Easy Riders: Gramm-Rudman-Hollings and the Legislative Fast Track

Abstract

Conventional wisdom suggests that the legislative process is not an efficient or speedy one when it comes to major legislation or significant policy changes. According to Price (1985, p. 162), “Congress is often difficult to mobilize, particularly on high-conflict issues of broad scope.” The multiyear effort to enact Medicare legislation and the inability of Congress to enact comprehensive energy legislation in the 1970s are but two examples of the deliberate pace of the deliberative process.Yet in 1985, a major reform of the budgetary process, popularly known as Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, was enacted in a relatively short time without the benefit of extended subcommittee and committee deliberation. This “fast track” legislation, on the heels of other accelerated decisions since 1981, makes it difficult to draw the conclusion that Congress is unable to act quickly on major policies. In fact, the nature of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings debate suggests that modifications to our theories of the legislative process are needed.No one who has watched Congress would labor under the misconception that legislation routinely follows the process outlined on those neat charts in introductory American government textbooks. There are all too many examples of major bills that were approved as riders to minor legislation or that bypassed the normal committee process. For example, portions of President Carter's energy package were approved as amendments to tariff bills on bicycle parts and bobsleds. Furthermore, there are many examples of steps taken to bypass a powerful committee chairman, such as the drafting of the 1963 civil-rights bill so that it would go to the Senate Commerce Committee instead of the Judiciary Committee where it would be killed by Chairman James Eastland (D-Miss.).