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Too Weak to Govern investigates the power of the majority party in the United States Senate through a study of the appropriations process over a period of nearly four decades. It uses quantitative analysis, case studies, and interviews with policy makers to show that the majority party is more likely to abandon routine procedures for passing spending bills in favor of creating massive 'omnibus' spending bills when it is small, divided, and ideologically distant from the minority. This book demonstrates that the majority party's ability to influence legislative outcomes is greater than previously understood but that it operates under important constraints. However, the majority generally cannot use its power to push its preferred policies through to approval. Overall, the weakness of the Senate majority party is a major reason for the breakdown of the congressional appropriations process over the past forty years

There is a debate about the extent of the Senate majority party's influence and the conditions under which it is used. This article demonstrates that the majority party influences legislative outcomes to meet electoral goals and protect its reputation by manipulating the consideration of the dozen annual appropriations bills. The majority party limits amendments and eases passage of the budget when it abandons the "regular order" and creates an omnibus appropriations bill. It is more likely to abandon the regular order when it is ideologically divided, has a small margin of control, or is distant from the minority.

Theories of party power in Congress differ on the circumstances under which majority parties have the ability to shift policy outcomes away from the preferences of pivotal voters and toward the majority's preferred position. The theory of Pivotal Politics states that it is unlikely parties have such power. The theory of Conditional Party Government states that parties can influence policy outcomes when they are ideologically unified, while the Cartel theory suggests that parties can influence outcomes all of the time by controlling the agenda. In this dissertation, I propose and test three hypotheses addressing the extent of party power using an original dataset of the legislative history of federal appropriations bills and case studies of two time periods in Congress. Appropriations bills are an effective way to study trends in Congress because they must be passed every year. In the last three decades, Congress has shifted from its traditional method of passing the 13 bills that fund the federal government individually to packaging them together in massive "omnibus" bills. I show that the decision of party leaders to create omnibus bills is a form of agenda control that allows party leaders to meet a variety of goals ranging from protecting the majority party's reputation to adopting partisan policy. Omnibus bills help party leaders meet their goals because they are multidimensional, "must pass" bills that members are reluctant to oppose. They are particularly useful in the Senate, where they provide an effective counter to the ever present threat of a filibuster. I make three major arguments. First, I contend that the ability of a majority party to control the agenda with omnibus spending bills is independent of its degree of ideological diversity. In the last 30 years, omnibus bills have been used both when the majority party is ideologically diverse and when it is unified. Second, I contend that the likelihood a majority party will seek to control the agenda with omnibus bills depends on the ideological distance from the majority's median voter to other pivotal voters on the floor. These distances have varied over time with the ideological diversity and margin of control of the majority party. Large ideological gaps between pivotal voters are an indication that the floor is a challenging arena for the majority party and create an incentive to control the agenda. Third, I contend that the policy consequences of omnibus bills vary with the majority party's ideological diversity. Diverse parties are likely to use omnibus bills to "keep the trains running" by passing the budget, while unified parties are likely to use omnibus bills to pursue partisan policy goals. My findings expand our understanding of the motivations of members of Congress. Theories of Congress rooted in the reelection motive state that individual behavior, and by extension, the behavior of parties, is motivated primarily by the desire to improve prospects for reelection. Evidence from the history of appropriations bills over the last 30 years suggests that ideologically unified parties will use omnibus bills to pursue policy goals even if those goals create some additional risk of not being reelected.

Cet article explore une des mutations récentes du processus législatif au sein du Sénat, la création de lois dites « omnibus » face à la difficulté de gérer les débats dans la Haute Assemblée. En rassemblant les lois de finance (Appropriation Bills) au sein d'un seul texte, le pari est de rendre le coût politique de l'obstruction insupportable. A partir d'une étude du 108 ème Congrès, (2002-04), l'auteur met en relief les enjeux politiques de cette innovation procédurale tout en montrant ses conséquences de long terme.

AbstractScholars commonly observe that lawmaking in Congress has transitioned from the textbook system of "regular order" in which power was decentralized in committees and lawmaking followed a formal process to one of "unorthodox lawmaking" characterized by the centralization of power in party leaders and a lack of formal process. It is debated whether this change marks a decline in Congress's lawmaking capacity, or is a procedural adaptation that has allowed Congress to remain productive despite high levels of partisanship. In this article, we maintain that lawmaking in Congress varies along two dimensions: formality of process and centralization of power. We analyze non-spending bills added to omnibus appropriations packages to demonstrate that lawmaking on these bills is informal and decentralized. Rank-and-file members retain a capacity to place matters on the legislative agenda and authorizing committees retain gatekeeping and policymaking authority. The process through which add-ons are approved is also bipartisan. Our findings demonstrate that this style of lawmaking is a procedural adaptation used by members to pass legislation important to their districts and in which committees continue to play an important deliberative role.

We consider the consequences of the Senate electoral cycle and bicameralism for distributive politics, introducing the concept of contested credit claiming, i.e. that members of a state's House and Senate delegations must share the credit for appropriations that originate in their chamber with delegation members in the other chamber. Using data that isolates appropriations of each chamber, we test a model of the strategic incentives contested credit claiming creates. Our empirical analysis indicates that the Senate electoral cycle induces a back-loading of benefits to the end of senatorial terms, but that the House blunts this tendency with countercyclical appropriations. Our analysis informs our understanding of appropriations earmarking, and points a way forward in studying the larger consequences of bicameral legislatures.

We consider the consequences of the Senate electoral cycle and bicameralism for distributive politics, introducing the concept of contested credit claiming, i.e., that members of a state's House and Senate delegations must share the credit for appropriations that originate in their chamber with delegation members in the other chamber. Using data that isolate appropriations of each chamber, we test a model of the strategic incentives contested credit claiming creates. Our empirical analysis indicates that the Senate electoral cycle induces a back‐loading of benefits to the end of senatorial terms, but that the House blunts this tendency with countercyclical appropriations. Our analysis informs our understanding of appropriations earmarking and points a way forward in studying the larger consequences of bicameral legislatures.