Republican Policy Committee, and Chairman Margaret Chase Smith of the Republican Conference.
One important call was at the office of Senator Wallace Bennett, chairman of the Republican Committee on Committees, in order to learn how committee assignments were made and to register my preferences. The process is in fact mechanical. Once the majority and minority vacancies on the various committees become known, the members of each party in the incoming class line up in order of seniority to take their pick. Each senator is appointed to two major committees, and often to one or more minor ones. My own initial assignments were to Public Works, Space, and the District of Columbia.
It was in committee work that I first came to appreciate the enormous volume of business that courses through Congress, and its implications. It is not unusual to find meetings or hearings involving as many as three committees or subcommittees of which one is a member scheduled for the same time, each involving business of some importance. A senator either spreads himself thin by putting in token appearances at each or devotes himself to one meeting, relying on overworked staff members to keep abreast of what is going on in the other two. I have yet to be convinced that there isn’t somewhere in the bowels of the Capitol a computer programmed to arrange as many conflicting meetings as possible.
The committee system constitutes a delegation of responsibility for legislative work in designated areas. It should not be assumed, however, that a given committee will be representative of the Senate as a whole. Senators naturally tend to gravitate to those committees that interest them the most or whose work is most important to their particular constituencies, and a committee can become as “mission oriented” as an executive agency. Given the broad range of viewpoints represented on each side of the aisle, the requirement that each committee have a majority and minority membership roughly comparable to that of the Senate as a whole is no guarantee that it will reflect the political spectrum in any other sense. Thus committee reports are too often “selling documents” that do not provide other senators with the kind of balanced information that would be needed to help them reach a reasonably educated opinion regarding a bill’s merits.
It isn’t long—especially if controversial and complex legislation is being worked on—before a newcomer senses the enormous influence wielded by committee staffs. These are usually heavily loaded in favor of the majority party in terms of both outlook and availability to committee members. Time and again, after new points are raised in committee, the staff will disappear, to return the next day with what is often a considerably refocused bit of legislation.
It can be extraordinarily difficult for committee members, even those who are particularly concerned with the legislation in question, to keep up with what is happening to it. There simply isn’t time for a member to rethink and reconsider every interlocking provision of a complex bill each time a substantive change is made; hence the heavy reliance on staff. Furthermore, committees often work under enormous pressures to report out particular pieces of legislation by deadlines that are often set not so much by the natural rhythm of the legislative process as by political considerations.
Thus major legislation is often rushed through committee, reported out on the floor of the Senate, and put to a vote with few senators fully understanding it. It is, in fact, virtually impossible for a senator to keep up with most, let alone all, of the significant legislation being considered by committees other than his own. I do not refer to legislation that grabs the headlines and occasions national debate: a senator has to examine such legislation in some detail if only to answer his mail and reply to reporters’ questions. It is, after all, by his positions on conspicuous legislation that he establishes his political identity.
Most of the bills considered by the Senate are relatively inconspicuous, though by no means unimportant. They may establish new programs that will have an enormous impact on American society, on the states, or on the economy; programs that in time may grow into multi-billion-dollar commitments. Yet many of these bills will be enacted with little real examination by most of the senators who will have to vote yea or nay on them, and with less than adequate comprehension of what such bills involve.
A senator simply does not have sufficient legislative help to get a proper analysis of every bill that issues from the legislative mill. Too many bills are called to a vote before the ink has dried on the explanatory report. Thus, all too often a senator’s vote is based simply on a summary description of the bill (which can be totally inadequate), plus whispered conversations with colleagues who may or may not have detailed information as to its content—all in the fifteen-minute period allowed for voting after the bells have started ringing to summon him to the floor.
Technically speaking, any senator can ensure that adequate time is allowed for debate of any bill. He can simply register his refusal to sign on to a unanimous-consent agreement limiting the time allotted for debate. This presupposes, however, that he has had enough advance warning of the particular mischief at hand to record a timely objection to any agreement to which he is not a party. It also presupposes that he will be able to educate and energize a sufficient number of his all-too-preoccupied colleagues to assure himself of sufficient floor support to make the effort worthwhile.
I recall two cases in my own experience—although there are, unfortunately, many more—that dramatize the pressures under which the Senate operates.
In early 1971, Governor Daniel Evans of Washington suggested the need for legislation to cope with economic disasters, similar to existing legislation designed to cope with natural disasters. The law he proposed would be narrow in its focus, providing relief on a short-term, emergency basis to help communities ride out sudden economic catastrophes.
Two bills incorporating this approach were introduced, and hearings on them were held by the Public Works Committee. Several months later, the committee met in executive session to consider the legislation as revised by staff after the hearings. To the astonishment of at least some members, the draft bill differed in fundamental respects from both of the measures that had been introduced. The basic concept had shifted drastically. Instead of a tightly focused bill to bring maximum effort to bear on specific emergency situations, it had become an amorphous one that would also cover areas of chronic unemployment or chronically low economic activity, for which there already existed thirty or forty other federal programs. The definition of areas that could be eligible for relief under the legislation was such that even a neighborhood could qualify for the most exotic kinds of federal help.
Nevertheless, this basically new legislation was approved in a single day by the full committee and reported out. The legislation was then rushed to the floor of the Senate, debated before a largely empty chamber, and put to a vote—all within a day or two of the time printed copies of the bill and of the accompanying committee report had become available to the senators. This legislation opened up a whole new area of federal intervention. It carried no price tag, and it was approved by senators only a few of whom had any grasp of its scope.
The second example concerned a new program of a truly sweeping nature that was enacted by an overwhelming majority of senators, many of whom I am convinced had little understanding of the real issues involved. Just before the August recess in 1971, the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare reported out a measure innocuously titled “A Bill to Extend the Economic Opportunity Act of 1968 and Other Purposes.” The “other purposes” turned out to be the inauguration of a comprehensive federal program for “child development” services designed ultimately to embrace a very large proportion of pre-school-aged children regardless of financial need. Whereas in its first year the new program would cost a mere $100 million (chicken feed these days), the committee report placed the figure for the second year at $2 billion—an amount significantly greater than the projected cost of all the rest of the Office of Economic Opportunity’s activities. Furthermore, the report stated that the cost of the child-development program would double every two years thereafter for some time hence. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Elliot Richardson estimated that the annual cost of the new program would come to $20 billion before the end of the decade.
Thanks to an interested housewife who had followed the progress of the bill in committee, my office was alerted to its implications. Because of the recess, we had time to examine its horrors, and I was in a position to argue, on the basis of expert opinion, against the child-development section. The bill,