Houses Of Congress Research Articles

International System Stability and American Decline

In the World of International Affairs Punditry, it is both fashionable and profitable to take extreme positions about the future of international relations. What is happening and what will happen in the world, however, is more complex and almost always less extreme than the predictions that catch the attention of the popular press and even the front-line scholarly journals. Such is the case for discussions of American decline and the prospects for stability in the international system: pessimists predict increasing system-wide conflict while optimists foresee a world of growing interdependence and transnational co-operation. But when the empirical record is examined in three policy areas that are important to the maintenance of international system stability -- foreign aid, debt relief, and international peacekeeping such extreme judgments are more eye-catching than valid.Put simply, the relative decline of American power has not led to a prolonged, across-the-board decrease in international efforts to maintain the stability of the international system. If anything, such efforts increased in the late 1980s and early 1990s, only to turn downward after the 1994 American elections swept the Republicans into control of both houses of Congress for the first time since the 1950s. Thereafter, the level and intensity of efforts did not return to the modest pre-1980 policy approaches. The growth of international commitments to maintaining stability and the partial retrenchment that followed make a case for muted optimism about the future of a stable world system and demonstrate the contributions of non-Americans to that goal. The developments in the Canadian-led landmines negotiations in 1997 provide one example in which non-Americans led the way toward resolving an issue that is important to international stability and peace. Given the obvious reluctance of the United States, Russia, and China to move decisively on that issue, one can argue that progress would not have occurred without Canadian leadership. When taken in tandem with the aid, debt, and peacekeeping data presented below, events such as these demonstrate the crucial role of non-hegemons to the success of international initiatives and point toward an evolving, more specialized, and narrowly focussed United States activism in the world.PerspectivesOne fashionable extreme argues pessimistically that the stability of the international system has and will further become a casualty of the apparent withdrawal of the United States from a dominant, activist role in world affairs. In this view, contributions which focus on maintaining and enhancing the stability of the global system will decline without an American hegemon to serve as underwriter and disproportionately large contributor to the goals and policy tools of stability. The assumption is that a United States faced with domestic preoccupations, superpower fatigue, diminishing relative resources, and no overarching adversary will do less for global welfare. Moreover, others have not, will not, and possibly cannot do more. This selfish, neo-isolationist behaviour will harm the general welfare of the nations and populations of the world. The result: apres les Etats Unis, le deluge.(f.1)The other fashionable extreme is optimism. Socio-economic globalists see a world unified not by any political entity, but by the new information and communications technology, economic and cultural globalization, and the prevalence of widely shared beliefs about a common human fate, about moral obligations, and about international status. In this view, distant foreign developments acquire immediate relevance within domestic society. Failure to address foreign concerns clashes with notions of proper and rewarding behaviour and may be dangerous to interests back home. As new political and social communities rise, national governments and the international organizations they control are pushed to counter threats to system stability. …

Unity Marks Effort to Bolster R&D

Members of both houses of Congress have embarked on complementary efforts aimed at winning a higher profile for science. A Senate meeting on 22 October was filled to bursting with presidents of scientific and engineering societies after lawmakers introduced legislation that calls for doubling civilian R&D spending in the next decade. The next day, House lawmakers kicked off a related project with the help of about 30 distinguished scientists and administrators--a major study that could revamp federal support for science in a post-Cold War world. But participants admit it will be tough to turn the rhetoric into dollars.

Explicit and Authentic Acts: Amending the U. S. Constitution, 1776-1995.

Over the course of the past two centuries, more than 10,000 amendments have been proposed by the method stipulated in Article V of the Constitution. Amazingly, only 33 have garnered the required two-thirds approval from houses of Congress, and only 27 were ultimately ratified into law by the states. Despite their small number, those amendments have revolutionized American government while simultaneously legitimizing and preserving its continued existence. Indeed, they have dramatically altered the relationship between state and federal authority, as well as between government and private citizens. Kyvig reexamines the creation and operation of Article V, illuminating the process and substance of each major successful and failed effort to change the formal structure, duties, and limits of the federal government. He analyzes in detail the Founders' intentions; the periods of activity during the 1790s, 1860s, 1910s, and 1960s; and the considerable consequences of failure involving slavery, alcohol prohibition, child labor, New Deal programs, school prayer, equal rights for women, abortion, balanced budgets, term limits, and flag desecration. Ultimately, Kyvig demonstrates that so-called constitutional revolutions can only endure through formal amendment; without it such sea changes as the New Deal are likely to be temporary amidst the shifting winds of political fortune. That truth underscores the centrality of the process to American constitutionalism, sheds light on the amendment fever that swept through the 104th Congress, and better prepares us to deal with such initiatives in the future.

BALANCED BUDGET AGREEMENT

Congress has performed its part of the budget-balancing act. The numbers are now in and the analysts are hard at work striving to understand what they mean. But the real budget battles are just beginning. Those battles will be fierce, and the outlook for federal research and development spending is far from rosy, says Kei Koizumi, an analyst who tracks R&D budget trends for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The numbers, of course, pertain to those in the budget agreement worked out between the Clinton Administration and Republican congressional leaders on May 15. The House and Senate budget committees quickly went to work filling in details, and late last week both houses of Congress had approved very similar resolutions embodying those details, leaving themselves free to leave town for a 10-day Memorial Day recess. Meanwhile, various interest groups were striving to understand what the figures really meant for their constituencies. For the ...

The Effect of the Independence of Quebec upon Treaties and Agreements with the United States of America

Introduction Following the very close results of the 1995 Referendum on Quebec's independence, and with the expectation of another referendum to be held within the next few years, a practical and informed consideration of the effect that independence would have on the 272 bilateral treaties and other international agreements between Canada and the United States of America and the many multilateral conventions binding the two countries is necessary and desirable. (1) Those supporting independence have been asserting the view that an independent Quebec certainly would succeed, as a matter of international law, more or less automatically to such agreements. Such a view, however, fails to reflect how difficult it is for new states to cope with hundreds, even thousands, of treaties to which their predecessor states were parties. (2) Those offering assurances of certain mistakenly rely upon inapposite international law principles of state in respect of treaties and misapprehension of United States practice in this regard. In fact, an independent Quebec would face a clean slate as regards all Canadian treaties and other international agreements; that is, the continuation of such instruments in force in respect of an independent Quebec would be an issue in virtually each case, and hence subject to discussion at the political level with the other State Party or States Parties (and, in many cases, to legislative action). Specifically, such important agreements as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), (3) the Agreement Concerning Automotive Products (Auto Pact), (4) the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (1994 GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), (5) the United States-Canada Tax Treaty, (6) the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) Agreement, (7) and the Boundary Waters Treaty, (8) to note only the most prominent, all would require political negotiations and action in order for them to be applied to an independent Quebec. Moreover, of those six agreements two might well require United States Senate advice and consent to ratification (the United States-Canada Tax Treaty and the Boundary Waters Treaty), two definitely would require approval of both Houses of Congress (NAFTA and the Auto Pact), and one definitely would require an affirmative vote of an international organization (WTO and GATT). The Applicable International Law Principles The customary international law principle as regards of States to treaties that is applicable to an independent Quebec is that When part of a state becomes a new state, the new state does not succeed to the international agreements to which the predecessor state was party, unless, expressly or by implication, it accepts such agreements and the other party or parties thereto agree or acquiesce. (9) The applicability of this principle to an independent Quebec is underscored by supporting authoritative commentary to the effect that this clean-slate theory applies both to newly independent states and to a state separated from another by secession or other circumstances. (10) Thus treaties and other international agreements apply in respect of the new State only if there is mutual agreement. Some have argued that a presumption of succession would be applied to treaties between a sovereign Quebec and the United States. That position, insofar as it would be relevant to an independent Quebec, appears to be derived from Article 34(1) of the Vienna Convention On Succession Of States In Respect Of Treaties, which provides that, in principle, When a part... of the territory of a State separate[s] to form [a] State [], whether or not the predecessor State continues to exist... any treaty in force at the date of the of States in respect of the entire territory of the predecessor State continues in force in respect of [the] successor State so formed. …

Biomaterials availability in the U.S.

Slowly but inexorably the commodity materials that constitute over 95% of implantable devices are being withdrawn from the medical market. U.S. manufacturers operate on accumulated reserves and therefore are reluctant to say precisely when they will stop fabrication. Nonetheless, “thousands and perhaps millions of people [are] at risk of not being able to receive the most commonplace medical treatments1: vascular grafts, cardiac valves, hip joint prostheses, hydrocephalus shunts.” What is the problem? Companies that supply materials for, or components of, medical devices have stopped selling these essential ingredients to U.S. manufacturers of medical devices. Manufacturers, who typically have maintained large stocks since the unit cost of procuring raw materials is low compared to that of validating each new batch, are approaching the end of their reserves. The suppliers (typically multinational chemical companies one to three orders of magnitude larger than device manufacturers) have made the eminently rational decision to exit the U.S. market because they have been joined in expensive lawsuits related to allegedly defective products, such as temporomandibular joint (TMJ) prostheses and silicone breast implants. U.S. legal precedence allows an individual who has suffered bodily injury from a commercial product to sue all parties involved in the manufacturing of the product.2 In the case of medical devices, this doctrine has incriminated the suppliers of standard commodity materials, such as Dacron, Teflon, Delrin, and Silastic as well as standard engineering components used in the fabrication of medical devices. Suing DuPont or Dow Chemical for the failure of a prosthetic TMJ or a breast implant is a bit like suing U.S. Steel in the case of a car crash, or Texaco in the case of an automobile fire. Guilt by association. U.S. Steel supplied the raw metal from which the automobile was fashioned and Texaco the gasoline that fueled the fire. Similarly, Dacron yarn is essential for weaving or knitting large-diameter vascular grafts, Silastic is still the material for choice for constructing hydrocephalus shunts, and Teflon powder is critical to the manufacture of pacemaker batteries. None of these materials is the device. Because each implant contains only a few cents worth of any of these polymers, the sale of polymers to medical-device manufacturers represents an infinitesimal part of the market for polyethylene terephtalate, silicone elastomers, or polytetra-fluoroethylene. For example, the total sales of Teflon for TMJ implants were less than $2,000. In contrast, the annual cost to DuPont of defending itself against the lawsuits related to the TMJ (which it has won in all cases) has been hovering around $8 million! Therefore we have a perfectly understandable reason for American suppliers to refuse to deal any further with the U.S. medical-device industry, for overseas suppliers to adopt the same line of conduct, and for U.S. manufacturers to move fabrication abroad and de-emphasize innovation in the U.S. As a result, tens of thousands, and later perhaps millions, of U.S. citizens are at risk of not receiving some commonplace and effective medical treatments.3 In 1994, 14 specialty societies concerned with the availability of materials for medical devices formed the “Biomaterials Availability Coalition” to investigate means to avoid the looming crisis. The coalition's objective was to assist in the formulation of legislative remedies, inform the scientific and clinical community, and be the advocate of patients. At its behest, a Biomaterials Availability Act was introduced in Congress in 1995, derailed, reintroduced in 1996 by Senators J. Lieberman (D-CT) and J. McCain (R-AZ), merged for convenience with the Product Liability Reform Act (HR 956), passed by both houses of Congress with comfortable majorities, then vetoed by President Clinton.

Social Work Management in an Era of Diminishing Federal Responsibility

One needs only to look at recent presidential and congressional election results to see a growing public unhappiness with government. In 1992 Texas billionaire Ross Perot ran for president as a third-party protest candidate and received nearly 20 percent of the vote, the largest number of votes cast for a third-party candidate in a U.S. presidential election (NBC News, 1993). During the 1994 midterm elections, the Republican party gained control of both houses of Congress as well as many state legislatures, ending nearly four decades of control by the Democratic party. With their new majorities, Republicans quickly worked to implement provisions of the Contract with America (Gingrich, Armey, and the House Republicans, 1994), which emphasized shifting many federal government responsibilities to state and local governments. There is also a growing disaffection with what is broadly termed welfare and the associated public and nonprofit social work and human services organizations. Although welfare, as reflected by Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), is a small proportion of the total public expenditure, it nonetheless symbolizes the perceived failure of government to deal effectively with social realities. Welfare bashing is a frequent topic of radio and television talk shows. Although such popular discourse may be valuable in a democracy, it places social work professionals and managers in a defensive posture. These realities make the social work manager's job more difficult. In the near future the changing political realities and their social and cultural context will bring additional challenges to the social work profession and to those who manage social work and human services organizations. Leaders from both political parties are responding to a common set of economic and social forces and assumptions - even though they disagree on specifics - that are driving them to seek solutions to the federal budget deficit, rampant increases in expenditures for various entitlement programs, and decades of growth in federal regulations that affect almost every aspect of Americans' lives. It is almost certain that what is termed the devolution revolution (Nathan, 1995) will continue regardless of the November 1996 election outcome. Budget controls, selective tax reductions, caps on entitlement spending, and means-tested benefits tied to socially responsible behavior are currently being implemented. In addition, block grants with reduced funding levels and regulations and the increased use of purchase-of-service (POS) agreements and other means to draw a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit organizations into service provision will further complicate and disaggregate an already dizzying arena within which social work managers must function. This article discusses the management challenges facing social work, including changes in the U.S. economic and social structure, changes in public policy that have greatly increased the diversity and competitiveness of social services providers, and the development of a growing public discontent with government organizations. This article reviews two management approaches - total quality management and reengineering - and considers the implications for social work management. Historic Policies Affecting Social Work Management Although it may be tempting to see these new realities as a current political and partisan phenomenon, there is a larger, historical reality underlying the developments changing social welfare. Progressive Movement and the New Deal The progressive movement emerged in the United States during the late 19th century (Reid, 1995). Progressives promoted a rational, public, social sciences-based government response to social problems that emphasized economic regulation, meritocracy, social insurance, and other protections, as well as the professionalization of services. Progressives were optimistic and humane, and they promoted an environmental view of human behavior that was in contrast to the 19th-century view of individual character and will as explanations of the shortcomings of society. …

"Such a Helpless Body": Dissenting Senators and Foreign Policy Issues in the 1920s

In 1905, during one of his periodic quarrels with Congress, President Theodore Roosevelt called the United States Senate such helpless body when efficient work for good is to be done.' Roosevelt's complaint arose because the Senate had blocked an arbitration treaty that he wanted, but modern senators themselves have often echoed TR's judgment about the character of the upper house of Congress. When Senator George Mitchell of Maine, then Democratic Majority Leader, was under consideration as possible Commissioner of Baseball, reporter asked how he would manage twenty-seven temperamental baseball club owners. Mitchell responded that as commissioner he would have seventy-two fewer prima donnas to contend with than in his current position. When historians investigate the Senate, they usually concentrate on one key lawmaker-as has been done recently in Gilbert Fite's biography of Richard Russell, Richard Lowitt on Bronson Cutting, and Robert Dallek on Lyndon Johnson-or they consider manageable group of key senators involved in some controversial episode. A fine example of this latter approach is Herbert E Margulies, The Mild Reservationists and the League of Nations Controversy in the Senate (1989), which focuses on neglected group in the struggle between Woodrow Wilson and the Senate over the Treaty of Versailles. Robert David Johnson's examination of the role of the peace progressives in the Senate in the 1920s and early 1930s falls into the second category. Tracing some fifteen to twenty lawmakers from the era of William Howard Taft until the advent of World War II, Johnson regards these midwestern and western senators as pursuing a more peaceful order through an active American foreign policy along reformist lines (p. 3). They advanced a consistent anti-imperialist vision which they applied to all areas of the world (p. 3). In so doing, they provided third and important alternative to the Wilsonian tradition of internationalism and the corporatist economic policy of

The transformation of Wall Street: a history of the Securities and Exchange Commission and modern corporate finance

The Transformation of Wall Street is a comprehensive and insightful historical analysis of the Securities andamp; Exchange Commission from the perspective of a leader in securities regulation. The Transformation of Wall Street offers an in-depth look at the history of the SEC's origins, accomplishments, and failings since its creation in 1934. Each chapter in the book takes historical look at the tenure of the various SEC chairmen. The first edition, published in 1977, covered the SEC through the Nixon-Ford presidential administration. A revised edition was published in 1995, updating the book through 1992. Now, the third edition continues the history until 2001, the end of Arthur Levitt's Chairmanship, with a treatment of auditing issues through the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (July 2002). In this revised edition, author Joel Seligman draws on unpublished SEC files and extensive personal interviews to provide a comprehensive examination of the origins, accomplishments, and failings of the SEC and its leaders, from the creation of the SEC in 1934 to the present. The new material, among other things, addresses: The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, which has had a significant impact on private securities litigation after its passage in 1995 The structure of the securities markets (which are in an important transition because of Electronic Communications Networks; decimalization; international competition; and the continuing evolution to greater institutionalization of our markets as well as the growth of several new products, most recently security futures products) Municipal securities markets (which were largely ignored before the recently resigned Arthur Levitt) Several issues with respect to the accounting profession (most notably auditor independence and the independence of accounting standard-setting boards). In addition, this work focuses on Chairman Levitt, whom the author believes was one of the most accomplished of the post World War II chairs, and had the challenge of being a Chair appointed by a Democratic party president during a period when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress as well as a period of extraordinary ferment in the securities market.

Off the Endangered List: Philippine Democratization in Comparative Perspective

The Philippines has long been on the most endangered list of new democracies. There have been more coup attempts (eight) in the Philippines than in any other wave democratizer.' It is one of only few states to still face Communist insurgency. Moreover, many civilian, noncommunist politicians were openly disloyal to the government of Corazon C. Aquino, including her vice president, Salvador H. Laurel. These political problems are compounded by socioeconomic difficulties. The Philippines is plagued by extreme poverty and inequality, high debt, and low growth, as well as by ethnic conflict (not to mention the series of natural disasters that has aggravated many of these factors), leading it to be ranked as one of the four new democracies outside of Africa facing the worst structural woes.2 Former President Aquino made little progress in remedying these problems: the economy lagged ever further behind its fast growing neighbors in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and only very limited social, particularly land, reform was undertaken. Michael Burton, Richard Gunther, and John Higley in their comparative study of democratization described the Philippines as a graphic instance of democracy that remains unconsolidated.13 Yet something peculiar happened on the way to what appeared to be the inevitable breakdown of democracy in the Philippines. Since the failed December 1989 coup there have been no significant armed challenges to the democratic regime. Instead, dwindling New People's Army, largely inactive Muslim separatist movement, and few isolated military rebels were self-destructing through internal factional struggles while negotiating from position of weakness with the government. Fidel V. Ramos's election as president in May 1992 was also clear sign of growing political stability. Although he won with the tiniest of pluralities (23.6 percent), five of his six major opponents conceded defeat, which is quite unusual in country where cries of electoral fraud are long established ritual. Ramos, whose Lakas-National Union of Christian Democrats party won less than fourth of the seats in the house of representatives and placed only third in the number of senators elected, was nonetheless able to establish working relationship with both houses of congress. The recent successes of Philippine democracy can be understood only in the context of its previous difficulties. Relatively little has been written about the

Compulsory Voting, Invalid Ballots, and Abstention in Brazil

This paper explores the determinants of invalid ballots and abstention in the world's largest electorate subject to compulsory voting. Previous analysts have seen blank and spoiled ballots either as an expression of po litical protest or as a product of the social structure. To these interpreta tions we add the hypothesis that invalid voting can be caused by institutional factors. In studying twelve legislative elections in Brazil be tween 1945 and 1990, we find that for each of three dependent variables considered (invalid votes for both houses of Congress, and noncompliant abstention), a model incorporating political, socioeconomic, and institu tional factors is more powerful than a model relying on any one of these alone. We also provide evidence that Brazil's unusual system of open-list proportional representation generates institutional features which serve as barriers impeding the effective incorporation of newly enfranchised voters. The extraordinarily high rates of invalid balloting in recent Brazilian elec tions point to the necessity of institutional reform in order to achieve democratic consolidation, with important implications for other new democracies.

Commerce Department's Data Gathering To Continue Despite Budget Cuts

Both houses of Congress are locked in a heated debate over the continued existence of the Department of Commerce and the potential reshuffling of the majority of its functions to other agencies. Among a group of economists familiar with the chemical industry, a general consensus has emerged that the statistical information derived mainly by two of the department's units—the Bureau of the Census and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)—is valuable for governmental policy making and business planning alike. This data gathering likely will remain intact somewhere within the government. Under one scenario, Commerce's 1996 budget would be reduced by $1 billion from the present $4.2 billion allocation but the department would remain intact. But under a bill originally put forth by House Republicans in May, the Commerce Department would be dismantled, with many of its statistical duties and programs—which benefit the chemical industry—transferred to other federal government agencies (C&EN, Sept. 18, page 26). T...

Correction: Henry Clay and the Great State of Kentucky

To the Editor. —I am writing to correct a statement made by Dr Martensen 1 in his otherwise excellent appreciation of Oliver Wendell Holmes, in which he refers to Carolina Senator Henry Clay's Fugitive Slave Act. Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser, although born in Virginia, spent his entire and very productive political career representing the state of Kentucky in both houses of Congress, first as one of the longest-serving speakers of the house, and then twice serving in the Senate, being brought out of retirement in 1849 by the threat of a country divided over the hot question of slavery. He was forced to retire because of health again in 1852, dying a few months thereafter. John Calhoun was the noted South Carolina senator, who although an ally of Clay in the early days, rather bitterly parted company with Clay because of the latter's attempts to gain a settlement

Budget update: Future is looking gloomier for science

As the wheels of the new Republican‐controlled Congress have been turning, it looks like belts are indeed going to be tighter around U.S. research and development budgets. In mid‐March, the House Budget Committee voted to cut $100 billion over the next five years from federal agency budgets and published guidelines for how this could be done. NASA's Earth Observing System and the U.S. Geological Survey were again mentioned as potential targets and so was the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. If the reduction bill goes the legislative mile, the appropriations committees in each house of Congress will have to figure out where the cuts will fall. Republican and Democratic members of the House Science Committee quickly jumped into the traditional fray with their respective “Views and Estimates” on how science dollars should be doled out for fiscal year 1996. President Clinton has also jumped in the budget‐cutting game with the release last week of a plan to cut $13 billion from four federal agencies over the next 5 years. In the meantime, a rescission bill for FY 1995 has been on the fast track through Congress. Here are some of the latest highlights:

The Length of Legislative Sessions and the Growth of Government

This article suggests a simple and straightforward explanation for government growth based on the length of time that Congress meets in session. The basic hypothesis is that the more time spent in session, the longer and/or more complex the number of bills enacted into law. Because each bill enacted is likely to entail some spending clauses, the bills enacted in longer sessions are likely to involve larger government spending than those passed in shorter sessions. Using data for both houses of Congress for the period 1947-1982, this article provides evidence in support of the hypothesis that government growth can be partially explained by the length of time that Congress takes in session.

Health Care Policy Implications of the 1994 Congressional Elections

AS REPORTED in the press, the 1994 congressional elections had broad implications for the future of public policy in the United States. Republicans gained a majority in both houses of Congress, taking control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. In all, the Republicans gained 52 seats in the House and eight seats in the Senate. The purpose of this article is to examine the implications of the 1994 elections for the future direction of health care policy. Using the results of three Election Day surveys of voters, we will look at two key questions: What role did the health care issue play in voters' choice of candidates? What do voters want the new Congress to do about health care policy? In addition, we will examine the views of California voters on Proposition 186, a proposal to adopt a statewide single-payer system. <h3>Data and Methods</h3>

Naive, not stupid.

In Jane Mayer and Jill Abraham's (1994) new book, Strange Justice, Anita Hill and a longtime friend, flying into Washington for Hill's appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, begin to realize that they are of their league. The friend and Anita have begun to sense that his supporters will do anything to defend Thomas from slander but that no one is going to protect Anita Hill. Anita actually expects Thomas to agree with her on at least some of the facts; it never dawns on them that the hearings be a political free-for-all. Over the Potomac approaching National Airport, her friend declares, feel like we're a couple of stupid farm girls: Naive, Hill said, correcting her, I was reading Strange Justice on November 8 as the electoral returns came rolling in, and I was feeling very stupid. I had not yet recovered from the ignominious demise of health care reform in September, when I felt suddenly broadsided by this new political agenda. It threatens to break many deeply held contracts Americans have with their government. Both the Congress and the statehouses have experienced a thunderous stampede to the right. The Republicans won a majority in both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years; the Democrats had held a majority in both chambers in no fewer than 17 of the last 20 Congresses. The House has shifted from 256 to 178 in favor of the Democrats to 230 to 208 in favor of the Republicans, a gain for the Republicans of 49 seats. The balance in the Senate shifted from 56 Democrats and 44 Republicans to 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats, a gain of nine seats for the GOP. The Republicans also gained 9 governorships for a total of 30 - their first majority since 1970. These governorships now include seven of the eight largest states, gubernatorial clout that could shape the electoral college in 1996. Republicans also picked up 481 seats in state legislatures, winning control of 19 new legislative chambers. They now control both chambers in 19 states, Democrats control both in 18, and in 12 states the chambers are split (Nebraska's unicameral legislature is nonpartisan) - the first time in 60 years that state legislatures have had such parity (Rosenbaum, 1994). Some say that the seeds of this Republican victory, especially in the South and in rural areas, were sown in the gains achieved by the civil rights, antiwar, feminist, environmental, and gay rights movements. The theme that has now come to dominate the political landscape is the refrain that government is not only not the answer to our problems, government is the problem. The reader will have to make his or her own judgment as to whether this is naive, stupid, or otherwise. NEW CONTRACTS IN AMERICA On September 27, a number of Republicans proposed a new Contract with America, to be passed within the first 100 days of the new Congress: legislation to fight crime, reform welfare, restrict child pornography, reform product liability laws, impose term limits on Congress, and give the President veto power over individual items in spending bills. Mainly, however, it proposed a constitutional balanced budget amendment and wholesale tax cuts that would drastically reduce federal revenues. The tax cuts - on capital gains, families with children, corporate investment, retirement savings, and social security benefits - would generate severe revenue losses costing about $40 billion a year in the first five years. Thereafter, the costs would soar to about $80 billion a year. In addition, the deficit reductions would require cutting another $140 billion a year. All in all, the contract knocks about $200 billion a year out of a $1.5 trillion budget (Contract's Brutal Arithmetic, 1994). Agreeing on the details of such draconian cuts will not be easy. Proposals by Republican representatives John Kasich (OH) and Gerald Soloman (NY) in the last Congress spelling out far lesser cuts failed to obtain Republican support. …

Politics of the Demise of Healthcare Reform

Millions of our citizens do not now have a full measure of opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health. Millions do not now have protection or security against the economic effects of sickness. The time has arrived for action to help them attain that opportunity and that protection.” The recent words of President Bill Clinton? No, the words of President Harry S. Truman. As early as 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his State of the Union Message, advocated “the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.” That same year, Senators Robert Wagner (D-NY) and James Murray (D-MT) and Representative John Dingell, Sr (D-MI) introduced the “Wagner/Murray/Dingell” bill, which proposed broadening Social Security to include a national health insurance system financed by a payroll tax. Fast forward to 1994. After a long and contentious 2-year battle to pass comprehensive healthcare reform, the Congress, President Clinton, and the American public find themselves no farther along in the process than their counterparts during the Roosevelt Administration. According to Donna Shalala, Secretary of Health and Human Services, “the public clearly told us that the idea of taking on the whole system, every aspect of it,” was unacceptable. The American public finds itself left in the wake of a reported record $46.1 million spent by health and business interests lobbying on healthcare reform, according to the group Citizen Action. Although healthcare reform was dead for the 103rd Congress, Americans still retained a whole new set of additions to the American lexicon—or at least those Americans living within the confines of the Washington Beltway. Hard, soft, and fast-track triggers, managed care, premium caps, purchasing cooperatives, community rating, single payer, and incremental reform were spread throughout the pages of daily newspapers and discussed on endless radio talk shows. Healthcare …

Cultural Politics at the Edge of Life

To operate within a strictly political frame of reference, the dispute over abortion—the centerpiece of the controversy over reproduction and population control in America—would seem to be over. With the election of Bill Clinton to the presidency in 1992, many observers declared as much. Charles Krauthammer, for one, argued that “one can reasonably declare a great national debate over when all three independently (s)elected branches of government come to the same position.” In 1992 the Supreme Court reaffirmed the central holding of Roe v. Wade in the Casey decision. Given this and an apparent majority of pro-choice votes in both houses of Congress, the new President-elect vowed to make good on his campaign pledge to pass the “Freedom of Choice Act” (FOCA), the legislative equivalent of Roe, as a safeguard against any future challenges. Certainly there seemed to be grounds for such a claim.

Family Leave Legislation in the U. S. House: Voting on the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1990

Family and medical leave legislation has been one of the most hotly debated topics in family and social policy in recent years. Since 1985, when Representative Patricia Schroeder (D-Colorado) and her colleagues introduced the first family leave bill in the U.S. Congress, supporters of such policies experienced notable gains and setbacks. In the mid-1980s, few (if any) states had established family leave policies. Now, as many as half the states have some form of family leave law, and nearly all the states have introduced family leave proposals into their legislative processes. In Congress, there has been a steady march toward passage of family leave legislation. Congress passed the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) of 1990 in the early summer of that year, only to have the legislation vetoed by President Bush on June 29, 1990. In late 1991, a similar measure was held in conference committee so that supporters of the bill could force the President to veto the bill in an election year (see Schroeder, 1991). Finally, in early 1993 both houses of Congress passed the Family and Medical Leave Act, and in February the bill became the first piece of legislation signed into law by President Clinton. Although Clinton's signature closed the book on national family leave legislation, at least in the short run, there could be no doubt that family and medical leave had become an issue of high political visibility. As the family leave policy neared its implementation date in August 1993, debate over various provisions of the law made it clear that the topic is far from settled. The topic of family leave has not been ignored by the scientific community. The need for programs that help employees balance work and family demands has been discussed widely (e.g., Hopper & Zigler, 1988; Zigler & Frank, 1988). The political environment and process likely to result in passage of family leave laws at the state level have been documented (Garand & Monroe, 1994b; Wisensale, 1990). Arguments for and against family leave laws have been analyzed (Haase, 1988; Lenhoff & Becker, 198, and the costs of failing to adopt such laws have been reported (Spalter-Roth, Hartmann, Gibbs, Lenhoff, & Stoneback, 1989). In this article, we utilize a theoretical model developed in previous research to explain and predict roll call votes in the U.S. House of Representatives on the FMLA of 1990. We previously examined the votes of U.S. Senators on debate surrounding the Parental and Medical Leave Act of 1988 (Monroe & Garand, 1991). That model had excellent predictive capability, but the vote examined was a cloture vote (i.e., a vote to end a filibuster, rather than a vote on final passage of the legislation). While there was sound logic for examining a cloture vote as a proxy for a substantive roll call vote on family leave legislation, the lack of a recorded ballot on final passage for that legislation was a limitation. Next, we tested a similar model to explain adoption of family leave laws at the state level (Monroe & Garand, 1989; Garand & Monroe, 1994b). Again the model provided an excellent fit to the data, but the test of the model was limited because so few states had adopted such a law and because the content of the laws varied considerably from state to state. The present article is not bound by the above limitations. The FMLA was a very public vote on a widely publicized piece of legislation. Supporters and opponents of the legislation were operating in full force. President Bush made his veto intentions clear. Moreover, in this study we are unconstrained by the limited number of cases inherent in any study of the U.S. Senate or the American states. The size of the House membership (N = 435) provides for better estimates of the effects of relevant independent variables and sufficient degrees of freedom for the number of variables in our model. Finally, measures of the various independent variables can be finely developed because constituency level data are available at the House district level. …