Congressional Support Research Articles

Nicotine indicted as an addictive drug

Catalyzed by a report issued last week by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop indicting nicotine as an addictive drug, health groups and their supporters in Congress have launched a new assault on the tobacco industry, linking the war on cigarettes to the war on illegal drugs. The 639-page study focuses on the pharmacologic basis of addiction to tobacco. It asks why people smoke and use other tobacco products despite the known health hazards. Koop gives three simple answers: Cigarettes and other forms of tobacco are addicting. Nicotine is the drug in tobacco that causes addiction. The pharmacologic and behavioral processes that determine tobacco addiction are similar to those that determine addiction to drugs such as heroin and cocaine. All tobacco products contain substantial amounts of nicotine—a tertiary amine composed of a pyridine and a pyrrolidine ring—and other alkaloids. The report reviews nicotine's pharmacokinetics, metabolism, pharmacodynamics, sites and mechanisms of action, toxicity, and its ad...

Do HMO Members Get More Cancer Checkups?

One justification for Congressional support of Health Maintenance Organizations has been the supposition that they promote preventive medicine. This study found HMO members no more likely overall to receive appropriate cancer checkups than individuals with traditional (reimbursement) insurance coverage, although in the under-40 age category, HMO members were more likely to receive the checkups. The study identified reminders, rather than type of health plan coverage, as the key predictor of obtaining checkups.

A Mission in the Desert: The Albuquerque District, 1935-1985

Abstract : The accomplishments of the Albuquerque District, U. S. Army Corps of Engineers encompass 50 years of accelerating growth in the American Southwest. For the Albuquerque District, it all began in 1935. But for the Army Engineers, it all began much earlier - more than a century ago when the U. S. Topographical Engineers began to probe the region. This important era of Engineer exploration and mapping provided information for future expansion into the Southwest during and after the War with Mexico in 1846. The early data was also useful in gaining later Congressional support for railroad construction, which was the first major step in the development of the region by the United States. When the Army Engineers came into New Mexico in 1935 to construct its first project near Tucumcari, the Engineers began to develop a knowledge of the political, climatic, cultural, and economic uniqueness of the region, and the Albuquerque District has subsequently developed an expertise in the needs and realities of the land and its inhabitants. The contributions of the District are woven into the fabric of expansion whereby the Southwest has entered the mainstream of national development. In this history of the Albuquerque District and of the early engineer explorers, the thoughts, writings, and theories of many Army personnel have been collected. The contributions of the Army Engineers began with Lieutenant Zebulon Pike's explorations of the southern Rockies in 1806, and were followed by Major Stephen Long's journey along the Rocky Mountain Front Range in 1819 and 1820. Surveys by engineers Abert and Peck in New Mexico in 1847 were succeeded by additional surveys by Lieutenant George Wheeler in the 1870s. The present District's origins began as the Tucumcari (later Conchas) District during the construction of Conchas Dam and then the name was changed to the Caddoa District during the construction of John Martin Dam and Reservoir in Colorado.

What Do Key Votes Measure?

Congressional Quarterly's key votes are examined on two of the organization's stated criteria: legislative controversy and presidential power. Key votes reveal greater internal conflict but less controversy than do all roll-call votes in Congress. At least for Republican presidents, key votes are a very parsimonious (i.e., consistent) measure of congressional support for presidents. We conclude that key votes are a better measure of presidential power than they are of controversy in Congress.

"Staying Private": Gaining Congressional Support for Unpublicized Presidential Preferences on Roll Call Votes

Presidents are known to have strong incentives to publicize their positions on legislation before the Congress. This paper examines the obverse of that proposition: that under appropriate circumstances, presidents have strong incentives not to publicize their positions. Data from the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies uncover 36 instances of unpublicized presidential preferences. The paper rejects apolitical explanations for their existence, and then presents four political reasons why presidents might avoid publicly expressing their views. Tests of inferences about congressional voting behavior based on those reasons are formulated, and the findings conform to the expectations. On the basis of those findings, I argue for additional research that examines various facets of the process by which presidents influence the Congress.

Let's be sure to do our homework

A strong federal budget for geophysical research requires the active support of Congress. AGU needs to raise the general level of awareness among members of key congressional committees and their staffs of the importance of geophysical phenomena to society and the contributions geophysicists can make in providing scientific information as an ingredient in the formulation of public policy.Effective communication with any legislative body, be it a state legislature or Congress, requires long‐term repeated contact—not just a sudden appearance at the final stage of a budget deliberation or during a crisis when some geophysical event like a catastrophic earthquake or volcanic eruption captures the attention of legislators.

THE SOUND OF THE GUNS

This article examines whether, during the 1946-1982 time period, presidents achieve more success in Congress on important international issues in the wake of dramatic military operations. The analysis shows that, at least for a short period of time after visible uses of U.S. military force, a president will generally have a greater chance of congressional support on key international issues.

Mobilizing Congressional Support for the President: Insights from the 1960s

This paper presents and tests the proposition that Presidents Kennedy and Johnson mobilized their core supporters in Congress in order to succeed on roll-call votes in the House of Representatives on motions identified by the White House's Office of Congressional Relations as motions that were critical to the presidents' agendas. This proposition has gone largely unexplored within the existing body of quantitative research. The findings demonstrate that core supporters are indeed mobilized (as are the presidents' core opponents) and have significantly contributed to the presidents' success. The findings indicate that we should explicitly broaden our conception of how presidents exercise influence when building majorities in the Congress.

Planning, evaluation, and legislative capabilities

Virtually all examinations of governmental planning have been restricted to the executive branch. However, over the last fifty years, Congress has acquired a relatively sophisticated, though latent, planning capability which has greatly increased its potential for policy making that is both more anticipatory and more comprehensive. While the transformation of Congress from a quintessential liberal institution into an institution dominated by planning is certainly an unlikely prospect, the reforms of the 1970s, building on the reforms of 1946, have changed Congress significantly. These reforms have vastly expanded congressional sources of internal support, have created and enhanced external congressional support agencies, and have reorganized the internal structure of Congress. It is important to recognize the planning implications of each of the structural modifications, and grouping them all together as part of a grand congressional planning capability puts past reforms and proposals for future reforms in a new and enlightening perspective.

Democrats Gain a 10-Seat Majority in the Senate

The Democratic Party emerged from the Nov. 4 elections with a 55 to 45 majority in the Senate, regaining the control it lost in the 1980 Republican landslide. Democrats picked up only five seats in the House, but they already had a 74-seat majority in that body. Thus, it is the change in control of the Senate that will make the most difference in the last two years of President Reagan's second term. On the top of the Democratic agenda is an item the President strongly opposes—tough new trade legislation designed to protect American jobs and open up overseas markets to American products. The Democrats' new majority in the Senate also means, at the very least, much greater scrutiny of Administration programs and nominees. It probably won't have much effect on funding for basic scientific research, which has enjoyed strong bipartisan Congressional and Administration support in recent years. But it gives new life to opponents ...

Congressional Support for the President: The View from the Kennedy/Johnson White House

This paper describes characteristics of presidential support scores compiled by the Office of Congressional Relations (OCR) from 1961 to 1967. These characteristics are compared to similar scores compiled by Congressional Quarterly (CQ). The OCR scores were based on votes known to be important to the presidents, while CQ could not make such distinctions. This difference in vote selection generated important substantive and methodological implications. For example, the OCR scores reveal that Republicans and southern Democrats were much less supportive of the presidents than CQ suggests, while northern Democrats were much more supportive. This, along with other CQ shortcomings revealed by the analysis of CQ-OCR differences, argues for the use of the OCR scores when attempting to explain presidential influence, and a sensitivity to important problems with the CQ scores when the OCR data are not available.

Congressional Support Agencies

Congressional Support Agencies

The American—Israeli Alliance: Raison d'état Revisited

Long before the advent of the 1973 war, -the United States had devised a policy that manifested its broad and deep commitment to Israel's security. The commitment was evidenced not only in repeated public pronouncements of support by successive administrations (Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan), but also by an unusual constancy of support in Congress: massive doses of economic and military aid, special privileges granted to Israel and its citizens, and close coordination between the two countries on many economic, diplomatic, and military matters. 1 How can one explain satisfactorily the solidity and longevity of this special, perhaps unique, relationship? What are the forces that cement the ties? And, finally, what does the future hold for the relationship between Israel and the U.S.? The Palestinian scholar, Professor Walid Khalidi, attributes Washington's Middle East policy to the predominance of domestic and global concerns. In his view, domestic and geopolitical strategies have been allowed to play paramount roles, at the expense of the regional variable. This, he contends, is why U.S. policy toward the Palestine problem and the Arab-Israeli conflict since the 1940s has consistently gone awry.2 Similarly, Paul Findley, a former congressman from America's heartland, clearly and convincingly delineates the extraordinary influence of the

Care of the elder veteran: new directions for change.

Prologue: The medical care system that serves the nations military veterans occupies a unique place in American society. Publicly financed and centrally administered by the Veterans Administration (VA), the system is designed to fulfill what society has determined is its obligation to, as Abraham Lincoln declared so eloquently a century ago, “care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan. ” The VA is a vast federal agency — the third largest with an annual budget nearing $30 billion —and it enjoys broad support in Congress. Increasingly, though, because of its size, the aging of its contituency, the federal governments budget-cutting exercise and questions about its appropriate future role, the VA has come under sharper scrutiny. A variety of reforms of the VA's medical care system have been proposed, such as tightening its eligibility requirements, establishing a voucher system that would entitle veterans to care in the private sector, and narrowing the VA's focus. Most proposed reforms have run into a stonewall of opposition from VA's vaunted lobby and the reformers stymied. Nevertheless, the pressures that suggest some future changes will be necessary remain. In this essay, authors Mark Schlesinger and Terrie Wetle advance a different proposal for reform which, they say, is more in accord with the VA's capacity and political reality. The proposal seeks to draw upon the strengths of the current VA medical care system and encourage a more active collaboration with other public and private systems of care. Schlesinger and Wetle both reside at Harvard University; Schlesinger is at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Wetle is assistant professor at the medical school. They have been working closely with a variety of members of Congress on VA reform. Schlesinger holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Wisconsin and is research coordinator for the Center for Health Policy and Management at the Kennedy School. Wetle holds a doctorate in urban studies from Portland State University and is assistant director of the Division on Aging at Harvard Medical School.

Congressional Support Agencies

Congressional Support Agencies

Mars mission

To mark the 10th anniversary of the Apollo‐Soyuz joint space mission, a recent conference examined the prospects for human exploration of Mars and for international cooperation in space. Most of the participants at the conference, which was jointly sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and The Planetary Society, seemed to agree that some sort of collaboration like that between the United States and Soviet Union a decade ago would be desirable, and probably necessary, if humans are ever to reach Mars. Sen. Spark Matsunaga (D‐Hawaii) extended the idea by saying that to gain the support of Congress, plans for future space exploration should be tied to international cooperation.

EL SALVADOR AND THE PRESS: A PERSONAL ACCOUNT

Abstract : In El Salvador, the war is being fought by the government to retain popular support and is supported by the United States through economic and military aid. US public opinion and congressional support have therefore become key pressure points and targets for the insurgents' propaganda efforts. This situation has given the press a good deal of leverage in influencing that support. At the time of my assignment to El Salvador in 1982 as Chief of the US Military Group, there was an obvious lack of balance in the press coverage.

Closed Primaries and Party Support in Congress

Nominating procedures in the American states rely on three types of primary elections: closed, open, and blanket. These systems vary with regard to the extent partisanship is injected into the process. The data show that members of Congress with the highest levels of party support in the House of Representatives are elected in states using closed primaries. However, this relationship between partisanship in office and use of the closed primary appears to result from the common determination of these two variables by regional differences and traditional patterns of interparty competition at the state level. In other words, the state systems that value partisanship the most will likely have closed primaries and elect representatives more likely to support their party.

Measuring Presidential Success in Congress: Alternative Approaches

There are numerous obstacles to studying presidential-congressional relations. One of the most difficult to overcome is measuring presidential success. This article addresses the theoretical significance of the choice of measures, and develops and analyzes four alternative indices of presidential support in Congress. It concludes that usually it is best to employ individual-level measures of presidential support and that, although different measures produce similar results, it is useful to rely on both broad and exclusive measures in one's research.

The Fate of Policy Analysis in Congressional Decision Making: Three Types of Use in Committees

TW A TITHIN the past two decades, Congress has dramatically enhanced its analytic capability, increasing the number and responsibilities of its professional staff (Malbin 1979; Salisbury and Shepsle 1981) and the quantity and quality of its analytic information (Commission on the Operation of the Senate 1976; Frantzich 1982). Two new congressional support agencies have been created, the Office of Technology Assessment and Congressional Budget Office, and the policy analysis components of the other two, the Congressional Research Service and General Accounting Office, have been significantly upgraded. The fate of policy analysis in congressional decision making, however, remains unclear. Research on the use of analytic information has focused almost exclusively on the executive branch, perhaps in response to suggestions that the potential for using policy analysis in Congress appeared to be quite limited (Davidson 1976; Jones 1976; Dreyfus 1977). In addition, research on congressional decision making has yet to produce models which explicitly connect floor voting choices, which are not likely to be directly influenced by policy analysis, with the activities which precede and structure those choices, activities in which the influence of analytic information is likely to be much stronger. This article is an attempt to provide some theoretical context and empirical underpinning to discussions of both the use of policy analysis in Congress and the implications of that use for congressional decision making. Such an endeavor contributes in two more general ways to greater understanding of the role of analysis in public decision making. First, it extends the scope of research, which has been largely restricted to administrative organizations. Investigating the use of policy analysis in legislative environment forces explicit attention to the political factors which affect use, something often ignored. Second, the legislative setting presents, in stark terms, the basic difficulty of combining expert advice with democratic political institutions, which MacRae contends is a major problem of contemporary democratic societies (1976: 169). Congress, the institution once envisioned to be tied most closely to the common sense of the common man, is now being confronted with increasingly complex problems that appear to require considerable specialized knowledge. An