. A budget resolution that matters—for instance, shifting budgetary priorities, cutting spending, or raising revenues—will be immensely important; it becomes the object of such intense controversy that no single committee can or should retain control over it. For the budget committees to exercise the same kind of control over budget resolutions as the House Appropriations Committee does over its bills would entail the concentration of vast amounts of power in one committee, making the budget committees more like a cabinet than a committee. Because members of Congress who do not sit on the budget committees would never willingly consent to relinquish such power, it is not reasonable to expect that budget resolutions written by and controlled by the budget committees will have significant influence over budget policy.

In the mid- to late 1970s, budget resolutions passed on the floor of the House and the Senate almost exactly as drafted by the budget committees. We should not conclude on that evidence alone that the committees exercised influence over budget policy. According to Allen Schick's definitive study of the budget process in its first years, the process was used not to reduce spending but rather to bestow congressional approval on a level of spending that would have occurred regardless of the process. Schick reports: "In almost a hundred interviews with members of Congress and staffers, no one expressed the view that the allocations in the budget resolutions had knowingly been set below legislative

expectations. 'We got all that we needed,' one committee staff director exulted."^[12] The budget committees largely "accommodated" themselves to the desire of the other committees, and accordingly they were able to pass their budget resolutions without many floor amendments. When resolutions came to be meaningful statements of policy, control over them passed to other bodies.

Edmund Muskie (D-Maine) and Henry Bellmon (R-Okla.), the first chairman and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, set out at the inauguration of the new process in 1975 to create a bipartisan Senate committee. Both were committed to the success of the process, and to that end they established an excellent working relationship that permitted the committee to function on a bipartisan basis. Over the first five years of the committee's life, there was an extraordinary degree of minority party participation in writing resolutions. Sometimes more than half of all successful motions in committee markup of first budget resolutions were sponsored by the minority Republicans, and never before 1980 (FY 1981) did minority motions account for fewer than a third of all successful motions. In a partisan committee the minority would be excluded from meaningful participation.

The Senate Budget Committee (SBC) met at great length to produce their resolutions. First the full committee would debate and vote upon each of the nineteen functions in the budget, one by one, to find a level of spending for each that would command the support of a majority of the committee. When this process was complete they would work through a second time for the

[12] Allen Schick, Congress and Money (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute, 1980), p. 313.

purpose of lowering the spending total. This function-by-function analysis and its reiteration absorbed much time and filled many pages of transcript. The vast length of these committee markup sessions indicates strongly that the committee did not merely ratify a resolution produced by the chair or the majority party caucus but wrote resolutions in the course of markup.

SBC resolutions passed on the floor by substantial margins and with few amendments. Muskie equated floor involvement in the writing of resolutions with the demise of the process, and in this period floor amendments did not often pass. On the floor, Muskie, a liberal, argued against amendments that sought to increase spending, while Bellmon, a conservative, led the fight against cuts.^[13] Their view was that the budget process was "incapable of surviving the rough and tumble of floor action"; for this reason the committee resolution must prevail.^[14] Majority Leader Mike Mansfield supported this deference to the committee, saying, "I intend to support fully what the Budget Committee has recommended because if we do not then I think we might as well abolish it, and go back to our old ways."^[15] Budget control seemed to hinge on the success of the budget committees.

In the view of leading senators, the budget committees were not to lead but to follow the wishes of Congress. They were to accept and respond to the initiatives of other committees, not constrain them. Muskie explained his view that the function of the SBC was "to reflect a consensus of the Senate on issues insofar as evidence

[13] Ibid., pp. 282–283.

[14] Ibid., p. 283.

[15] Ibid., pp. 284–285; Cong. Rec. , May 4, 1977, p. S7048.

of a consensus is available to us."^[16] Robert Dole expressed a similarly modest view of the SBC: "The Budget Committees should not pass spending targets that force the adoption of program changes that have not even been contemplated. It has been and should continue to be the Budget Committee's practice to reflect in its spending targets and score-keeping the budget effects of pending legislation that appears to have some possibility of passing."^[17] Early floor success of the budget committees bespeaks neither the power of the committees nor of the process, but an acceptance of an inferior position. Accommodation does not make a committee powerful.

Assumed Legislative Savings

Yet from 1976 to 1979 the budget committees did attempt to depart somewhat from the pattern of accommodation by means of the "assumed legislative savings" approach to entitlement control. The budget process as originally enacted did include various means to prevent appropriations from exceeding the targets in the resolutions. However, a compromise in the writing of the Budget Act essentially exempted entitlement programs from the controls of the process. Nonetheless, the budget committees wrote resolutions based upon assumptions that certain committees would report legislation reducing spending on their entitlements. If the committees did not produce these savings, spending would exceed the targets in the resolution.

Assumed legislative savings was nothing more than

[16] Schick, Congress and Money, p. 311.

[17] Ibid., pp. 311–312.

an unenforceable request by the budget committees that other committees change their programs. Few informed observers should have been surprised that the committees were not forthcoming; indeed, these committees were derelict in their responsibilities and produced only trivial proportions of the assumed savings. The failure of the assumed legislative savings approach ultimately caused the budget committees to seek more effective tools.

In July 1979, Muskie became concerned about the lack of committee compliance with the legislative savings and sent letters to the leaders and ranking members of the appropriate committees, requesting that they take action. Muskie warned each of them that unless they reported the requested changes, the deficit would grow. Blandly the leaders replied that while they agreed that the deficit was a problem, they did not believe cutting their programs was the best solution. Respectfully they declined to obey the injunctions of the budget resolutions.^[18] The ease with which the substantive committees eluded budget committee attempts to broaden the budgetary net undoubtedly contributed to the floor success of resolutions. Knowing that they would later be able to ignore the resolution, committees had made no efforts on the floor to strip the resolution of proposed savings.^[19] The SBC took umbrage at this sort of behavior: "The First Budget resolution assumed reductions

[18] The correspondence between Muskie and the other chairmen is included as an appendix in Senate Budget Committee, Second Concurrent Resolution on the Budget, FY 1980, S. Rept. 96–311, 96th Cong., 1st sess. (USGPO, 1979), pp. 195–248.

[19] As Schick explains, "These committees therefore opt for silence when the budget resolution is debated in the expectation that their inaction will force the Budget Committees to restore the funds later in the year." Congress and Money, pp. 318–319.

in outlays of $5.6 billion. No voice was raised against that policy on the Senate floor. Indeed, many a speech has endorsed the policy of frugality. Many a press release has broadcast a firm commitment to the painful politics of austerity. But as this report is filed, it is clear that the rhetoric has not been reflected in policy."^[20]

Initiating Reconciliation

In 1980, matters changed decisively. Reconciliation replaced legislative savings, and the focus of spending reduction efforts shifted out of the budget committees, ultimately to the floor.

The SBC had moved tentatively to initiate the use of reconciliation in 1979, after the committee chairs refused to comply with their assigned legislative savings. Frustrated by the nonchalance with which committees had been able to ignore the first resolution, the SBC included the legislative savings in the second resolution, in the form of reconciliation instructions to the committees. This first attempt to invoke the procedure was a committee initiative, intended to provide for enhanced enforcement of the committee's own resolution. There was some dissent on the Senate floor, but a motion to delete the reconciliation language failed. The Senate's second concurrent resolution on the budget for FY 1980 thus called for reconciliation; the House resolution, however, did not.

In conference the House side argued successfully that the timing of the budget process did not favor use of reconciliation to achieve substantial legislative changes.

[20] Senate Budget Committee, Second Concurrent Resolution on the Budget, FY 1980, S. Rept. 96–311, 96th Cong., 1st sess. (USGPO, 1979), pp. 6–7.

The second resolution should be passed by September 15, and the reconciliation bill, implementing legislative changes mandated by the resolution, is to be passed ten days later. On October 1, the fiscal year begins. Attempting to speed up the legislative process to that extent is infeasible, especially if nontrivial changes are required. Moreover, the official schedule of the reconciliation process is incompatible with the Constitution. The Constitution allows the president ten days to veto legislation, whereas the budget process provides only a week between passage of the reconciliation bill and the start of the fiscal year. Perceiving the seriousness of these difficulties, the Senate conferees receded from their position, and the reconciliation language was dropped. But the possibility of using reconciliation to reduce entitlements was not forgotten.

Shortly after President Carter submitted his FY 1981 budget proposal to Congress on January 28, 1980, inflation and interest rates soared. A weak economy, high inflation, and rising interest rates augured badly for Democratic electoral fortunes in the fall elections. Acting on the belief that the $15.8 billion deficit in Carter's budget had adversely affected the bond markets, Democrats from House and Senate leadership and both budget committees met with representatives from the White House in order to produce a new and, they hoped, balanced budget. In a series of meetings lasting some ten days the participants put together a package of spending cuts and tax increases designed to produce a "balanced" budget, achieved only by using unrealistically optimistic economic projections. But the unlikelihood that the package would produce budgetary balance was not as important as the agreement that some entitlement programs should be cut.

Having reached agreement on a package of legislative changes, the problem of getting them enacted remained. Experience over the previous years with legislative savings made clear that this was not trivial. To overcome some problems inherent in cutting the budget, they decided to depart from strict adherence to the Budget Act and employ the reconciliation procedure on the first resolution. According to the letter of the Budget Act, reconciliation is a device to enforce the ceilings in the second. But because the Budget Act stipulates that the first resolution may contain "such other matters relating to the budget as may be appropriate to carry out the purposes of this Act," it was deemed legally and procedurally acceptable to shift reconciliation from late in the process to early. In due course, parliamentary rulings affirmed the legitimacy of this informal but important modification of the budget process.

Introducing reconciliation profoundly altered the authorship of resolutions. Prior to 1980 budget resolutions, written in the budget committees, were the result of long negotiations conducted among the committee members. The manner of the negotiations conducted by each committee was quite different; the HBC was highly partisan, and the SBC bipartisan. Nonetheless, decisions were made in the committees, and these decisions, though far from earth-shattering, subsequently were accepted by floor majorities. The pattern of budget resolutions being written in budget committees was altered in 1980 when the committees instead performed a largely ministerial function. Instead of negotiating the resolution within themselves, the committees took the budget as rewritten by the leadership group and drafted it into the form of a budget resolution. The budget committees made some changes but generally adhered to

the agreements worked out previously by the leadership. Both committee-reported resolutions included reconciliation instructions.

Reconciliation on the first resolution constitutes a repudiation of the original agreements of 1974 that exempted existing entitlements from budget process control. The significance of these developments was not lost on the defenders of committee prerogatives. The day after the HBC reported its resolution, most House committee chairs sent a letter of protest to Speaker O'Neill:

We are opposed to the inclusion of reconciliation in the First Concurrent Resolution on the Budget…. Given the time available to the Budget Committee, it is impossible for it to become well enough acquainted with all federal programs and activities to know where to apply appropriate economies program by program. The standing committees, with expertise in the programs in their respective jurisdictions, should attempt to translate the targets into program detail. Invoking reconciliation in the first step of the congressional budget process undermines the committee system, reposing in the Budget Committee authority to legislate substantively with respect to the nature and scope of federal activities.^[21]

One may take the leaders' protest as either a principled defense of committees or a reflex response to an invasion of their traditional rights. But however impeccable the chairs' logic, it seems somehow the case that when committees "attempt to translate the targets into program detail," somehow the targets are invariably

[21] This letter is reproduced in House Budget Committee, A Review of the Reconciliation Process, Committee Print, 98th Cong., 2nd sess. (USGPO, 1984), p. 19.

missed. The structure the chairs defend is simply inappropriate to the task of budget cutting. So when the political circumstances for whatever reason demand that budgets be cut, committees will of necessity be, to some extent, supplanted by other structures and procedures more conducive to that goal. When the HBC resolution came to the floor in the House, a Morris Udall (D-Ariz.) motion to strip the resolution of reconciliation language failed, 127–289.^[22]

Upon passage of the resolution, committees had until June 15 to report their reconciliation legislation. Grudgingly, they more or less complied with their reconciliation directives.^[23] On June 30, facing little opposition, the reconciliation bill passed in the Senate, and on September 4 the House passed its reconciliation bill. After an arduous conference committee, the conference report was passed by both houses, and the first reconciliation bill in history was signed into law by President Carter. Thus, under Democratic party auspices, a full and complete system of congressional budget control was established.

Reconciliation is commonly believed to have been initiated in 1981 by David Stockman, when the process was used to serve Republican purposes. Had the Democrats not inaugurated reconciliation by shifting it to the first resolution, it would not have been available for

[22] CQ Weekly Report, May 10, 1980, pp. 1228–1229.

[23] There was, however, plenty of cheating by the committees. One particularly transparent trick was to delay an intergovernmental payment from September until October. This did not reduce total spending at all, only spending in FY 1981. Efforts of this kind led to the adoption of multiyear reconciliation in successive reconciliation instructions. By requiring committees to cut spending over three years, they are deprived of the opportunity simply to shift spending to the next year. However, they can still shift spending to a previous fiscal year, for the same devious purpose.

Stockman in 1981. It is doubtful that the House parliamentarian, an appointee of the Speaker, would have allowed reconciliation on the first resolution, to the benefit of Ronald Reagan's program, had the precedent not been set the previous year.

Enhanced Importance of Budget Resolutions

From 1980 to 1987, Congress passed a reconciliation bill every year, confounding the expectations of observers who viewed reconciliation as too contrary to the ordinary fragmented and decentralized tendencies of Congress to survive. Examining the record of Congress in enacting reconciliation bills, one could argue that the process has been a failure. Committees regularly cheat in producing savings, claiming credit for more savings than actually appear. Reconciliation bills have often been enacted late; consequently the savings realized are reduced. Reconciliation bills have also increased expenditures by including large amounts of extraneous matter inserted by committees because they know a reconciliation bill is sure to pass. Such behavior is exactly what one would expect from committees, whose members tend to support the programs in their jurisdictions and prefer not to cut them.

There are also impediments other than committee obstruction to the final enactment of reconciliation legislation, and these have often been more troublesome. In 1983, for example, both the House and the Senate passed their reconciliation bills, but disagreements between the House, the Senate, and the president delayed final enactment of the legislation until April 5, 1984—some five months after the budget committees reported the original reconciliation bills. One can hardly blame

the budget process or the reconciliation procedure for failing to overcome the inefficiencies stemming from separation of powers.^[24]

Congress and its committees have not implemented reconciliation perfectly, but the failure to attain perfection should not cause us to dismiss the process. To an impressive extent, congressional committees have responded to their reconciliation instructions and have complied with the demands of their chambers. Legislation cutting spending and raising taxes—legislation not enacted under ordinary legislative procedure—has been enacted with the help of reconciliation. The extent of committee compliance with reconciliation is particularly impressive when compared with that under "assumed legislative savings." Without an effective enforcement mechanism, committees routinely ignored the urgings of the budget committees to reduce expenditures, and only minute proportions of the assumed savings were actually enacted. Under reconciliation, far larger proportions of the savings targeted in the resolution have been enacted. Table 1 compares assumed legislative savings and reconciliation and shows that compliance with the resolution has improved markedly since the introduction of reconciliation. This table strongly suggests that, since 1980, budget resolutions have been meaningful statements of policy, whereas previously they were ignored.

Insofar as floor majorities have been able to agree on spending reductions, committees have not impeded their enactment. With reconciliation, budget resolutions are transformed from more or less symbolic documents to effective means of enforcing majority preference.

[24] See CQ Almanac, 1984, p. 160.

As the budget resolution has become more important, the surrounding politics has become far more contentious, and power over the content has shifted away from the budget committees.

Budget Negotiations after 1980

No consistent pattern in the authorship of budget resolutions has emerged since 1980, except that budget committees have generally not been the forum in which the policy embodied in the resolution has been negotiated. With impressive regularity, either the committees have adopted as their own budgets developed elsewhere, or the resolutions they report have been defeated or fundamentally altered on the floor. The budget committees have ceased to function as independent, autonomous decision-making bodies. Table 2 shows briefly the origins of the first budget resolutions that have passed each chamber, beginning in 1980 (FY 1981). Given the dominance of the budget committees over budget resolutions prior to 1980, the shift of budget influence since then represents a remarkable change.

An examination of adopting budget resolutions in the past several years shows that neither budget committees nor any other organized entity within Congress (or outside) is able to exercise consistent control over the process. Over the period 1980–1984, there were five complete budget cycles, each of which followed a markedly different pattern. Sometimes the majority party prevailed, but frequently it did not. Occasionally an ad hoc bipartisan coalition passed the resolution, but frequently the votes came almost solely from one party. Upon occasion the president occupied a prominent position in the proceedings, but often he did not. The budget

get committees will not disappear given their vital role in enforcing resolutions, but there is no basis upon which the budget committees will be able to exercise substantial control over meaningful budget resolutions. Rather, as long as budget policy is conducted through budget resolutions and reconciliation, we should expect instability to continue as the norm.^[25]

1981

The election of Ronald Reagan as president was almost universally interpreted as a repudiation of Democratic policies, and it caused many Democrats to be more than normally inclined to cut the budget. On February 18, newly installed President Reagan detailed a new budget calling for large spending and tax cuts in his first speech

[25] See John Ellwood, "Comments," p. 378.

to the Congress. It was not Reagan's intention to wait until the second year of his presidency to see his budget priorities enacted—a fate often forced on new presidents by the inconvenient schedule of the budget cycle. Three weeks after the congressional address, OMB released a detailed, program-by-program documentation of Reagan's revision of Carter's last budget.^[26]

As in 1980, there arose the question of how to get Congress to enact a complex policy that reached into the jurisdictions of many committees and was likely to be opposed by those committees. Again, reconciliation was chosen as the best means.

Several weeks before the normal date to begin work on the first budget resolution, the SBC, controlled by Republicans, began the budget process by reporting out reconciliation instructions. Because of Democratic fears of a turn to the right in the electorate, they largely went along with the Republican majority as the committee drafted reconciliation instructions that mirrored the president's recommended budget. The committee exercised little or no independence. Indeed, even small departures from the president's budget were not allowed by some committee members. When, for example, the draft budget resolution suggested by Chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) called for budget deficits of $60 billion in 1984, contrary to the president's official position that the budget would be balanced by then, three Republicans on the committee refused to support Domenici. He was forced to add future unspecified savings under "allowances."^[27] The reconciliation resolution, Senate Concurrent

[26] Office of Management and Budget, Fiscal Year 1982 Budget Revisions (Washington, D.C.: OMB, March 1981).

[27] See Senate Budget Committee, First Concurrent Resolution on the Budget, Fiscal Year 1982 , S. Rept. 97-49, 97th Cong., 1st sess. (USGPO, 1981), pp. 196, 198. The unspecified savings were the "magic asterisk" referred to by David Stockman. According to William Greider, "somehow or other, the Senate Budget Committee staff insisted upon putting honest numbers in its resolution—the projected deficits of $60 billion plus running through 1984. That left the Republican senators staring directly at the same scary numbers that Stockman and the Wall Street analysts had already seen…. After a few days of reassurances, Stockman persuaded the Republican senators to relax about the future, and two weeks later they passed the resolution—without being given any concrete assurances as to where he would find future cuts of such magnitude. In effect, the 'magic asterisk' sufficed." William Greider, The Education of David Stockman and Other Americans (New York: Dutton, 1982), pp. 36–37.

Resolution 9, came to the floor unencumbered by the full trappings of a budget resolution. Reporting reconciliation instructions without a full budget resolution was unorthodox, but it was explained as necessary to give Senate committees extra time to produce their legislation. In the full Senate the resolution was met by Democratic opposition and resolute Republican support. Democrats offered numerous amendments, and all were turned aside by a highly unified Republican party. Somewhat later, the SBC reported a more orthodox, complete budget resolution. Another perfect reflection of presidential priorities, it met similar receptions in both committee and chamber. But on the vote for final passage, a majority of Democrats supported the resolution, and it passed by a wider margin than any previous budget resolution in the Senate, 78–20.

On the House side, James Jones (D-Okla.), the new chairman of the HBC, was faced with the challenge of producing and passing a Democratic resolution despite a diminished Democratic majority. His plan was to cooperate with the president, but only including about 75 percent of the president's recommended cuts in the resolution. By calling for smaller tax cuts and a smaller defense

spending increase, Jones's resolution managed to project a smaller deficit for FY 1982 than either the president's or the Senate's budget. In committee, Jones's resolution was adopted by a party-line vote.

Trouble awaited the HBC resolution on the floor. In every previous year the Republican minority had challenged the committee-reported resolution on the floor with a substitute resolution, but prior to 1981 they had never won. In 1981, Phil Gramm, a Texas Democrat newly appointed to the HBC, joined the minority in sponsoring a challenge to the House resolution.^[28] Gramm, OMB Director David Stockman, and Minority Whip and House Budget Committee member Delbert Latta (R-Ohio) drafted an alternative resolution that incorporated all the president's budget and tax recommendations. The substitute resolution, known as Gramm-Latta, was widely favored to win,^[29] and it did, by the surprisingly large margin of 253-176—with sixty-three Democrats and all Republicans voting for the amendment. The resolution required thirteen committees in the Senate and fifteen in the House to report legislation producing total first year cuts of about $35 billion. The committees named in the resolution were to send their legislation to their respective budget committees by June 15.

Unsurprisingly, the Senate committees responded with greater alacrity than their House counterparts. After much prodding by Leon Panetta (D-Calif.), who

[28] For his close collaboration with the Republicans, Gramm was rewarded by the Democrats with the revocation of his committee assignments. For a study of Gramm's role in the budget battle and his subsequent punishment, see Ross K. Baker, "Party and Institutional Sanctions in the U.S. House: The Case of Congressman Gramm," Legislative Studies Quarterly 10 (August 1985): 315–337.

[29] Greider, Education of David Stockman , pp. 32–34.

was in charge of the HBC reconciliation task force, House committees did respond to their reconciliation instructions, though the manner in which they did so indicates that they had not come to accept the Reagan revolution in their hearts. William Greider reports:

Some of the Democratic committee chairmen in producing their cuts were playing the "Washington Monument Game" (a metaphor for phony budget cuts, in which the national Park Service, ordered to save money, announces that it is closing the Washington Monument). The Education and Labor Committee made deep cuts in programs that it knew were politically sacred: Head Start and Impact Aid for local schools, and care for the elderly. The Post Office and Civil Service Committee proposed closing 5,000 post offices.^[30]

In response to the attempted subversion of the president's budget, Republicans on seven committees together with OMB prepared alternate reconciliation legislation. The Republicans planned to repeat their earlier success in adopting the resolution by substituting on the floor for the reconciliation legislation from those committees. The president and his men mounted a massive lobbying effort on behalf of Gramm-Latta II (as the package of substitute legislation was known). The mobilization of the public by both the administration and its interest-group allies succeeded in causing the Reagan faithful across the country to send letters and call their representatives in unprecedented numbers. The House mailroom was inundated with letters and also, improbably, thousands of pie plates, sent to symbolize

[30] Ibid., p. 52. Closing post offices makes much sense for developing postal efficiency, but they are politically untouchable.

the desire of their senders that the shares of the budgetary "pie" be rearranged.

Normally the constituency for indirect benefits is invisible and inactive, but the size of the reconciliation bill enabled Reagan to focus attention on it and create a massive, clamorous constituency for budget cutting.^[31] The Democratic leadership's strategy for defeating Gramm-Latta II was to vote separately on each committee package. The Democrats thought that if each committee's legislation was considered in comparison only to that proposed in its place, some or all of the substitutes could be defeated. The Republicans, on the other hand, sought a single up or down vote on the entire Gramm-Latta substitute. In compliance with the wishes of the leadership, the Rules Committee reported a resolution that broke Gramm-Latta into seven packages, each with a separate vote, and also disallowed its nonbudgetary provisions—of which there were plenty. The critical vote was on the rule. At this, the second crucial juncture of the budget process in 1981, the Republicans again prevailed over the putative Democratic majority. After the Rules Committee rule was first defeated, Delbert Latta, ranking minority member on the committee, offered a substitute rule that called for a single vote on all the substitute reconciliation legislation, and it passed. The House then considered the Gramm-Latta II package en bloc and passed it.

On the strength of just two key votes—first on the resolution and second on the reconciliation bill—the Republican House minority with the assistance of the boll weevil Democrats was able to avoid almost completely the normal obstructionism of the committee system of

[31] Phil Gramm, holder of a Ph.D. in economics, demonstrated his understanding of this problem in an article, "Understanding the Deficit Problem," Wall Street Journal , Oct. 16, 1980, p. 28.

Congress and pass President Reagan's budgetary program in its entirety. By ordinary procedure, cutting a hundred or so programs, as the reconciliation bill did, would require that the administration position prevail on each of several hundred votes—in subcommittees, in full committees, and on the floor, in both the House and the Senate. In this case, a legislative majority that was not the majority party triumphed over both the committees and the majority leadership by controlling the floor.

1982

The third consecutive year of reconciliation in the budget process continued the unblemished record of budget resolutions originating from sources other than budget committees. The president's budget in 1982 disappointed the many who had hoped Mr. Reagan would make a serious effort to deal with the mounting size of the federal deficits. This budget proposal was satisfactory to no one, for not only did it project a deficit in the $200 billion range, but it required large social spending reductions just to keep it that low. After it quickly became apparent that the president's budget was useless as a guide to budget action, leaders from the House and Senate, along with representatives from the White House, met to negotiate a compromise budget. This group, known as the Gang of Seventeen, was able to agree on a number of technical issues, but it could not agree on important issues of budget priorities. After six weeks of negotiations, the summit broke up on April 28, after which both budget committees began independent efforts to craft resolutions that could pass.^[32] Unlike the

[32] Lawrence Barrett describes these meetings in Gambling With History (New York: Penguin, 1984), chap. 20, pp. 364–371. Paul Light describes the "Gang" in the following manner: "The meetings seemed to inaugurate a new form of presidential-congressional government. The meetings were secret. There were no minutes or transcripts. All conversations were strictly off the record. The gang was free to discuss all of the options without fear of political retaliation. It became an ad hoc, month-long negotiation group, existing completely outside the constitutional system. This was not just separate institutions sharing power; this was a new kind of government body involving a single chamber of national leadership…. Unlike presidential commissions, the gang had considerable power to enforce its decisions inside Congress." Light, Artful Work: The Politics of Social Security Reform (New York: Random House, 1985), pp. 143–144.

previous year, the SBC broke publicly with the president, and, on a strict party-line vote in committee, reported out a resolution that called for tax increases and smaller budget cuts than the president had requested.^[33] This was a daring departure, for the committee took the lead in calling for cuts in Social Security. The president had been adamant in his opposition to any kind of tax increase, but, before voting to report, the Republicans on the committee persuaded Reagan to give the resolution his lukewarm blessing.

Vehement opposition appeared immediately. Senator Daniel P. Moynihan (D-N.Y.) introduced a "Sense of the Senate" resolution in the Senate denouncing cuts in Social Security. It was narrowly defeated and replaced by a milder condemnation that passed 96-0.^[34] Following this early rebuff, the resolution came to the floor where, after a couple of days of debate, it became clear that it could not pass in its present form. Majority Leader Howard Baker called a recess, and the Republicans repaired to a caucus. There they met behind closed doors for several days and rewrote the resolution. Among other changes, they deleted the Social Security cuts and

[33] Senate Budget Committee, First Concurrent Resolution on the Budget, FY 1983, S. Rept. 97–385, 97th Cong., 2nd sess. (USGPO, 1982).

[34] Light, Artful Work, p. 129.

relieved the Labor and Human Resources Committee of its reconciliation cuts (at the request of Orrin Hatch, the committee's chairman, who was expected to face a tough electoral challenge in the fall). After being renegotiated in the caucus, the resolution was taken back to the Budget Committee and very quickly reported out. Committee action at this stage was absolutely perfunctory. Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) described the committee action as follows: "Gone were the days when we worked function by function, mission by mission, to weigh program priorities against fiscal policy dictates. As our chairman put it, the committee has 'matured beyond' that. It was all over in a matter of minutes, and the committee had adopted a plan that had seen the light of day only hours before."^[35]

The purpose of the Republican caucus was to negotiate a resolution behind which all the party could stand united, in order to turn aside the expected onslaught of difficult Democratic amendments. Unless the Republicans could agree and pledge themselves to reject all amendments before taking the package to the floor, the package would come apart under the pressure of "grandmas versus tanks" amendments. As expected, the Democrats did offer various tempting amendments, but the Republican strategy worked: the Republicans were able to remain very nearly unanimous in opposition to the amendments. Only one, a James Sasser (D-Tenn.) amendment to restore cuts in railroad retirement benefits, passed. The Republicans, on the other hand, offered no amendments at all.

The twelve Republicans on the SBC were in a position neither to speak for the entire party nor to negotiate

[35] Cong. Rec., daily edition (May 21, 1982), p. S5869.

controversial budget packages and expect the rest of the party to follow. Instead, the resolution was negotiated in the Republican caucus itself. The key to controlling the budget resolution is the ability to assemble a majority, and that is a task for which budget committees are ill-suited.

In broad outline, House action on the resolution in 1982 nearly duplicated that of 1981. On a partisan vote the HBC reported a resolution that was subsequently defeated on the floor. Ultimately a Republican substitute passed, backed by a coalition nearly identical to that which passed Gramm-Latta II the year before. But the details of the process reveal both the inability of the HBC to exercise leadership in budget matters and the extent to which budget action centered on the floor.

Exactly as he had the year before, HBC Chairman James Jones drafted a resolution and brought it into committee; it was reported out without any Republican support. Before this resolution came to the floor, however, it became an orphan. Both Jones and the leadership backed away from it to support a different resolution sponsored jointly by Jones and the House leadership. The floor contest, then, centered not on the HBC-reported resolution, but on three substitutes: one liberal, offered by Jones and leadership; one moderate, offered by Les Aspin (D-Wis.); and one conservative, offered by Delbert Latta. The rule governing floor consideration treated each substitute amendment as equal, according none a privileged position.

Of these, the Latta amendment was initially favored to win. But discipline within the conservative coalition broke down in the amending process, and a carefully negotiated package fell apart. The problem developed

when an amendment offered by Mary Rose Oakar (D-Ohio) to transfer funding from defense to social spending passed on all three substitutes. Republican disciplines dissolved on the floor, allowing the Oakar amendment—which had not been expected to pass—to win by a substantial margin. David Broder explains how this could happen:

Up for consideration was an amendment by Rep. Mary Rose Oakar, D-Ohio, to the Republican budget Michel and the President were backing…. The Democratic leadership was backing Oakar in confident expectation that Michel would have the votes to defeat her, thus giving the Democrats yet another of what they called their "grandmas vs. submarines" election issues.

But suddenly, more than 60 hard-core Republicans were abstaining. This surprise show of displeasure with the Reagan-Michel budget lasted until the final 60 seconds of voting. Then, 51 of the 62 "yellow-jackets," by the count of Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., one of their leaders, relented and voted with Michel.

But by then the Republican leader had lost control. In the nervous confusion, with the leadership in obvious disarray, both conservative Democrats and Republicans in shaky districts flocked to support Oakar, and 11 of the "yellow-jackets" joined them. With no time left on the clock, Michel was stuck with a 228-196 vote that stripped the Republican budget of its promised Medicare savings and reduced the defense budget far below the level Reagan wanted.^[36]

[36] David Broder, "Yellow-Jackets Block Victory for GOP in House," Oakland Tribune, May 28, 1982, p. A–1.

Thus the Latta substitute, which might well have passed had it not been mutilated by a Democratic amendment, was rendered too liberal by the diminution of the defense function. After the House finished amending the three substitutes, it proceeded in one brief but decisive session to vote them all down.

Two weeks later the House again attempted to pass a budget resolution, this time with success. The HBC reported yet another resolution in the interim but not one the committee Democrats wanted to see passed. They drafted the president's budget submission into the form of a resolution, recalculated it according to CBO economic projections, and reported it.^[37] If it came to a vote, Republicans would face an unpleasant choice. They could either vote against a budget resolution they found distasteful and betray their president or loyally support a resolution they found quite unacceptable. The Democratic and Republican leadership both offered complete substitute resolutions, so that the HBC-reported resolution would come to a vote and embarrass the Republicans, only if neither of the two major substitutes passed. To ensure that one would pass and that the disaster of the first attempt was not repeated, both substitutes were protected by a closed rule, giving each a single, clear vote. Thus protected, the Republicans were able to hold their coalition together and passed their substitute, 219-206.

Apart from its initial effort to produce a passable resolution, the HBC assumed a noticeably minor role: neither of its resolutions was ever in serious danger of passing. In the second round of budget consideration the

[37] House Committee on the Budget, First Concurrent Resolution on the Budget, FY 1983, H. Rept. 97–597, 97th Cong., 2nd sess. (USGPO, 1982).

HBC completely abandoned the effort to assume a position of leadership.

1983 and After

The pattern established in the first three years of reconciliation has continued in much the same manner, although with some variation and embellishment. The SBC has been notably ineffectual, while the HBC has participated more fully, although not occupying a position of conspicuous or independent leadership.

In 1983 the SBC was utterly incapable of agreeing on a serious budget resolution and so, to enable the process to continue, reported a strictly pro forma resolution intended only to serve as a vehicle for floor amendments. The battle to pass a resolution was, in the fullest sense, floor-centered as competing resolutions were debated on the floor. On the basis of careful negotiations a bipartisan resolution, drawing most of its support from the minority Democrats, was able to pass by a margin of one vote. In 1985 the SBC began its deliberations on an auspicious note—a bipartisan vote to cut the defense function. But that cooperative spirit soon disappeared. Committee Republicans met in caucus to complete the resolution and then reported it out by a party-line vote. All this was for naught, however, as the SBC resolution was completely ignored. The crucial negotiations took place later, between Majority Leader Dole and the White House.

In 1983 the HBC recovered from the disasters of the previous two years to write a budget resolution and pass it on the floor. However, the committee did not assume a role of independent leadership. Its purpose, rather, was to negotiate a resolution capable of holding together a diffuse Democratic party. In 1984, unable to reach internal

agreement on a resolution, the HBC took the novel approach of reporting two resolutions, one favored by the chair, and the other, called "pay-as-you-go," devised by George Miller (D-Calif.), a junior member of the committee. Miller's resolution, although opposed by the leadership, passed on the floor.^[38] Even when the HBC has been able to pass a resolution, the negotiations leading to it center not on the House Budget Committee or its Democratic members, but on the entire Democratic party.^[39] In writing the resolution, the HBC leader looks more to his party than to his committee. For instance, to assist in producing a resolution in 1983, the HBC circulated among House Democrats a questionnaire designed to ascertain their views on a range of budget issues and involved many members in the process of writing a resolution.^[40]

As reconciliation was introduced and the budget process became powerful, the focus of budget activity moved from budget committees to more inclusive and more authoritative groups. Since 1980, the budget process has served as an extracommittee structure within which broad budget negotiations have taken place and by which the decisions thus reached have been implemented.

[38] In 1984, a large number of complete substitutes were offered as amendments; Tim Wirth (D-Colo.) offered Reagan's budget as a floor amendment. Only Jack Kemp voted for it as it went down in humiliating defeat, 1-401. CQ Almanac, 1984, p. 20-H.

[39] "The entire Democratic membership of the House took an active role in the formulation of the budget resolution reported by the House Budget Committee on March 21. The Democratic caucus held several meetings to discuss the budget." CQ Almanac, 1983, p. 436.

[40] House Budget Committee, "An Exercise in Hard Choices: Policy-Alternatives," typescript, March 2, 1983. Again in 1985, under a new chairman, Bill Gray (D-Pa.), the HBC circulated the same kind of questionnaire.

Change in the Senate Budget Committee

The success of the reconciliation process has led to charges that the budget committees have become "super-committees." Such allegations can be due only to a serious misunderstanding of their role. The number of votes within a committee is a reasonable measure of the extent to which the committee itself, through its own internal deliberations and negotiations, actually wrote the measures it reports. The more votes in committee, the more directly the members of the committee participated in determining the resolution's content. When there were few votes, we can expect that the committee merely ratified a document written elsewhere and presented to it. As Table 3 shows, the Senate Budget Committee took tremendous numbers of votes in its first years of operation, rising to a peak in 1980 (FY 1981 budget). Subsequently, the total number of votes declined precipitously, to a low of four in 1984 (FY 1985). The decline in the number of votes taken charts the decline in the SBC as an independent decision-making body.

We can also see the decline of bipartisanship in the SBC. Muskie and Bellmon inaugurated the SBC on a bipartisan basis, with the committee minority participating fully and equally in deliberations and markup. Table 3 also summarizes an analysis of votes in committee, broken down according to (1) the party of the member offering the motion and (2) whether the motion was passed. Prior to 1980, more than one-third of all successful motions were offered by the minority, and more than half the motions offered by the minority passed. This evidence indicates that the committee business was conducted on a highly bipartisan basis. Beginning in

1980, when the committee largely adopted the recommendations of the leadership group, fewer and fewer minority motions were accepted. Since 1982 (FY 1983), almost no minority motions have been accepted. SBC deliberations, to the extent they deserve that term, were extremely partisan in 1982. Twenty-seven votes were recorded in committee, and on none of those involving substantive matters (as opposed to, say, votes on economic assumptions) did any Democrats vote for Republican proposals or any Republicans vote for Democratic proposals.^[41] In 1983 (FY 1984) and 1984 (FY 1985), no

[41] Senate Budget Committee, First Concurrent Resolution on the Budget, FY 1983 , S. Rept. 97–385, 97th Cong., 2nd sess. (USGPO, 1982), pp. 121–135.

member of the majority party voted for any motion offered by a member of the minority.

In 1984, the committee members formally recognized that the committee's character was fundamentally altered and that they no longer constituted a deliberative body. For the first time, they dispensed with the detailed function-by-function approach to markup and instead considered only complete packages. In 1985 (FY 1986) the SBC tried again to employ the function-by-function style of markup, but it was not successful. Over the first week of deliberations, as shown in Table 4, committee action was remarkably bipartisan, with more Democratic than Republican motions passing, some of them by very large margins. Mostly these votes concerned the more minor functions in the budget. Social Security, however, was too contentious an issue, bipartisanship broke down, and all the work up to that point was scrapped. The committee Republicans met in caucus and at length wrote a resolution that was then adopted by a nearly perfect party-line vote in the full committee.^[42] Even though they passed the resolution, the action

[42] In minority views attached to the committee report, three Democrats lamented that "despite all the individual decisions made by this committee [in some sixty votes] most of the assumptions on which those choices rest were either reversed or erased in a single vote adopting the committee chairman's substitute." Senate Budget Committee, First Concurrent Resolution on the Budget, FY 1986, S. Rept. 99-15, 99th Cong., 1st sess. (USGPO, 1985), pp. 340–341.

was largely perfunctory, intended to fulfill the committee's responsibility to report a resolution and enable the process to continue in a larger forum. Mark Andrews (R-N.D.) remarked that Republicans "were voting for this turkey to get it out of the committee and onto the floor."^[43] This is the picture of a bipartisan committee become partisan, of a deliberative body that has ceased to deliberate. In no sense is it the portrait of a "super-committee."

Floor-Centered Activity

A Congress in which a party caucus decides on a comprehensive budget policy that is subsequently implemented, or in which a bipartisan floor majority is able to do the same, is not like the Congress that appears in textbook descriptions. As members of Congress have become gradually more concerned with the budget as a whole—which is to say, with budgetary aggregates—they created a budget process that has enabled congressional majorities to exercise control over budget policy. This new budget process enables them to express their preferences, not just on the parts of the budget as the old system did, but also on the whole. When considered as a whole and guided by constraint, the budget becomes so inclusive, so unavoidably redistributive in character and thus so divisive, that the normal committee structure

[43] CQ Almanac, 1985 , p. 447.

of Congress cannot possibly deal with it. Consequently, with the institution of budget control in 1980, we have witnessed the emergence of a new, "floor-centered" legislative style. Such a development was neither explicitly sought nor foreseen when the Budget Act was written or perhaps even when reconciliation was introduced in 1980. Budget committees were set up to oversee the process, but the role they were intended to fulfill, having assumed overarching importance, has been taken over by other, more authoritative bodies.

Budget politics have been floor-centered, but not in the sense that major choices are necessarily made on the floor. They are floor-centered in the sense that mobilizing a floor majority to pass a comprehensive budget resolution has become the most important action each year in Congress; moreover, these majorities do not accept the choices presented to them by committees. Rather, the resolution emerges from negotiations that involve large numbers of members. In the past, committees served as the winnower of legislation, and nearly any legislation reported by a committee has passed on the floor. Floor passage did not constitute a major obstacle to passage, except for certain highly partisan committees.^[44] Congressional majorities had little power except to reject or slightly modify the decisions presented to them by committees. Once majorities were weak, and committees strong; committees are still strong, but majorities have now gained greater capacity to dominate and subordinate the committees.

[44] The leading example of a partisan committee with little influence on the floor is the House Education and Labor Committee. See Richard F. Fenno, Jr., Congressmen in Committees (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973).

When budget resolutions are meaningful documents, initiative in policy moves from committees to whoever is able to control the floor. The politics of budget resolutions is floor-centered, not because all that is important occurs there, but because now floor control means the ability to force action, direct committees, and determine the shape of budget policy, rather than merely to halt action. Reconciliation is an "action forcing mechanism." The importance of this can hardly be overstated, for it obviates the practical veto over legislation normally possessed by committees in their jurisdictions. Increasing the power of majorities increases the importance of the floor compared to that of committees.

One might argue that budget politics have become "party-centered" rather than floor-centered because parties tend usually to organize congressional activity outside committee. I have no theoretical objection to this logic. However, although the congressional parties have taken leading positions in budget formulation, they have not been able to systematically dominate the budget process. In 1983 Slade Gorton organized a bipartisan coalition to pass a resolution, and in 1985 George Miller (D-Calif.) was able to mobilize a large group of freshman, Democratic members of Congress to pass his pay-as-you-go resolution, which was opposed by the leadership. The budget process would be party-centered if the parties were able to mobilize majorities to pass budget resolutions. Because they have not been able to do so, the question of who dominates the budget process remains open. I use the more inclusive term "floor-centered."

Moving power out of committees, to the floor, changes the character of the legislative process. Norms of universalism and reciprocity, traditional signs of civility in

Congress, are little in evidence while considering budget resolutions. Passing budget resolutions, unlike most congressional action, involves "hardball" politics. When issues are considered individually, without posing explicit trade-offs between programs and functions, members can engage in cooperative, mutually beneficial behavior. By not criticizing each other's favorite programs and by voting to fund them all, all members can benefit. Conflict in Congress can be limited by not considering trade-offs, but budgets cannot be controlled by this means. The budget process affords members the possibility of maintaining budget control, but only by destroying the internal calm of Congress, for it is nothing if not an exercise in budget choices. When considering budget resolutions, Congress ceases to be a "cocoon of good feeling," and serious conflict emerges.^[45]

Change in the behavior of Congress is frequently associated with changes in its rules and organization. Structure never solely determines events, but it commonly intervenes between the emergence of majority preference in favor of a given policy and its realization in legislation. Just as the mere existence of majorities in favor of Civil Rights legislation did not assure passage in the early 1960s, the desire of congressional majorities in the 1970s to exert greater control over the budget did not suffice to accomplish that purpose. In both cases procedural barriers got in the way, and in both cases structural change had to occur before the majorities

[45] Clem Miller used this phrase to describe Congress. Quoted in David Mayhew, Congress: The Electoral Connection (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 79.

could win. When members demand to control the budget from the top down, as they now seem to do, they need a different budget system than that providing bottom-up control. Since 1980, members have had such a system, and, beyond its budgetary consequences, it has also changed the face of Congress.