Seniority, political experience, and support for government spending in the US House: a culture of spending?

Abstract

Payne (1991a) postulates that there is a “culture of spending” in the US Congress, whereby members of Congress are socialized to increase their roll-call support for more spending as a function of length of service and exposure to the Washington culture. In this article we develop and test an expanded model of roll-call voting on spending matters, focusing on two potential sources of socialization effects: (1) exposure to the Washington culture of spending, primarily through seniority and proximity to Washington, DC, and (2) previous political experiences developed before members are elected to Congress. Using data for US House members from the 93rd through the 107th Congresses, we estimate a series of models in which we explain National Taxpayer Union scores as a function of seniority, previous political experience, personal attributes, and a range of constituency variables. We find strong and consistent seniority and political experience effects, with senior members and those with extensive political experience more likely to support greater spending than other members. These findings withstand a range of robustness tests.