Congress: Parties and Leaders

Introduction

• Although the Constitution says nothing on the subject, House and Senate organized along party lines
• The rule books mention majority and minority parties frequently
• Status at the beginning of the 119^th Congress
• Republican majority House, 220-215; Republican majority Senate, 53-47; (although 2 Dems are formally independents)
• 117^th—VP Harris break tie in 50-50 Senate to give Democrats majority
• Recent examples of split-party control
• 2011-14 (112^th & 113^th), Republican House, Democratic Senate
• 2019-20 (116^th), Republican Senate, Democratic House
• 2023-24 (118^th), Republican House, Democratic Senate

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Introduction

• Being the majority party important

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• 1. Provides you with leadership positions—the two most important being Speaker in the House and Majority Leader in the Senate
• 2. Provides you with the committee chairs and a majority of committee members are from the majority party in the chamber

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Leaders

• These are the leadership positions in the House (and their occupants in the 119^th Congress)

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• Speaker: Mike Johnson (R-LA)
• Majority Leader: Steve Scalise (R-LA)
• Majority Whip: Tom Emmer (R-MN)
• Minority Leader: Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)
• Minority Whip: Katherine Clark (D-MA)

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Leaders

Speaker

• Speaker is the only House position described in the Constitution
• Today the Speaker is selected as the first official piece of House business in a Congress by a strict party-line vote
• In the past candidates other than the party’s official nominees get votes, e.g. 25 Republicans defected from Boehner in 2015, 2019, 18 defectors, mainly Dems from Pelosi
• In the C19th we had minority Speakers and numerous ballots to determine the position
• It is generally an uninteresting event
• Paul Ryan initially selected midsession, with Boehner resignation in 2015; Ryan “emerged” as unanimous pick of Republicans

Speaker

• 118^th Congress different
• Narrow Republican majority (5) and very divided caucus—e.g. Trump supporters (“MAGA”), more moderate group etc.
• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) took 15 rounds in January 2023 to win a majority—to do so agrees to allow one member to move to “vacate the chair”—i.e. vote of confidence in the Speaker
• Matt Gaetz (R-FL) offered motion in October 2023 and it passed
• Republicans then tried to elect a new Speaker
• Three candidates either back out or unable to secure a floor majority
• Fourth choice Mike Johnson (R-LA), finally elected
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC) unprecedented Speaker Pro Tempore for 3 weeks
• On list McCarthy forced to make after succession rules changed post 9/11

Speaker

• Speaker really has two roles
• 1. Leader of the House of Representatives—this is an institutional role, like the Speaker of the British House of Commons, mediating debate, running the place, representing it at formal occasions (State of the Union, formal joint sessions etc.)
• 2. Leader of the majority party—this is a partisan role, making sure the majority’s agenda gets passed through the body, promoting the party’s electoral interests
• Strange mix, perhaps a good analogy is allowing a head coach of one of the teams to referee a football game

Speaker

• Speaker’s powers have always been great, perhaps hitting their height 1890-1910 under the Thomas Brackett Reed (R-ME) and Joseph Cannon (R-IL)

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• Assigned members to committees, chaired the Rules Committee, assigned bills to committees, controlled floor debate, Cannon’s favorite soup (bean) still served in cafeteria

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• Today the powers—defined by the Constitution, House rulebook, statute, and his/her party’s rules—not as great, but still important

Speaker

• 1. Appoints majority party members of the Rules Committee
• The Rules Committee writes special rules for important bills that largely determine the length of time the legislation is to be debated on the floor and whether or not it can be amended
• It is “dominated” by the majority; 9-4
• This power therefore helps give the Speaker and majority party great control of the floor agenda and the content of bills passed

Speaker

• 2. Schedules bills approved by committee (and if necessary Rules) for floor debate
• This enables the Speaker to control the flow of bills to the floor

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• It has been used to allow the majority control of the agenda—the “Hastert Rule” where the Speaker will not bring a bill to the floor unless a majority of the party supports it

Speaker

• 3. Power of recognition
• The Speaker (more often his/her designee as presiding officer) must recognize a member to speak during floor debate
• This enables great control over floor proceedings
• 4. Multiple referral
• When bills’ content straddles two or more committees, the Speaker can assign them to multiple—done mechanistically by the parliamentarian otherwise
• Has significant effects on the bill’s prospects

Speaker

• 5. Great influence over the appointment of party’s members to committees
• This is a party rule, each party has a “steering committee” that appoints members to committee positions and the leaders have significant formal influence in those committees
• Helps in the shaping the behavior of rank-and-file
• Boehner used to punish unruly members—this helped stoke discontent among Tea Party/Freedom Caucus
• Has been used to eject members of other party by floor vote—Marjorie Taylor Greene; Eric Swalwell & Adam Schiff (Intelligence), Ilhan Omar (Foreign Relations)
• 6. Appoints House members to conference committees
• Conference committees iron out the differences between House- and Senate-passed bills
• Less important today, more later

Speaker

• But Speakers’ powers still rely on the skills of the office’s occupant and the political context in which he/she operates—the Speaker cannot fire a member, only the voters can

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• 1. Political context
• General popularity within House party
• Size of the majority
• The party of the president—this greatly affects the role, under unified government the Speaker is charged with passing the president’s agenda, under divided government the Speaker heads the opposition

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Speaker

• 2. Personal style
• Dennis Hastert (R-IL), 1999-2006 was a tactician (“It’s 218, stupid”), not well-known outside of Washington
• Possibly same to say about Johnson, although carries water for the administration
• Gingrich & Pelosi—constantly on television, many public appearances, saw it as their job to be a visible party leader

Other House Leaders

• The other positions are just defined in party rules

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• The majority leader really assists the Speaker and helps with the everyday running of the institution when the Speaker is fulfilling his partisan duties

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• The role of the minority leader is largely defined by who holds the White House—when his/her party does, he/she must try to do what they can to get enough majority party support to pass the president’s agenda

Other House Leaders

• Whips try to keep their members together on important measures—recognized only by party rules
• Done using committee assignments, campaign contributions, providing information etc.
• The term is derived from fox-hunting
• There are significant whip mechanisms in both parties in both bodies—members given titles like deputy or zonal/regional whip
• The goal is to get good information and to influence members who feel more obligated to vote with the party if they are part of the leadership

Other House Leaders

• Underneath the whips are the Caucus Chair (Democrats) or Conference Chair (Republicans)—Pete Aguilar (D-CA) and Lisa McClain (R-MI)
• They are a liaison between the party rank-and-file and the leadership, a conduit of information, presenting the membership’s position at leadership meetings
• The conference/caucus ratifies committee assignments by secret ballot
• Also the campaign committees we discussed earlier, DCCC, NRCC

Senate

• These are the leadership positions in the Senate (and their occupants in the 119^th Congress)

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• President: J.D. Vance (R-OH)
• President Pro-Tempore: Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
• Majority Leader: John Thune (R-SD)
• Majority Whip/Assistant Leader: John Barrasso (R-WY)
• Minority Leader: Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
• Minority Whip/Assistant Leader: Dick Durbin (D-IL)

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Senate

Senate

• Two positions are mentioned in the Constitution
• 1. The President—who is the Vice-President of the United States
• Presiding officer of the Senate used to have important powers, but these stripped in the 1820s under divided government and VPs Daniel Tompkins and John C. Calhoun
• Now most important role is to vote to break ties
• 2. The President Pro-Tempore—given as an honorific position to the most senior member of the majority
• Created to fill in for the VP when he was away on executive business
• Until the 1880s the Senate picked a new President Pro-Tem whenever the VP was away

Senate

• The most important power today is the Majority Leader
• It is important to note that the Majority Leader—because of Senate procedures we shall discuss later—is nowhere near as powerful as the Speaker
• Majority Leader position came about just after the Civil War
• Two main procedural powers
• 1. Scheduling bills reported from committee for floor vote—this is quite important
• 2. Initial recognition—during floor debate the majority leader is recognized first by the presiding officer
• As we shall see later, recent majority leaders have exploited this for procedural advantages

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Senate

• Most of the Majority Leader’s powers come from his skills and the political context he operates in—for example, what the party of the president is
• Because of the way the Senate works, the Majority Leader must work closely and communicate regularly with the Minority Leader—such bipartisanship is unnecessary in the strictly majoritarian House
• This tends to make majority leaders strategists and legislative technicians as much as spokespeople and public representatives of their party
• Minority Leader like the Majority Leader role is shaped greatly by which party the president belongs to
• Leading opposition to Trump

Senate

• Assistant Leaders/Whips
• Jobs are defined by their bosses, like the whips (and majority leader) in the House, chamber rules say nothing about what they should do

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• Conferences—again like the House, these are a conduit between the leadership and rank-and-file

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• Campaign committees we discussed earlier, DSCC and NRSC

Congressional Parties

• There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that both bodies have become increasingly partisan over the past couple of decades

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• Chart is the proportion of roll-calls that are party unity votes—i.e. when a majority of Democrats vote on the opposite side to a majority of Republicans

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Congressional Parties

Congressional Parties

Congressional Parties

• Political scientists argue that much of this is explained by greater ideological polarization between the parties

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• The chart shows the differences in party means of the DW-NOMINATE score in each chamber—scores calculated from roll-call votes using a computer algorithm

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Congressional Parties

Congressional Parties

• The question is: Why?
• One plausible answer has been redistricting—House districts becoming more solidly Democratic or Republican, but since the story is essentially the same in the House this does not seem to be so
• Others say it is a function of geography
• The Democrats have lost their conservative wing as the South has become Republican
• The Republicans have lost their liberal wing—in the 1940s-70s New England, OH, PA, the Great Lakes states were very Republican
• Today there are very few moderates and in most Congresses these days not one Democrat is to the right of a single Republican in either body

Congressional Caucuses

• Congress has literally dozens of caucuses, formal (and sometimes not so formal) collections of individual members who meet and communicate on issues of concern to them, discuss legislation and legislative strategy etc.
• Many different types of caucuses, a large proportion have members of both parties and bodies
• Party—these are essentially ideological factions within the parties; e.g. Blue Dogs who are moderate Democrats, Freedom Caucus who are conservative Republicans

Congressional Caucuses

• Demographic—Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Women’s Caucus
• Regional/Geographic—Northeast-Midwest Coalition, Congressional Rural Caucus, House Great Lakes Task Force
• Single-Issue—Congressional Zoo and Aquarium Caucus, House Beef Caucus, Flat Tax Caucus, Pell Grant Caucus, Senate Friends of Scotland