93rd Congress Research Articles

ТРАНСФОРМАЦІЯ ЕНЕРГЕТИЧНОЇ ПОЛІТИКИ США У ПЕРШІЙ ПОЛОВИНІ 1970-Х РР.

Violation of status-quo in the Middle East, which radically influenced the world oil supply system, generated the uncertainty of prospects in politics in general and energetics in particular. For the United States, it became necessary to transform their energy strategy, which included domestic and foreign policy aspects. However until October, 1973 the Administration of the USA could not develop a strategy capable of preventing an energy crisis of 1973–1974. Nevertheless, persistent looking for a new model of energy politics continued in the United States throughout the first half of 1970. As of December 1972, at least 42 federal agencies, bureaus, departments, and offices were involved in research into energy issues. The 93rd Congress (January 1973–January 1975) involved itself was in energy-related legislation on an unprecedented scale. More than 2,000 bills were introduced, and more than 30 standing congressional committees collectively held over 1,000 days of hearings on nearly every aspect of energy policy programs and problems. Nearly 40 energy-related laws were enacted. The magnitude of these efforts indicates that the United States leadership was deeply concerned about the situation. Despite the efforts made, the US administration could not avoid the dramatic events of the energy crisis. The cause for this was the untimely transformation of American energy policy. This article shows relationship between politics and energetics and explores, therefore, political methods, used in the USA in the process of developing the new energy politics in 1970 – 1975. It covers the history of this politics institutional and legal base creation. By the modern viewpoints it highlights the main problems and barriers to energy strategy formation, which slowed down its transformation.

The 93rd Congress of Japan Gastroenterological Endoscopy Society

The 93rd Congress of Japan Gastroenterological Endoscopy Society

The 93rd Congress of the Japan Gastroenterological Endoscopy Society

The 93rd Congress of the Japan Gastroenterological Endoscopy Society

The 93rd Congress of the Japan Gastroenterological Endoscopy Society

The 93rd Congress of the Japan Gastroenterological Endoscopy Society

The 93rd Congress of the Japan Gastroenterological Endoscopy Society

The 93rd Congress of the Japan Gastroenterological Endoscopy Society

On the importance of inequality in politics: duplicate bills and bill co-sponsorship in the US House of Representatives

In this paper, we attempt to provide an economic explanation for the adoption of bill co-sponsorship by the US House of Representatives in 1967. We demonstrate empirically that key features of legislative production prior to 1967 (when House members’ support for a bill was indicated by introduction of duplicate bills) and post-1967 (when political support for a bill is indicated by co-sponsorship) are strikingly similar. Specifically, the raw number of supporters of a bill, whether indicated by duplicate bills or by co-sponsorship, is not nearly as critical to advancement of that bill through the House of Representatives as is the political power of the individual who introduces it and those who support it. The relative sizes of these effects are highly consistent over time. In effect, this finding means that the underlying factors of importance in the House’s legislative production function did not change significantly when bill co-sponsorship was adopted. This suggests that the change in operating procedure may have been driven by an intra-chamber struggle to control the legislative outcomes. We present empirical evidence that is highly consistent with this hypothesis—adoption of bill co-sponsorship in 1967 coincides exactly with the post-World War II peak in a concentration ratio of legislation passed in the US House of Representatives. Prior to the 90th Congress, there was a more-or-less steady increase in concentration of legislation passed by the five busiest committees that peaked at over 0.4 in the 90th Congress and then declined precipitously to under 0.15 by the 93rd Congress.

The Ways and Means of National Health Care Reform, 1974 and Beyond

Little attention has been paid in the health policy and welfare state literature to the politics of health care reform in the 1970s. Drawing on newspaper accounts and archival material collected from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and the National Archives, I outline the political history of health care reform in the 93rd Congress. In doing so, I highlight critical institutional, environmental, and strategic lessons that today's reformers can learn from the experience of 1974.

Impeachment Practice in the Era of Lethal Conflict

In many cases [impeachment] will connect itself with the preexisting factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other, and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties than by the real demonstrations of innocense or guilt. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 65 In the current environment, impeachment verges on becoming just what the Founding Fathers feared it could become–just another weapon in lethal partisan conflict. By examining the practice of impeachment, we can appreciate that while in theory we want impeachment locked away in a gun safe somewhere in the House, in practice, it really is just a loaded pistol lying out there on the coffee table. Without taking care, the current atmosphere can easily turn impeachment into a "vote of no confidence" on policy grounds–a cheap way to change the government without invoking new elections, to bend the presidency to the Congress's will. Using vote-counting information from inside the operations of the congressional majority in the 93rd Congress (1973-1974), this article explores the empirical importance of two central presumptions in impeachment theory: "due deliberation" and the power of ambition. The evidence from the effort to impeach President Richard Nixon suggests that practice varies greatly from the theory, implying in turn that impeachment constitutes more of a practical political weapon than the theory presupposes. In light of that empirical conclusion, the article then explores the potential for its use in the current partisan setting, concluding that the potential for its political use appears high. The article concludes with a comment on how impeachment used in this practical, partisan way can become a vote of "no confidence," which, when combined with the provisions for succession, can undermine the constitutional system.

Religious Influence and Congressional Voting on Abortion

The abortion question has been politicized since the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision which legalized abortions during the first trimester of a pregnancy. In reaction, pro-life advocates have shifted their attention to Congress in efforts to restrict the availability of abortions. Recent studies have analyzed congressional voting on abortion legislation and have concluded that the political ideology of the congressperson is the most important reason for supporting or opposing abortions (see Eccles, 1978: 259; Vinovskis, 1979: 1790-1827; and Bardes & Tatalovich, 1982). These studies find liberals supporting the pro-choice position on abortion while conservatives more often selected the pro-life position. The research of Vinovskis and that of Bardes and Tatalovich, moreover, indicate that Congresspersons' religious affiliation is the second most important predictor of their votes on abortion legislation. This research note amplifies that aspect by delineating congressional voting in terms of specific religious denominations. This examination is based on thirty roll-call votes taken in four Congresses: four rollcalls from the 93rd Congress, two roll-calls from the 94th Congress, seventeen roll-calls from the 95th Congress and seven roll-calls from the 96th Congress. These thirty votes include all the roll-calls reported in the Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report during the period from 1973 to 1980. Sixteen involved some version of the well-known Hyde Amendment, which bans the use of federal medicaid funds for abortions. Other bills included such issues as banning Legal Services Corporation attorneys from taking abortion cases, prohibiting the Commission on Civil Rights from collecting data on abortion policy, and forbidding the use of District of Columbia appropriations for abortions. As the index to voting on abortion, we used a form of Guttman scaling to construct a scale score to indicate each Representative's position. To achieve comparability across the four Congresses, each legislator's scale score was divided by the number of votes included, thus creating a range from 0.0 (pro-life) to 1.0 (pro-choice). The congresspersons' religious affiliation was coded according to the detailed classification used by the University of Michigan's Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research for election studies. From this array, we grouped the legislators in each Congress based on the average scale score (Table 1). Not all Representatives are included since ambiguous affiliations (e.g., other Protestants) were *Byron W. Daynes is Associate Professor of Political Science at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. Raymond Tatalovich is Associate Professor of Political Science at Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois.

Coalition-Building by Party Leaders: A Case Study of House Democrats

This study explores the process by which party leaders build winning coalitions. Focusing on House passage of impoundment legislation in the 93rd Congress, the essay documents the extensive efforts of Democratic leaders to create a viable bill and persuade party members to support it. Analyses of whip counts demonstrate that the leaders passed the impoundment bill in part because they could bargain with and convert “successful” party members whose past career advancement and future achievements depended in part on leadership assistance. The essay concludes by identifying six conditions that nurtured the bargaining capacity of the Democratic leaders and fostered their coalition-building success.1

Presidential and Congressional Response to Political Crisis: Nixon, Congress, and Watergate

This research tests a series of hypotheses on the congressional response to Watergate and explores Nixon's counter-impeachment strategy. As Neustadt's theory of presidential influence predicts, the sequence of Watergate disclosures contributed to a decline in congressional support for Nixon's legislative program in 1973. Partisan and regional differences in support for Nixon's program were also significant. The electoral marginality of representatives was not an important factor: competitive-seat Republicans voted as consistently for Nixon's program as safe-seat Republicans. The president's own electoral strength was a significant factor early in the 93rd Congress: Republicans in districts where Nixon ran strongly give Nixon his greatest legislative support. Nixon responded to the impeachment threat by withdrawing from legislative leadership and abandoning the “Administrative Presidency.” In 1974 Nixon added only five proposals to his domestic legislative agenda, took positions on only 15 percent of House roll calls, and vetoed only two bills. By avoiding controversial policy initiatives that might antagonize Congress, Nixon anticipated and helped forestall a further decline in congressional support in 1974.

Congressional Career Patterns and Party Systems

This article proposes a nonlinear model for the careers of members of the U.S. House of Representatives. This model is easily interpretable, in spite of its nonlinearity, and yields a measure, here called the coefficient, that summarizes the career patterns of any freshman class. For data from the 1st through the 93rd Congresses, the model fits extremely well. Comparing the career coefficients of the 93 freshman classes, we have found that the pattern of congressional careers follows the pattern of the party-system eras in American politics. These patterns can be accounted for by the levels of interparty competition characteristic of the party systems, as well as by the general desirability of a House seat during these historical periods.

Party, Constituency, and Roll-Call Voting in the U. S. Senate

A longitudinal analysis of a 30-year period shows that the more heterogeneous a state's population, the more likely it is to have simultaneously a Democratic and a Republican senator. A path analysis linking constituency, competitiveness, party, and roll-call variables is tested on data from the 1970 census and the 93rd Congress. Geographic heterogeneity is related to diversity in the reelection constituencies of senators representing the same state. Reelection constituency is, in turn, related to party control of a state's Senate seats. While reelection constituency has a greater direct effect than geographic constituency on roll-call behavior, party has the largest direct effect. Constituency characteristics have a larger effect than party when direct and indirect effects are combined.

Joint Electoral Outcomes as Cues for Congressional Support of U. S. Presidents

Recently the concept of presidential coattails has been used as an explanatory variable in analyses of congressional voting on presidentially sponsored legislation. This study pursues this line of inquiry by measuring the impact of presidential electoral strength, relative to that of congressmen in their districts, upon an index of presidential support. Regression techniques are used to depict how much presidential support increases for every electoral percentage point by which a president surpasses a congressman in the latter's district for members of the 83rd, 85th, 87th, 89th, 91st, and 93rd Congresses. Findings of this research show that congressional support of presidentially sponsored legislation increased between one and thirteen percentage points for every percentage point by which the president exceeded congressmen in the six elections analyzed. The impact of relative presidential electoral strength upon presidential support among congressmen of the president's party was stronger: (1) after landslide presidential victories rather than more competitive elections; (2) among non-Southern Democrats rather than Southern Democrats under Democratic administrations; and (3) in safe districts rather than more electorally competitive districts. Further, this relationship was stronger among Republican senators under Democratic administrations, and House Democrats under Republican administrations, than among the other partisan combinations.

Legislative role performance of female legislators

Women members of the United States House of Representatives for the 91st and 93rd Congresses are compared with male members to test whether there is a significant difference in their legislative behavior in the following areas: liberalism-conservatism, dependency-independence, specialization, and effectiveness. Only in the area of specialization is there reasonable statistical support for the hypothesis of significant difference. Women did introduce legislation relating to health, education, welfare and other social concerns at a slightly higher rate than males, but this still represented only about one-fourth of their legislation.

Energy Regulation: A Quagmire for Energy Policy

The difficulties that energy policy makers in the United States experienced in 1974 and 1975 resulted from the lack of a comprehensive and coordinated national energy policy. More than 2000 energy-related bills and resolutions were introduced in the 93rd Congress. More than a thousand days of exhaustive hearings were held; and finally, about forty laws were enacted. Among these was the Energy Reorganization Act that established the Energy Resources Council and separated the functions of the Atomic Energy Commission into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Energy Research and Development Administration. This measure consolidated most of the government's energy R and D efforts and removed the conflict-of-interest stigma that had stymied the AEC's efforts to both develop and regulate nuclear energy. The legislative record of the 93rd Congress neither formulated a guiding philosophy nor a strategy for coordinated and comprehensive action. The 94th Congress approached the energy situation as a composite whole, and the Administration settled on an energy strategy and through the Energy Resources Council provided some continuity of purpose and support to its energy proposals. Three competitive plans that emerged are: the President's (S 594), the House Ways and Means Committee's (HR 5005), and the Democratic Majority's. Themore » three plans all have the same four distinct goals: reduction of U.S. dependency on energy imports, protection against disruption of foreign supplies, increased conservation and efficiency, and increased domestic energy supplies. Such competition between congressional goals does not indicate that a national energy policy is being formulated, though. (MCW)« less

Electoral Marginality and Party Loyalty in House Roll Call Voting

A number of scholars have tested the hypothesis that electoral marginality predisposes the legislator towards party disloyalty in roll call voting. The results of such tests have varied widely, and the relationship between the variables is still unclear. The problem, at least in part, seems to be due to inadequate controls for the demographic character of the districts, which is related to both of the primary variables. Using a measure of demographic character of district constructed through the use of regression analysis, the hypothesis is tested for the 88th through the 93rd Congresses. For neither Democrats nor Republicans is there a positive relationship between electoral marginality and party disloyalty when demographic character of district is controlled. Rather the data indicate that, especially for Republicans, party disloyalty tends to pay off in an electoral margin that is higher than expected, given the demographic character of the district. The most disloyal Republicans represent districts which, in demographic terms, are less Republican than those of their more loyal party colleagues; yet their electoral margins actually tend to surpass those of their more loyal colleagues.

10. Issues in designing a national program of long-term care benefits.

This paper discusses a major policy area in long-term care--the design of a comprehensive national program of long-term care benefits--for which a broad base of information is needed. In the continuum of social welfare, a program for long-term care is veiwed as being in the middle ground between health care and income maintenance. Significant issues include the extent of coverage in terms of population groups and types of services, and the relative emphasis given to institutional care, to organized services enabling persons to remain in their homes, and to support of informal care from relatives and friends. Other considerations are methods of controlling costs and utilization, sharing of responsibility between federal and state governments, and establishement and enforcing of standards for providers of services. Two proposals introduced in the 93rd Congress illustrate current approaches to comprehensive long-term care benefits.

An evaluation of the economic policy proposals of the joint economic committee of the 92nd and 93rd congresses: A comment

Christ has presented a comprehensive and constructive evaluation of the policy recommendations offered by the Joint Economic Committee during the 92nd and 93rd Congresses. The staff and, I am sure, the Members of the Committee are grateful for this serious critique of our work. Criticism of this type is perhaps the most effective way of helping us both to adopt policies that make economic sense and to communicate the rationale underlying our policies to the general public. Throughout his commentary, Christ makes complimentary observations about the policy positions of the Joint Economic Committee; for these, too, we are grateful. While arguing with some of his criticisms, I hope that in accepting these compliments. I can avoid the impression of churlishness. I shall focus my comments on two sets of JEC policy recommendations that Christ criticized: first, our joint unemployment and inflation objectives; and second, recommendations to lower interest rates. Perhaps his most serious criticism is directed at the joint inflation and unemployment targets:

An evaluation of the economic policy proposals of the joint economic committee of the 92nd and 93rd congresses: A comment

An evaluation of the economic policy proposals of the joint economic committee of the 92nd and 93rd congresses: A comment