LETTER
Procedural Reform in the 104th Congress
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Sadaam Scam
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JOURNAL
The China Question
Capitalism and the Peoples' Liberation Army
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The Premature Burial:
America's Seventh Party System
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The Impact of the Republican Victories
in the 1997 Off-Year Elections
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REVIEW
Ending the 55 Mile Per Hour Speed Limit
Krugman and Limits to Growth
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FORUM
Mystic Mechanics:
An Anatomy of American Civil Religion
(draft doctoral dissertation)
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NOTEBOOK
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PROCEDURAL REFORM IN THE 104TH CONGRESS
In late October, 1997, the stock market fell over 600 points wiping out more than half a
trillion dollars in paper wealth in one stroke. Simultaneously, the government announced
that the deficit for the last fiscal year had fallen below $ 25 billion. Bill Clinton was quick
to claim credit for the later, but had nothing to say about the former. Actually, while he
had nothing to do with the declining deficit, he had a great deal to do with the fall in stock
prices. The trade war rhetoric of his Japanese policy for six years has helped kindle the
incipient trade war among some nations of south Asia, while his consorting with mainland
China has complicated the equation, compounding the impact of the instability of the
Hong Kong exchange and the developing currency crisis in the area, although the Wall
Street fall was greater in proportion than that in any other country in late October, at least.
What probably did as much as anything to set off the drop on Wall Street was his
greenhouse policy announced just days before it occured. Wary of what will happen in
Kyoto in December, the jitters generated, reinforced perhaps by Janet Reno's wreckless
charges against Microsoft, pulled the rug out, at least temporarily, but with long term
impact inevitable from that sort of wealth loss. There is danger beneath all the optimism of
investors who look for the kind of bargains this kind of decline can produce, if selling off
cascades to mutuals and beyond. That is unlikely. As for the deficit closure, had it not
been for the Republican Congress, and had Clinton's budgets and policy initiatives such as
national health care not floundered, the deficit would have been expanding rather than
shrinking.
But this is something that the GOP Congress gets little credit for having effected. Instead,
what they caught from the national media and the administration and its partisan allies has
been the smear campaign about the Republican plans to gut social programs and starve
people in the streets, which was so associated in a year and a half of campaign
commercials with attacks on the Contract with America. Nevermind that not only did the
Contract win broadbased approval in Congress -- bipartisan -- but that it was designed to
consist of items widely supported by the voting population.
It is this Contract with America which also launched the impetus for the extraordinary
reforms that have been undertaken in the 104th and to a lesser extent the 105th
Congresses.Curiously, however, they have received little attention in academia or the
popular media, despite their sweeping nature.
Among the more important of the changes in procedure pushed by Gingrich with his new
majority were some fifteen reforms in four general categories:
Reforms of Congressional procedures
Budgetary Reforms
Unsuccessful Structural Changes
Operational Measures.
REFORMS OF CONGRESSIONAL PROCEDURE
One of the first parts of the Contract with America, which passed the House unanimously
by a vote of 429 to 0 was legislation to make Congress have to operate under many laws
which previous Congresses had imposed on the country but specifically exempted
themselves from having to be bound to adhere to.
Congress' action to exempt itself from some of this legislation is amazing if not
scandalous. Among the measures which became applicable to Congress with the 104th
were the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1988, the Ethics in Government
Act of 1978, both Age Discrimination Acts, the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, the
Freedom of Information Act, and the Social Security Act of 1933. As with all of the
elements of the Contract, this was something which polling data showed overwhelming
support for across the country.
The new Congress also contracted with an outside firm to conduct an independent audit of
House operations. Inspired by such travesties as the House banking, check-cashing, and
post office scandals, the audit did uncover some additional skullduggery. With this action
to, the vote was extremely one-sided, with only one vote of 431 being cast going against
it.
There were only 12 votes in opposition to the cutting of House committees by one-third,
compared to 416 votes for it. It is surprising that with such a lop-sided vote, such action
was not taken under earlier Congresses, but it lead to a substantial reduction in operating
expenses. Not amounting to a great deal of money in the overall scheme of things, the
mere fact of the streamlining of House operations was a valuable advantage of this change.
The act also cut by one third the size of the staffs of committeess. 35000 workers were on
congrssional payrolls by 1994, compared to only 11000 in 1970. Some 20000 of these
employees were directly employed by House members as part of their personal or
committee staffs, and, whatever other functions they served, often provided important
effective re-election campaign support.
Ancillary to this reduction was the elimination of taxpayer support for special
congressional caucus operations. Perhaps the loudest outcry was heard from those who
opposed the defunding of the Congressional Black Caucus. If it, like other such groups,
was to continue, which they could, it would have to be by alternative non-public funding.
The House also acted to make committee meetings open to the public across the board,
except where matters of national security might be involved. While it also passed without
a vote against it (431-0), the vote on another measure to end committe voting by proxy
which permitted members present at committe votes to cast the votes of absent committee
members did receive a small amount of opposition, though it won passage easily, 418-13,
ending 'ghost voting.'
The 104th Congress also voted to limit the terms of office of both the Speaker and
Committee chairs to eight years. Seventy four members voted against this action, but their
vote was dwarfed by the 355 supporters. With support like that, it is curious, again, that
the measure did not win approval before the Republicans took control of the House. It
was the fact that the change was put on the agenda by the Contract and Gingrich which
brought this important alteration of congressional procedure. It remains true, however,
that this measure, like most of the others, is only as good as Congress' will to maintain it.
Another Congress could overturn this, as all of the other measures. While it would not be
perhaps wise to limit by greater stricture future Congress' ability to revoke the reforms,
this does suggest the importance of leadership and majorities in cleaning up legislative
process.
BUDGETARY REFORMS
Four major alterations of the Congressional budget process also were made under the
Contract with America during the first 100 days of the 104th Congress:
Requiring a 'super-majority' to raise income taxes
Ending base-line budgeting
A balanced budget amendment
The line item veto.
By a margin of 279 to 152, a three-fifths majority was mandated for Congress to raise
income tax rates. The change would have spelled doom for the Clinton 1993 retroactive
$ 500 billion tax hike. It is an important move in a nation which had gone through twelve
tax hikes twenty years, with constant murmurings on the left for more of them. Getting
261 members of the House is going to make it quite difficult to enact tax hikes, with their
detrimental impact on living standards, productivity, economic growth and development,
and even tax collections, but it is not an insurmountable obstacle given evidence of a
necessity to act.
The 100 days also saw a determination by the Congress to put an end to base-line
budgeting which effectively posed spending increases as cuts if the increases were below
the levels that had been projected. Even given the propensity of certain members of the
Congress to fall back on such rhetorical ruse, the vote was 421 to 6 in favor of putting an
end to the masquerade. Yet another important reform enacted by the 104th was the end
it legislated to nonfunded mandates imposed on the states.
A temporary and trial line item veto power was also extended to the President by a 294 to
134 vote in the House. Even though Clinton has made but sparing use of the authority, it
presents a strong tool for fiscal responsibility in the hands of future executives with
different mind-sets than he possesses who might have to contend with run-away spending
sprees by potential future sessions of Congress. There has been sentiment that such a tool
would hardly be given to the executive by a legislature structurally locked in checks and
balances with each other. But this Congress acted responsibility. In fact, the measure in
some ways rescinds, without formally doing so, the outlawing of impoundments all
Presidents through Nixon had and used, but which Congress enacted after Nixon's demise.
It adds to the weaked recission and deferral version of power that the legislature replaced
impoundment with in 1974.
The balanced budget amendment did not do as well in the Congress. Although it passed in
the House handily, the 300 to 132 vote was not adequate to win consent for state
consideration of an amendment since it did not get enough support in the Senate where it
failed to garner the requisite 2/3 majority for submission by one vote. This clearly demonstrated the
will of the Congress to contain the growth of spending, however, and appears to have won
without having won because of the closure of the deficit in the years since 1995.
UNSUCCESSFUL STRUCTURAL CHANGE
In addition to that insufficient vote, the 104th could neither muster enough votes to pass
the Citizen Legislature Act which would have set term limits by way of Constitutional
amendment. Needing 288 votes to pass, it earned 227 to 204 against. Half the states have
already enacted such legislation, though such efforts have been dealt serious blows by the
courts. And many states, seeing themselves left at a disadvantage by imposing such
limitations on their officials vis a vis other states which would not, were unwilling to
handicap themselves in a Congress which still puts some premium on seniority. The
proposal, however, would not have imposed such limitations, but merely have sent the
determination as to whether or not to write it into the Constitution to the states for
deliberation. Too many members of Congress, perhaps lawfully, were not willing to go
this far.
Partisan Break-Down on Term Limit Vote
For Against
Republicans 81% 19%
Democrats 19% 81%
ADDITIONAL REFORMS
The 104th also determined to attempt to try to clean up legislation by putting some
limitations on the practice of legislation by rider. Although they clearly did not go as far as
they might have, and while Republicans have been criticized in the mainstream media
where such practices were exercised (whereas in the past it was GOP Presidents who got
flack for refusing to accede to such legislative chicanery), the use of the technique has
been far less common since 1995 than at any recent time.
Other operational measures that have been initiated with the 104th Congress have been
efforts to sell one Congressional office building, restriction of some perks that members
have in past years created for themselves, the privatization of one of the parking facilities
of the Congress, and a decentralization of significant degree of the Speakership, spreading
much authority over a broader range of majority leadership.
The importance of such reforms, and others that have been put in place, should not be
overlooked. These are by no measure insignificant changes that have put into action.
That more could be done is unquestionable. But what these items constitute is a veritable
revolution in Congressional process. Actually, the fact that the reforms mentioned were
retained in the 105th Congress despite the somewhat diminished Republican majority is an
important accomplishment in and of itself, perhaps in large measure, though, attributable
to the will of Gingrich and the people around him to retain the reforms. A more objective
evaluation of such changes in Congressional procedures than has thus far been accorded
by political scientists and punditry would establish these alterations of process as one of the
more substantive such moves in American legislative history.
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