Committees and Bills

The assignment.

For next time, ch. 8

The most reassuring video I will show you all semester:

Simulation committees?

Think about where you come from.  If you were a House member from that district, what committees would you want?

The committee system

• How members end up on committees
• "Steering committees" in House & Senate (Davidson pp. 190-195 of print ed)
• Speaker-appointed House committees: Rules, House Administration, Intelligence
• Seniority and other criteria
• Removals:  The case of Ilhan Omar
• House and Senate jurisdictions are not quite the same.

LEGISLATION REALLY CAN PASS (more later)

Bill Drafting 

• How an idea becomes a bill
• Types of measures
• Drafting guide
• An example of legislative language: BITCOIN Act of 2024)
• Senate Legislative Counsel
• House Legislative Counsel

Acronym Bills

• The EARN IT Act
• The STOP STUPIDITY Act
• The EL CHAPO Act
• The OMAR Act
• The NO CORRUPTION Act

Rules

• House Rules -- a guide
• Senate Rules

Do They Read The Bills? No.  

USA PATRIOT Act:  “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism

 

Research Assignment

Pick one current (119th Congress) bill that a House member or senator has introduced since October 1 and has not yet passed either chamber. (See a sample list at the end of this assignment.) You are a legislative assistant in the prime sponsor’s office. Your boss (House member or senator) has one clear instruction: “I don’t need a think piece. I need a plan that can actually move this bill through my chamber this year.” Your job is to produce a 5-page memo that lays out a plausible path from introduction to passage in your boss's chamber, given partisan margins and the realities of committees, procedure, leadership, interest groups, and the administration. Also consider your boss's party affiliation, committee assignments, seniority, and reputation within the chamber.

Additional specs:

• The memo must read as if it were actual staff work. (A good product would make a nice writing sample when you apply for internships and jobs.) Every memo starts with a standard block of information, typically following an email-like format: 

TO: Senator Gus Fring

FROM: Walter White

DATE: March 6, 2026

SUBJECT (or RE): Passing legislation to legalize blue sky meth

• Identify possible sources of support and opposition (e.g., interest groups, constituencies, administration officials).  
• Lay out a step-by-step process to gain support and get the measure to a successful floor vote.
• Include an appendix (which does not count toward the page limit) with a screenshot of the official bill status page (with date visible).

Get background from a source such as CQ Magazine.  Other possible sources include:

• Statements of Administration Policy -- indications of whether POTUS will sign or veto. Note that presidents do not issue SAPs for most bills.
• Congress.gov (http://www.congress.gov/) -- official site for bill summary and status. For tips on how to use it, see the Quick Start Guide.
• GovTrack (http://www.govtrack.us/) – unofficial site for congressional information. See How to Use GovTrack
• ProQuest Congressional
• (http://congressional.proquest.com/profiles/gis/search/basic/basicsearch ). -- many congressional documents including the searchable Congressional Record. If your computer will not accept this URL, go through the library web page (http://library.claremont.edu). Click “databases,” then the letter “P,” then “ProQuest Congressional.”)
• Committee web pages, which usually contain testimony and text of reports. See http://www.house.gov/committees/ or https://www.senate.gov/committees/index.htm
• Kevin Kosar, guide to finding House rules

For further tips on legislative research, see videos on 

HOW TO TRACK & READ CONGRESSIONAL LEGISLATION

TWO-MINUTE TIPS FROM CONGRESS.GOV

AND  HOW TO USE CONGRESS.GOV

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• Essays should be typed, double-spaced, and no more than five pages long. I will not read past the fifth page.
• Submit papers as Word documents, not PDFs or Google docs.
• Cite your sources with endnotes in standard Turabian format. Endnote pages do not count against the page limit.
• Misrepresenting AI-generated content as your own work is plagiarism and will result in severe consequences.
• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you -- especially those I have noted on previous papers. Return essays (again, as Word documents, not PDFs) to Canvas by 11:59 PM, Friday, March 6. I reserve the right to dock papers one grade point for one day’s lateness, a full letter grade after that.

========

Here is a sample list.  You may choose others since October 1, 2025.

House bills

H.R. 5755 — No Budget, No Pay Act (Rep. Scott Peters)

Withholds Members’ pay after Oct. 1 in any fiscal year unless Congress adopts a budget resolution and enacts the regular appropriations bills.

H.R. 5826 — IDEA Act of 2025 (Rep. Haley Stevens)

Establishes a grant program to expand entrepreneurship opportunities for minority business enterprises.

H.R. 6157 — FORCE Act of 2025 (Rep. Jimmy Panetta)

Smend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to provide benefits under the Medicare program for first responders at the age of 57.

H.R. 6261 — Fairness for 9/11 Families Act (Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick)

Amends the U.S. Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund payment rules for certain 9/11-related judgment creditors.

H.R. 6686 — No Cost Educational Resources Act of 2025 (Rep. Bill Foster)

Authorizes grants for colleges to offer courses whose required readings use only publicly available digital resources (supporting ‘no-cost’/open educational reading materials).

H.R. 6981 — SHINE Act of 2026 (Rep. Susie Lee)

Directs DOE to develop and support voluntary streamlined local permitting and inspection for qualifying residential distributed energy systems (solar, batteries, EV chargers).

H.R. 7101 (Rep. Adelita Grijalva) -- require that an individual elected to fill a House vacancy in a special election shall have an opportunity to take the oath of office within five legislative days after certification of that elecition.

H.R. 7282 (Rep. Jeff Crank)

Incentivizes states to reconsider adoption of certain energy-efficiency housing codes.

H.R. 7308 — CALM Modernization Act (Rep. Stephanie Bice)

Extends CALM Act loudness requirements to video programming delivered via internet protocol (streaming) and related services

H.R. 7312 — (Federal dollars fraud task force bill) (Rep. Young Kim) — Establishes a national task force to investigate/combating fraud involving federal dollars (oversight + intergovernmental coordination).

H.R. 7484 (Rep. Andy Barr)

Amends the Electronic Fund Transfer Act to adjust certain thresholds for inflation.

H.R. 7551 (Rep. Cory Mills)

 To prohibit the head of a Federal agency from entering into an agreement with an entity that discriminates against Federal law enforcement, 

 Senate Bills 

S. 3061 — HUD Transparency Act of 2025 (Sen. John Cornyn)

 Requires expanded public reporting and accountability measures at HUD.

S. 3100 — POST Act of 2025 (Sen. John Curtis)

directs the Director of the Federal Protective Service to establish processes to strengthen oversight, performance, and accountability of contract security personnel engaged in the protection of certain buildings and grounds.

S. 3153 — CLEAR Act of 2025 (Sen. Rick Scott)

Revises national security policy authorities affecting defense operations.

S. 3283 — Exclusive Citizenship Act of 2025 (Sen. Bernie Moreno) -- forbids dual citizenship

S. 3333 — Emergency Savings Enhancement Act of 2025 (Sen. Todd Young)

 Encourages employers to offer short-term emergency savings accounts for workers.

S. 3410 (Sen. Andy Kim)

Creates federal technology and AI talent teams to modernize agency hiring.

S. 3539 (Sen. Adam Schiff)

“Requires DoD to provide Congress (and publicly release) unedited video of specified Sept. 2, 2025 strikes.”

S. 3554 (Sen. John Cornyn)

 Amends the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to terminate the tax-exempt status of terrorist supporting organizations.

S. 3597 — National Quantum Initiative Reauthorization Act of 2026 (Sen. Todd Young)

Reauthorizes federal research programs promoting quantum computing innovation.

S. 3600 — National Housing Emergency Act of 2026 (Sen. Elissa Slotkin)

Requires the President to declare a national housing emergency and invoke the Defense Production Act to incentivize residential housing production.

S. 3653 — Veterans’ Bill of Rights Act of 2026 (Sen. Marsha Blackburn)

Establishes additional procedural protections for veterans interacting with VA.

S.3853 – Vaccine Liability Shield Amendment Sponsor: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) would amend the Public Health Service Act to modify liability protections.

S.3855 – Bilateral Defense Cooperation Enhancement Act

Sponsor: Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC)  would enhance defense cooperation with Israel

S. 3653 — Veterans’ Bill of Rights Act of 2026 (Sen. Marsha Blackburn)

Establishes additional procedural protections for veterans interacting with VA.

S.3853 – Vaccine Liability Shield Amendment Sponsor: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) would amend the Public Health Service Act to modify liability protections.

S.3855 – Bilateral Defense Cooperation Enhancement Act

Sponsor: Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC)  would enhance defense cooperation with Israel.

L:eadership and Some Life Lessons

• For Monday, Davidson, ch. 7.  
• Start thinking about which two committees you want to simulate.
• If you have not already turned in your writeup, think about the differences between congressional leadership and leadership in other contexts (esp. if you are in the leadership sequence)

What is leadership?  What is power?

• Transactional v. transformative
• Sources of power
• Knowledge of policy and procedure
• Understanding of what followers want
• Money
• Reputation:  fear and respect
• Influence on public opinion

A PS to McCarthy's fall: change in the MTV

So why did Kevin McCarthy fail? Michael Tomasky:

McCarthy’s pulverizing failure as a legislative leader stems from two truths: One, he cared little about policy; two, his word was no good. He’d say anything to anyone. If you’ve read enough political biographies, you know that “he was always as good as his word” is a common form of high praise that can be delivered across partisan lines. McCarthy was as useless and malleable as his word.

Lesson: Pols understand that they often mislead voters, but it is taboo to lie to fellow pols.

Narrow majorities require high levels of unity.

A vote from yesterday shows that procedural control can be precarious. 

Boehner: 

• "Pelosi had gutted Big John Dingell like a halibut she found floating around San Francisco Bay, then calmly sat back and had a cup of coffee afterward. His entrails were left on display for everyone in the House of Representatives to see- and to remember."
• The Mark Meadows story: "Yeah, I said, I'd forgive him. But I knew he was carrying a backpack full of knives-and sooner or later, he'd try to cut me again with them. Which, of course, he did.
• How did Boehner lead the fight against the House Bank?  (He had help.)
• How did Bachmann turn the tables?

Barber Conable, a moderate Republican from upstate New York, retired in 1984, and wrote a column reflecting on life in the House. Instead of looking at the upstarts with horror, he instead saw something very natural:

Old as I am, I recall being a "young turk" at one point and participating noisily in a successful effort to change House rules which the then Establishment found adequate. I learned a lot about the institution from the effort, vented my frustrations, and gradually became part of the Establishment myself. Youth presses age, provides a good deal of the dynamic and the dialogue, and eventually ages. Partisans may not like the tranquility of my view of these recent histrionics, but I find reassurance in the cycle of renewal.

Boehner on quitting (fall 2015):

LBJ AND LEGISLATIVE LEADERSHIP

The Johnson Network

• The Favor Bank

The Johnson Intelligence System

• One week after becoming president, LBJ mentions his long relationship with J. Edgar Hoover (ab at 19:00).

The Johnson Procedure

• Unanimous consent agreement -- functional equivalent of a House rule

The Johnson Treatment

• Caro on LBJ, the House, and the Senate

LBJ in Frank Underwood's office

 

The inside game and the outside game:  in LBJ's time in the Senate, the outside game scarcely counted.  

Gingrich and C-SPAN start to change things. 

• Newt v. O'Neill 1984 (start clip at 9:30)

Parties and Leaders

  Americans hate Congress but like their own Members.

For Wednesday, we shall discuss the history of parties and leadership.  Carefully read the Boehner excerpt on Canvas.

Hill leadership

• House
• Senate

Leadership Activities

• Legislation
• Whips and for real (Scalise is now majority leader)
• Communication:  Johnson and Thune
• Campaign Activity; Hill Committees 
• Literally "paying your dues"

Edmund Burke:

 In all bodies, those who will lead, must also, in a considerable degree, follow. They must conform their propositions to the taste, talent, and disposition, of those whom they wish to conduct: therefore, if an assembly is viciously or feebly composed in a very great part of it, nothing but such a supreme degree of virtue as very rarely appears in the world, and for that reason cannot enter into calculation, will prevent the men of talent disseminated through it from becoming only the expert instruments of absurd projects!

Speakership elections 

McCarthy concessions (Davidson, print ed., 144-146).

More on Wednesday about McCarthy's skill set.

After compromising with Democrats, McCarthy fell to MTV change that he had accepted.

And then came Mike Johnson

• Is party unity the same as party discipline? 
• The Cheney vote

Member Organizations

• Congressional Black Caucus
• Links to Off-Hill organizations: the CBC Foundation

Informal Groups

• House Freedom Caucus
• The Squad

Home Style and Hill Style

PRESENTATION ON DC PROGRAM

IN WRITEUPS, EXPLAIN THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU LEARNED ABOUT CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS

For Monday, Davidson, ch. 6

The House

Overview  -- the game

Gerrymandering: cracking, packing, merging, isolating

World War G in 2025-2026!

The gerrymander game

Race and education:  the four quadrants

Crossover districts

The Senate

Senate classes (2024 was a "class 1" election)

The vanishing of split delegations.  The 119th has just three:

1. Maine:  Collins (R) and King (I)
2. Wisconsin: Johnson (R) and Baldwin (D)
3. Pennsylvania: Fetterman (D) and McCormick (R)

Campaign Finance

"Hard money" contribution limits

Outside spending

 A local emergency and a national story:

In their home style (Davidson, 127-129 of paper ed. ), members try to convey

• Qualification
• Identification
• Empathy

Every single member has both a Hill style and a home style.

Take our own House member, Rep. Judy Chu

John McCain in 1993 showed that a fierce maverick can become very deferential when facing little old ladies:

 

AOC-DC questions Michael Cohen:



Consider the characteristics of NY 14 as AOC goes local:

AOC District Office

d

During non-pandemic times, different kinds of encounters take place at town halls:

 

Town halls can sometimes get testy. This week, for instance:

US Style -- one measure

Highest Percentage from Small Donors in the 2024 cycle

• Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA): 72.6% ($5.76 million)
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY): 69.9% ($10.60 million)
• Bernie Sanders (I-VT): 63.6% ($22.73 million)
• Jim Jordan (R-OH): 55.7% ($7.42 million)
• Eli Crane (R-AZ): 54.9% ($4.63 million)

For detailed breakdowns of individual candidate records, you can search for specific members on the OpenSecrets Large vs. Small Donations tracker.

Congressional Elections

Questions on the assignment?

Presentation Wednesday on the CMC Washington Program 

For Wednesday, Davidson ch. 5

Competition

Incumbents Usually Win -- House and Senate

House and Senate margins  

Control

Midterms Are Bad for the President's Party

Since 1994:  control is in play, majorities are usually narrow.

In 2024, GOP won the aggregate popular vote for the House.

The historical pattern:

Turnout

Demographics:  Rock the Vote in 2018 and 2020

Always lower in midterms.  Why?

The House

Overview  -- the game

Gerrymandering: cracking, packing, merging, isolating

World War G in 2025-2026!

The gerrymander game

Race and education:  the four quadrants

Crossover districts

The Senate

Senate classes (last year was a "class 1" election)

The vanishing of split delegations.  The 119th has just three:

1. Maine:  Collins (R) and King (I)
2. Wisconsin: Johnson (R) and Baldwin (D)
3. Pennsylvania: Fetterman (D) and McCormick (R)

Campaign Finance

"Hard money" contribution limits

Outside spending

First Assignment, Spring 2026

Answer one of the following two options:

Option 1

Chapter 3 of the Davidson book begins with a short vignette about Rep. Derek Tran to introduce its core themes of ambition and recruitment. Write a replacement opening vignette featuring a different House member who won a first term in the 2024 election. In your vignette:

• Identify one specific decision point in this member’s path to office (e.g., whether and when to run at all, which seat to pursue).
• Tell why you chose this particular member, and how this case highlights something that Tran’s vignette does not.
• Analyze how this member’s experience illustrates or complicates arguments in the sections “Becoming a Candidate” and “Nominating Politics,” citing at least two specific passages from the book. This part is most important.
• Briefly note one fact or episode you encountered in your research that would not typically appear in a textbook vignette but sheds light on this member’s recruitment or nomination. 

Do not simply summarize the member’s biography or election results. Your job is to write something the authors could plausibly adopt, and to explain why.

Option 2

Choose one current congressional leader (Johnson, Jeffries, Thune, or Schumer) and write a postscript to Chapter 6 of the Davidson book. Your postscript should:

• Identify one specific moment since January 2025 when this leader faced a choice that tested party unity, procedural control, or bargaining leverage.
• Quote and cite at least two specific passages from the chapter that are most relevant to that moment.
• Explain how the leader’s behavior confirms, complicates, or contradicts the theory of conditional party government.  This part is most important.

Use at least three primary sources (e.g., floor statements, press releases, leadership letters, official transcripts).  In a short concluding paragraph, quote one sentence from Chapter 6 that the authors might revise if they were writing the next edition. Justify your choice.

Essays should reflect an understanding of class readings and discussions. Many resources, including CQ Magazine are at Library/Databases/CQ Library.  You must consult other sources as well. See, among others: 

• Congress.gov
• Vital Statistics on Congress
• Congressional Research Service
• Pew Research Center data on Congress
• House
• Senate
• Biog Directory of US Congress 1774- present
• C-SPAN
• Census Reporter [to find a profile of a House district, enter "Congressional District" and then the number.  For instance: Congressional District 28 CA.

Read Strunk & White and my stylesheet (with links to model papers).

Watch my writing lecture.

The specifications:

• Essays should be typed (12-point), double-spaced, and no more than three pages long. I will not read past the third page. 
• Please submit all papers in this course as Word documents, not Google docs or pdfs.
• Cite your sources. Please use endnotes in the format of Chicago Manual of Style.  Endnotes do not count against the page limit. Please do not use footnotes, which take up too much page space.
• Misrepresenting AI-generated content as your own work is plagiarism and will result in severe consequences
• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you. Return essays to the Canvas dropbox for this class by 11:59 PM, Friday, February 13. (If you have trouble with Canvas, simply email me the paper as an attached file.)  I reserve the right to dock papers one gradepoint for one day’s lateness, a full letter grade after that.