From the Texas Tribune: Tensions mount between Dan Patrick and the Texas House

No one likes being checked.

- Click here for the article.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick celebrated a milestone Wednesday: His Senate had acted on all four of Gov. Greg Abbott's emergency items with many more days to go in the 85th legislative session.

"It's the earliest ever that anyone knows of that either body ... has already passed all the emergency items," Patrick said in a radio interview. Abbott's top priorities are "out and done" in the Senate, Patrick boasted — a not-so-subtle contrast with the Texas House, which tackled its first emergency item this week.

It's not the only bone Patrick has to pick with the House these days. As its resistance to some of his top priorities has come into focus in recent weeks, the lieutenant governor has become increasingly vocal about the tension between the two chambers.

"The brow-beating — I think the volume's up a lot higher than we've seen in the past," said state Rep. Lyle Larson, an ally of House Speaker Joe Straus, a fellow San Antonio Republican. "Using a brow-beating approach in governing never bodes well for anybody."

The filibuster, majority rule and minority rights

The author of this commentary discusses the tension between majority rule (a central feature in democracies) and how the filibuster - if not the design of the bicameral system - helps resolve it.

- Click here for the commentary.

As mentioned, the filibuster is one of the primary characteristics that distinguish the House from the Senate. The House was established to more directly reflect the passions of the people—it moves quickly, and by majority rule. The Senate, on the other hand, was designed to “cool” the passions of the House and act with more deliberation.

James Madison wrote that the Senate should “consist in its proceedings with more coolness, with more system, and with more wisdom” than the majoritarian House. George Washington famously observed: “We pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it.”

Put simply, the filibuster is the check on blanket rule by the majority in the House. The filibuster ensures that the minority party in the Senate has a voice in the debate, because without it, the Senate cannot achieve the consensus needed to end debate and move to a vote—which requires 60 votes. The fact of the filibuster forces each side to work with one another, to come to an agreement about final language in a bill, or determine how to deal with competing priorities. In effect, it is a mechanism that forces the “coolness” and the deliberation that Madison and Washington envisioned.

Should all states adopt unicameral legislatures?

This author argues so. His principle point is that bicameralism is inefficient and unnecessary. There is also the problem posed by conference committees where differences between House and Senate bills are hashed out in secret, but not without lobbyist input.

This applies to both 2305 and 2306's discussion of the legislative branch's principle of bicameralism.

- Click here for the article.

One reason a bicameral legislature makes sense at the federal level was illustrated by the Connecticut Compromise. One proposal at the 1787 Constitutional Convention was for the number of representatives and senators from each state to be determined by population. But small states like Delaware were concerned that they would have little voice in federal affairs under such a system. The compromise was that the number of House members would be based on population, but that every state, regardless of population, would have two senators. That distinction doesn't exist on the state level, where both lower- and upper-house districts are drawn based on population.

Every state except Nebraska has a bicameral legislature, but with the passage of time, it's a setup that has come to make less sense. Nebraska passed a ballot initiative to create a unicameral legislature in 1934. When it was implemented in 1937, the state's legislative costs were cut nearly by half.

But cost isn't the only reason for states to adopt unicameral legislatures. Under the bicameral model, differences between bills passed by the lower and upper houses are hashed out in conference committees whose meetings are not public. Conference committees include only a few legislators, and their deliberations can easily be influenced by lobbyists. A unicameral legislature promotes greater transparency.

Then there is the efficiency of the process, with legislation not having to make its way through two bodies and then a conference committee before arriving on the governor's desk.

For those who fear that unicameral legislatures would lead to rash decisions, Nebraska has safeguards in place. In addition to judicial review and the gubernatorial veto, the state requires that each bill have a public hearing, that there be a period of at least five days after introduction before a bill is passed, and that each piece of legislation deal with only a single subject.

Unicameral legislatures are hardly radical; virtually every American municipality has one. The legislatures of Canada's provinces also are unicameral.

The politics behind the payroll tax break extension

Andrew Sullivan breaks it down.

Does Congress Deserve an A?

Here's a reminder that Congress - even though it has the responsibility to pass laws - is actually set up to make this very, very difficult:

What if Congress is working precisely as designed?

Suppose the purpose of Congress is not to pass laws but to stymie the passage of laws. To be precise, what if the purpose of Congress is to provide us with maximum theater while delivering the least number of new laws? In this alternate universe, we should expect a congressional landscape littered with good initiatives that have gone nowhere. Check. We should expect to see ideologues on both sides deeply disappointed that after all the time and effort they spend campaigning and winning elections, so little of what they want actually happens. Check. We'd expect that the issues on which Congress is decisive are mostly empty and symbolic. Check again.

How Congress provoked Standard & Poor’s

Ezra Klein thinks Standard & Poor's reevaluation of the nation's ability to handle its debt reflects on the fact that Congress is prone to inaction:

Here’s what Standard Poor said yesterday: at some point in the nearish future, the United States government is going to need to pass some laws putting us on a better fiscal path. But there’s a good chance that members of the two parties will disagree on what those laws should include, and since Congress’s natural state of existence is paralysis, it’s easy to imagine that we’ll wake up on Jan 1st, 2014, and nothing will have happened. If you seriously think there’s anything surprising, or even unconventional, in that analysis, you should pick up the paper once in awhile.
also:

- S&P Warns: Fix The Deficit, Or Else.

The Trouble With Open Floor Procedures

For 2302, a reminder of our discussion of floor procedures and the power of the Speaker. Jonathan Bernstein argues that Boehner's otherwise laudatory allowance of unlimited amendments on the floor of the House during the recent debate about spending on the 2011 budget has led to an inevitable budget showdown:

When Republicans brought the funding bill to the House floor, Boehner allowed for the introduction of hundreds of amendments, instead of following the usual procedure of having the House Rules Committee screen out most amendments. For Republican members of the House, it was a great opportunity to fulfill campaign promises by authoring amendments, many of which were approved, on all sorts of policy issues. Indeed, instead of just raising or lowering spending levels for federal agencies, these amendments prohibit the government from using any funds to carry out laws that House Republicans don’t like. So, for example, the funding bill now tells the EPA that it cannot regulate greenhouse gases; it tells the FCC that it may not implement net- neutrality regulations; it cuts funding from Planned Parenthood; and, perhaps most critically, it blocks money needed to carry out health care reform.

This means that, instead of sending the Senate a bill carefully tailored for a major budget fight, the House has delivered one containing a hodgepodge of policy fights. Consequently, it will be much harder to find common ground before time runs out to prevent a shutdown.

So the budget bill is not only about the budget. Due to the amendments that have been added to it, it is also about numerous other policy issues as well. Policy conflicts, Bernstein suggests, will lead to an inevitable stalemate and shut down. 

Stalemate on Continuing Resolutions in Congress

Even while the 2012 budget has been introduced and debated, issues associated with the 2011 budget still rage. Recall that money cannot be actually spent - drawn from the treasury, despite the fact that it has been budgetted, unless it is appropriated. As we know in 2302, Appropriations Committees exist in the House and Senate to oversee the process. But the process also allows for opponents of spending an additional chance to alter - after the fact - the budget. Impasses over spending are common, so appropriations bills are often not passed by the time the fiscal year starts. Continuing resolutions are then required to fund governmental operations. But these need to be voted on repeatedy, meaning opponents of pending always have a chance to block spending they are opposed to.

Republicans want to trim back spending on last year's budget, but have differed over how much. The Tea Party members want far more cuts than their leadership originally wanted, but appear to have won the day. Republicans now want to slice $100 billion from the 2011 budget, but they only control the House, not the Senate.  Senate Democrats are unlikely to vote for the budget cuts the House Republicans support. If this dispute is not resolved, and a continuing resolution is not passed when the current one expires - March 4 -- funding for government ceases and it all shuts down.

Related stories:

- Boehner says spending must be cut, but Senate Democrats won’t budge.
- Hill braces for shutdown showdown.
- House's cuts will test Senate.

From CQ Roll Call regarding the current state of the bill: THE HOUSE: Convened at 9 and appears on course for final passage of the $1 trillion, seven-month spending package sometime tonight. Talk of a Saturday session has been fading, even though all sides agreed late last night to allow up to 23 more hours of debate on as many as 129 more amendments.

Three amendments are getting the lion’s share of attention. One would cut all federal family planning aid. Another would prohibit any spending to implement last year’s health care overhaul. The last would impose an additional $20 billion in cuts from current levels (on top of the $61 billion in the legislation), which the conservative Republican Study Committee says would accomplish its goal of bringing non-security spending down to 2008 levels.

Some Takes on the Vote on the Fiscal Commission Vote

From the Brookings Institution.

In class yesterday as we were reviewing the bicameral system and how it was intended to tie the House closely to the immediate preferences of the public and detach the Senate from the same I suggested that the Senate was more likely to support the plan since the longer terms of office shield them from the immediate anger (short-term) that could follow their support. This despite the fact that the proposals serve the long term needs of the country.

Well, I was right.

5 out of 6 Senators voted for it.
5 out of 6 Representatives voted against it.

About the Financial Reform Conference Committee

The House and Senate finance reform bills (H.R.4173 Title: Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010) have gone a conference committee where they will, or are intended to be, reconciled with each other. If they are able to pass a single report, and if that report is then accepted by each chamber, the report will be sent to the president for a signature.

The Center for Media and Democracy tells us that this is the schedule so far:

- Thursday, June 17: Systemic risk regulation, resolution authority and payments/clearing/settlement issues.
- Tuesday, June 22: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, predatory lending, remittances, interchange fee and access issues.
- Wednesday, June 23: Prudential regulation.
- Thursday, June 24: Derivatives regulation.

I've also read that this could drag on for two weeks, so who knows how accurate this timetable is.

For information about the members of the conference, click here: A look at House, Senate conferees .

Some comments on the process:

- Do You Like to Whip It?
- House-Senate panel lets SEC create credit rating board‎
- Reviving Investor Protection
- Cheques and imbalances
- Will The Next Three Weeks Change Wall Street Forever?
- Financial Reform: Credit Rating Agencies Most Worried About Liability

Plus:

- Everything you ever wanted to know about Conference Committees.
- The impact of the Filibuster on Conference Committees.

Deem and Pass

This appears to be the term of the moment. It refers to the process Democrats plan to use to pass health care reform. The election of the 41st Republican to the Senate (the one that allows filibusters to be maintained) has made it necessary for the party to find someway to convince House members to pass the Senate plan, with the guarantees that changes to the bill will be made mandatory.

Its a confusing and controversial process that some argue may be unconstitutional. Here's some background:

- MSNBC.
- Ezra Klein.
- Kevin Drum.
- ProPublica.

Turning the Page

As I suggested in class, the bailout furor seems to be dying down. Some House leaders are claiming the bill has had its intended effect because so many AIG executives are returning the money:

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer said Tuesday that a House-passed bill that would slap a 90 percent tax on bonuses paid to executives and others at companies receiving federal bailout aid seems to already have had much of its desired impact.

The bill (HR 1586) has been criticized by President Obama and some senators as potentially unconstitutional, and as bad policy precedent in any case.

Neither the House measure nor a companion bill (S 651) produced by the Senate Finance Committee are likely to move through the Senate anytime soon. But Hoyer, D-Md., said it appears that executives at American International Group Inc. still have received Congress’ message, because a large number of them have agreed to return their share of the $165 million bonus money that triggered public and congressional outrage.

“I think apparently the House bill had its intended effect. They’re giving it back,” Hoyer said, referring to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s announcement that about half of the money from the giant insurance company’s bonus program will be returned.

Bicameralism in Action

As expected, the effort to tax bonuses at a 90% rate is meeting opposition in the Senate. Two issues are at work here, both procedural in nature.

First, the minority in the Senate has more influence than it does in the House, so is better able to say no to proposed legislation. This doesn't mean they can set the agenda, they are simply better able to thwart things they do not like.

Second, the Senate takes its time. The process is more open ended and can be slowed down long enough for rage to subside. The very fact that legislation passed by the House has to go to a second institution contributes to this.

Is this good or bad for public policy? If you believe that the current the focus on AIG bonuses takes attention from more serious problems then you probably think it its good. My hunch is that the Constitution's authors would agree.