Inside Congress by Trevor Corning

Author:Trevor Corning
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

TYPES OF BILLS

The legislative process, year, month, and week have their own cycle. What is being described in pieces is largely those cycles in more detail—the rules and then the negotiations. As part of that, much in the Senate is described as “generally” instead of “always” because there are exceptions to everything. Like in the House, relatively few individuals understand the entirety of the rules and their attending texts and precedents, and so members and staff are advised by the floor staffs representing the majority and minority parties and by the Senate parliamentarians, especially on more complex or exceptional maneuvers. However, there are some recurring terms that are helpful in this review of the legislative process. The key floor staffs that run hotlines and conduct many of the cross-party floor negotiations are based in the cloakrooms that each party has, which are located directly off the Senate floor. These staffs advise the leaderships, and also the floor managers. When a particular bill is being considered, the chairman and ranking member of the committee that has jurisdiction over the bill become the floor managers, and, along with other members and the leaders, manage the process of using the rules and negotiations to move a bill through the floor process. That process could include amendments, cloture or time agreements, success or failure. As you read through the different pieces, it is common to experience the individual parts making more sense at the end, once they all fit together.

Politically and practically, the legislative items listed in the legislative calendar fall into three general (though not technical) categories:

Boutique bills are issue-specific bills that focus on particular issues such as cyber security or veterans’ affairs and are usually driven by one or a few major champions. Their making it as far as the calendar is often a result of enjoying bipartisan support.

Deadline-driven bills are bills related to issues that must be addressed by a certain date such as the debt limit, funding the government, or the expiration of programs such as the Highway Trust Fund. Until relatively recently, these types of bills were often helped to the finish by a mechanism of congressionally directed spending or projects called “earmarks,” whereby members would advocate for and then point to specific resources coming to their state. Earmark-like moves are still sometimes seen, but the practice in general ended in 2010. These big deadline-driven, must-pass bills are now more driven by political pressure and top-level negotiations and messaging between the House, the Senate, and the White House.

Messaging bills are fairly common and could be said to be born to fail—that is, their real purpose is not necessarily to become the law of the land. Instead, they are designed to send a message to the public about issues that distinguish the political parties from each other, or they create difficult or otherwise politically advantageous votes. Often these bills are given names that sound very direct in purpose, partisan or confrontational. These bills often fail to achieve the consensus they

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