William_T._Bianco,_David_T._Canon]_American_Polit

410 Chapter 11 | Congress

of its assigned committee, or by a special rule in the House. In some cases, a bill may

go to the relevant committee, but then party leadership may impose its version of the

bill later in the process. For example, in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September

11, the House Judiciary Committee after hard bipartisan work quickly approved a

version of the Patriot Act to be considered by the full House to give the government

stronger surveillance powers. But a few days later, according to committee member

Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), “[t]hen the bill just disappeared. And we had

a new several hundred-page bill revealed from the Rules Committee” that had to be

voted on the next day. Most members of Congress did not have a chance to read it.^44 The

Affordable Care Act (ACA) also deviated from the standard path.

Second, about one-third of major bills are adjusted post-committee and before

the legislation reaches the floor by supporters of the bills to increase their chances

of passage. Sometimes the bill goes back to the committee after these changes, and

sometimes it does not. One good example of this approach was the ACA, which was

altered by House and Senate leadership after the committees deadlocked on different

versions of the bill. The legislation also bypassed the conference committee; party

leadership worked out the differences between the House and Senate versions

directly. Thus, although most of the legislative work is accomplished in committees, a

significant amount of legislation bypasses committee review.

Third, summit meetings between the president and congressional leaders may

bypass or jump-start the normal legislative process. For example, rather than going

through the Budget Committees to set budgetary targets, the president may meet

with top leaders from both parties and hammer out a compromise that is presented

to Congress as a done deal. This technique is especially important on delicate

budget negotiations or when the president is threatening to use the veto. Often the

congressional rank and file go along with the end product of the summit meeting,

but occasionally they reject it—as happened in February 2014, when all but 28 House

Republicans voted against their leadership on the extension of the debt ceiling that had

been agreed to by President Obama and House and Senate leaders.

Fou r t h, omnibus legislation—massive bills that run hundreds of pages long and

cover many different subjects and programs—often requires creative approaches by

the leadership to guide the bill through the legislative maze. In addition, the massive

legislation often carries riders—extraneous legislation attached to the “must pass”

bill to secure approval for pet projects that would otherwise fail. This is a form of

pork-barrel legislation and another mechanism used in the quest for reelection. One

example was the 2,232-page 2018 omnibus spending legislation that combined all 12

appropriation bills and authorized more than $1.3 trillion in spending. Some of the

“extras” in the bill included $1.6 billion for the border wall (Trump had asked for

$25 billion), $4.65 billion to help address the opioid crisis, and $380 million to the federal

Election Assistance Commission to improve election security and technology.^45

Differences in the House and Senate Legislative Processes

There are three central differences in the legislative processes of the House and the

Senate: (1) the continuity of the membership and the impact this has on the rules, (2) the

way in which bills get to the floor, and (3) the structure of the floor process, including

debate and amendments. First, as discussed earlier, the Senate is a continuing body,

with two-thirds of its members returning to the next session without facing reelection

(because of the six-year term), whereas all House members are up for reelection

every two years. This has an important impact on the rules of the two chambers: there

omnibus legislation

Large bills that often cover several

topics and may contain extraneous,

or pork-barrel, projects.

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