1. TODAY:
1. Congress' many functions and its inability to govern.
2. Generalizations
3. Congressional structure and procedures



2. GENERALIZATIONS:
1. Summary: legislators have so many responsibilities and are pulled in some many directions that they have relatively little time for deliberation.
1. Proposition: Congress is seldom a forum for discussion and debate about national issues and priorities.
2. In January 1995 Newt Gingrich called for a national debate about the role and function of government. To the extent that such a discussion has taken place it has been always in the context of specific policies.
2. What Congress does results from the political system's components that we have discussed in the last couple of months.
1. Members behave exactly as one would expect political entrepreneurs to act: they assert their independence, attempt to protect and expand their bases of support, bargain for specific benefits rather than rigidly adhere to a party line, listen to those who are most helpful in winning reelection, and the like.
3. Moreover, one can argue that Congress has taken on too many tasks.
4. Congress deals mainly with "middle-level" (branch, twig, symbolic, group, and regional) issues.
1. It does not debate or deliberate about "grand" strategies or policies.
2. Frequently, if not mostly, it enacts policies in a disjointed fashion.
5. Congressional decision making involves a labyrinth of rules and procedures that help members "hide" from responsibility.
1. Proposition: the only meaningful reforms are those that strengthen party discipline. Until that is done, the system will continue to misfire and accountability remain elusive.
6. Congress seldom breaks really new ground. It often acts only after the public has been "sold" on a policy.
7. Leaders' power flows from political circumstance and personality more than institutional resources.





3. ORGANIZATION:
1. Members
1. Independently elected entrepreneurs with "non-overlapping" terms of office.
2. Lack of strong parties
3. Dependence on interest groups
4. The "permanent campaign"
5. Getting reelected constituency services versus the general-welfare state and globalism.
6. Upper class, professional class.
1. How representative are they? Can they empathize with the common person?



4. STRUCTURE AND DECISION MAKING:
1. Bicameral: House and Senate differences:
1. Size, rules, committees, constituencies, ideological orientation, leadership, etc.
2. Committees, reforms, subcommittees
1. Committee chairs
3. Congressional staff
4. Leadership: the limitations on power
1. Favors (carrots) (e.g., committee assignments, special bills)
2. Prestige and skill
3. Knowledge
4. Leaders do not have the power to deny a member a party's nomination
5. Leadership under Newt Gingrich



5. NEXT TIME:
1. Possibly a film clip on congressional decision making and energy
2. Welfare policy
3. Reading:
1. Finish Squire and others, Dynamics of Democracy, Chapter 11
2. You should be well into There Are No Children Here
1. It will come in handy in the discussion of welfare policy

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