Browsing by Subject "U.S. Congress"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4

Beyond the 50 states: Puerto Rican statehood and representation in the U.S. Congress
(2012) Gargiulo, Juan Pablo
The Reclamation of the U.S. Congress, PRP 176
(LBJ School of Public Affairs, 2013) Evans, Angela
This report is the result of a ten-month effort undertaken by sixteen graduate students enrolled in a course entitled “The Reclamation of the U.S. Congress.” The course was offered at the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs in the 2012–2013 academic year, and it had five primary objectives: 1) To provide recommendations to the Congress for ways to improve its governance and operations given the current congressional environment. 2) To create an integrated analysis of past formal congressional reform efforts, including the major reorganizations of the Congress in 1946, 1970, and 1994, as well as more recent attempts. 3) To investigate new and emerging challenges that place pressure on the operations of the Congress. 4) To teach students how to be engaged in, and contribute to, congressional deliberations through objective analyses. 5) To create a digital repository of research that focuses on congressional reforms for future use of congressional scholars, experts, and interested citizens. The students conducted the research for this report, developed reform options, and analyzed each reform. They dedicated significant time, energy, and care to ensure their research and analysis was objective, analytic, and authoritative. Unlike other recent formal calls for congressional reform that begin by indicting Members and the Congress as a whole, this report identifies the enduring tensions and forces intrinsic to the Congress, and attempts to mitigate these tensions through adjustments to institutional structures and processes. The research and analysis presented in this report is limited to issues arising from the procedures and governance structures that make up the working environment of the Congress. While more current reforms have included proposals related to campaign financing, redistricting, and primary structures and processes, the research for this project focus on the institution and what Members encounter once elected.
Voting in the Texas Legislature compared to the U.S. Congress
(2012-04-02) Hung, Daniel
What variables affect the way Texas State Representatives vote? Studies have shown that campaign contributions to members of the U.S. Congress do not necessarily affect the way they vote. This study examines whether this is also true for the Texas Legislature. I will look at the payday lender bill (HB2594, which will regulate the industry), where the payday lender industry has contributed more than $1 million dollars to Texas politicians and see if it affected the way Texas State Representatives voted. Then I will consider other variables such as the location of pay day lenders, and the ideology rating of State Representatives. These payday bills take place in the 82nd Texas Legislature, where the state representative is composed of 101 Republicans, and 49 Democrats.
You better find something to do : lawmaking and agenda setting in a centralized Congress
(2017-05) Lewallen, Jonathan Daniel; Theriault, Sean M., 1972-; Jones, Bryan D; Wlezien, Christopher; Jessee, Stephen; Workman, Samuel
The U.S. Congress has significantly curtailed its lawmaking activities in recent years, and many commentators, scholars, and legislators themselves point to a decline in the institution’s output. Two trends blur this focus. First, the number of substantive (non-commemorative) laws enacted by Congress did not significantly decline until very recently. Second, that the roots of this decline have been growing for several decades, in the committee system. Data from 1981 to 2012 show that congressional committees have significantly shifted their activity towards oversight and other non-legislative policymaking at the expense of advancing legislation. Congressional committees act as Congress’s agenda setting capacity by determining what issues the institution can and will address and how it does so. Any explanation for a decline in congressional lawmaking, therefore, must begin with committees. I develop a theory of committee policymaking in this dissertation based on the limited agenda space decisionmakers face. Making policy through legislative or non-legislative means involves opportunity costs, and committees face uncertainty about whether their legislative work will bear fruit. With this theory as a guide, I test three explanations for the longitudinal shift in committee activity away from legislation. While current and former members of Congress, commentators, and other observers blame political gridlock and an expanding executive branch, I find that changes made to the legislative process itself have altered the incentives for committees to compete for agenda space and make policy through legislation. Members of both parties have centralized agenda setting responsibilities under party leaders over the last three decades, which has altered the contours and availability of legislative authority. My findings have important implications for Congress’s role in the policy process and how scholars and citizens evaluate the institution, including the importance of committee incentives and capacity for congressional agenda setting.