William_T._Bianco,_David_T._Canon]_American_Polit

412 Chapter 11 | Congress

controversial bills that threatened to be derailed by a filibuster. For example, the ACA

was passed in 2010 through reconciliation, and the process was also used for various

attempts to repeal the ACA (the most recent attempt, in 2017, failed in the Senate by a

single vote). It was also used to pass the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

House Rules In contrast to the Senate, the House is a more orderly, although

complex, institution. The Rules Committee exerts great control over the legislative

process, especially on major legislation, through special rules that govern the nature

of debate on a bill. There are three general types of rules: closed rules do not allow any

amendments to the bill, open rules allow any germane amendments, and modified

rules allow some specific amendments but not others. Once a special rule is adopted,

general debate is tightly controlled by the floor managers. Amendments are considered

under a five-minute rule, but this rule is routinely bent as members offer phantom “pro

forma” amendments to, for example, “strike the last word” or “strike the requisite

number of words.” This means that the member is not really offering an amendment

but simply going through the formal procedure of offering one in order to get an

additional five minutes to talk about the amendment.

These descriptions of the two chambers show that although the Senate is formally

committed to unlimited debate, senators often voluntarily place limits on themselves

through unanimous consent, which makes the Senate operate much more like the

House. Similarly, although the House has very strict rules concerning debate and

amendments, there are ways of bending those rules to make the House operate a bit

more like the potentially freewheeling Senate.

closed rules

Conditions placed on a legislative

debate by the House Rules

Committee prohibiting amendments

to a bill.

open rules

Conditions placed on a legislative

debate by the House Rules

Committee allowing relevant

amendments to a bill.

modified rules

Conditions placed on a legislative

debate by the House Rules

Committee allowing certain

amendments to a bill while barring

others.

“Why

Should

I Care?”

Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian statesman of the late nineteenth century, famously said,

“Laws are like sausages; it is better not to see them being made.” Indeed, the legislative

process may be messy, but knowledge of how laws are made is important both for being

an effective legislator and for being a good democratic citizen. Understanding how a bill

becomes a law, seeing the various stages of the process, and recognizing the various

veto points at which a bill may die all help put into context the simplistic complaints about

gridlock and conflict. Now that you have a better understanding of the legislative process,

you should have a stronger basis for evaluating what Congress is doing.

Oversight

Once a bill becomes a law, Congress plays another crucial role by overseeing the

implementation of the law to make sure the bureaucracy interprets it as Congress intended.

Other motivations drive the oversight process as well, such as the desire to gain publicity that

may help in the reelection quest or to embarrass the president if he or she is of the opposite

party. For example, in 2015 Republicans used their oversight powers to call attention to

Hillary Clinton’s use of private servers for her work-related e-mail as secretary of state and

the way that she handled the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi. While these hearings

were, at least in part, politically motivated (she was no longer secretary of state), the most

important motivation for oversight is to ensure that laws are implemented properly.^50

There are several mechanisms that Congress may use to accomplish this goal (see

also Chapter 13). First, the bluntest instrument is the power of the purse. If members

of Congress think an agency is not properly implementing their programs, they can

DESCRIBE HOW CONGRESS

ENSURES THAT THE

BUREAUCRACY IMPLEMENTS

POLICIES CORRECTLY

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