Congressional Reform: A Perspective

Congressional Reform: A Perspective

Congressional Reform:
October 6, 2021
A Perspective
Walter J. Oleszek
Congressional reform is a perennial issue for the House and Senate. Typically, it means a change
Senior Specialist in
for the better; Members’ views on that may diverge significantly. Lawmakers who benefit from
American National
existing institutional arrangements are unlikely to yield power voluntarily and may try to thwart
Government
reorganization efforts. Reform advocates have the task of persuading opponents or on-the-fence

lawmakers of the virtues of congressional reorganization.

The purposes of legislative reform are many. For example, these initiatives may produce
congressional alterations that are big or little, few or many; occur through formal actions (laws and rules) or informal
developments (changes in practices, such as wider use of omnibus measures); and are considered in diverse venues, such as
during debates in committee, the House and Senate chamber, party caucuses, or the offices of top party leaders. In short,
congressional reform is a significant undertaking replete with its own set of policy, political, partisan, and procedural
complexities.
This report’s principal objectives are threefold. First, it starts with a brief examination of the word reform and its popularity
on Capitol Hill. Even so, as a top House party leader and later President of the United States (Gerald Ford) cautioned:
“Reform is a tricky word; change per se is not necessarily the same as progress.” The word is “tricky” in part because
lawmakers often disagree on whether a legislative “reform” is an improvement over the status quo.
The focus of this report is on the internal operation and organization of Congress. It does not address the array of external
matters that affect the House and Senate, such as campaign fundraising or gerrymandering House districts.
Second, the report highlights six reform goals that commonly suffuse major congressional reorganization initiatives. They
include improving efficiency, redistributing power, promoting transparency, enhancing public standing, achieving policy
results, and strengthening congressional prerogatives. Each objective would likely provoke an array of discrete reform
suggestions proposed by Members and many others (e.g., scholars, commentators, and think-tank analysts).
Third, the bulk of the report provides an examination of three joint reorganization panels whose mission was to study and
make recommendations for improving the organization, operation, and role of the legislative branch. The three joint panels
were created in 1945, 1965, and 1993. Specifically, the report addresses several matters that overlap each reform committee
and several that are unique to each joint panel, such as the factors and forces that influenced why these bicameral panels were
created and what were several of their main recommendations.
Different legislative eras give rise to different congressional reform responses. During much of the 20th century, for example,
the issue of seniority—a Member of the majority party who served the longest consecutively on a committee would become
its chair—was a prominent reform topic, in part because it advantaged lawmakers regularly elected from safe states and
congressional districts as chairs, regardless of their abilities or policy preferences. Seniority waned as a major reform topic
starting in the 1970s going forward with the influx of reform-minded lawmakers. They won adoption of party rules requiring
prospective committee chairs to stand for separate, secret-ballot election by their partisan colleagues. This process led to the
ouster of several chairs.
The report closes with summary observations.

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Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1
Reform Objectives ........................................................................................................................... 2
Improve Efficiency .................................................................................................................... 2
Redistribute Power .................................................................................................................... 3
Promote Transparency ............................................................................................................... 3
Enhance Public Standing ........................................................................................................... 4
Achieve Policy Outcomes ......................................................................................................... 5
Strengthen Institutional (Inter-Branch) Prerogatives ................................................................ 5
The 1945 Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress .......................................................... 6
Context ...................................................................................................................................... 6
Restricted Charter ...................................................................................................................... 7
Role of Party Leaders ................................................................................................................ 7
Time as a Legislative Resource ................................................................................................. 8
Outreach .................................................................................................................................... 9
Sweeteners................................................................................................................................. 9
Summary of Major Provisions, 1946 LRA ............................................................................... 9
The 1965 Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress ........................................................ 10
Context .................................................................................................................................... 10
Charter Restrictions .................................................................................................................. 11
Role of Party Leaders ............................................................................................................... 11
Persistence and Adaptation ..................................................................................................... 12
Bicameral Coordination .......................................................................................................... 13
Outreach: Building Public Support ......................................................................................... 13
Several Notable Provisions of the 1970 LRA ......................................................................... 14
The 1993 Joint Committee on the Organization of the Congress .................................................. 15
Context .................................................................................................................................... 15
Hearings and Related Activities .............................................................................................. 16
Markup .................................................................................................................................... 16
Recommendations ................................................................................................................... 16
Legislative Reorganization Act of 1994 .................................................................................. 17
Reform Resurrected ................................................................................................................ 17
Concluding Observations .............................................................................................................. 18

Contacts
Author Information ........................................................................................................................ 19

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Congressional Reform: A Perspective

Introduction
Congressional reform is a perennial topic for lawmakers, scholars, analysts, and many others. Its
salience can vary over time, but the reformist tradition in Congress remains strong, persistent, and
genuine. This tradition is of critical importance because it underscores that there are lawmakers
and many others (academics, commentators, groups, and so on) who care about the work, role,
and performance of Congress as the “first branch” (Article I of the Constitution) in the nation’s
tripartite and interconnected constitutional system.
Congressional reform reflects in its broadest sense the actions and efforts of Members to
accommodate the inevitable changes (social, demographic, political, global, technological, and so
on) that influence the performance of Congress’s major, overlapping responsibilities: lawmaking,
representation, and oversight. The broad purpose of each responsibility is clear—making national
policy, serving constituents, and overseeing the administration of laws.
Reform, therefore, is an attractive word because it implies change and improvement for the better.
A dictionary definition refers to reform as “improve by alteration” or “put into a better condition.”
Because many things require periodic repair and renewal, reform is a popular word that is also
affixed to many legislative proposals: tax reform, health reform, campaign finance reform, budget
reform, lobbying reform, and so on. Congressional reform typically elicits a favorable response
from lawmakers and the general public. In the abstract, reform is likely to be supported by many
people.
Even so, the term is imprecise and overly general. It lacks concreteness as to the particulars of
congressional change, such as what organizational, procedural, or structural features of the
legislative branch require improvement in the judgment of reform advocates and for what
reasons. The goals and specifics of reorganization often arouse disagreement, and that can occur
whether reforms are comprehensive, incremental, or something in-between. Members may prefer
the status quo they know and benefit from compared to the unknown consequences of legislative
change. One person’s reform, after all, can be another’s deform.
Legislative “change” and “reform” are not necessarily identical. As House Minority Leader (and
later U.S. President) Gerald Ford cautioned: “Reform is a tricky word; change per se is not
necessarily the same as progress. Each and every proposal for reform of Congress must be
weighed against other suggested reforms, and all must be weighed in the balance of power
between the branches of government.”1 Such assessments can be problematic because the costs,
benefits, or implications of major or minor legislative alterations may take some time to come to
light. Something that might seem like a minor or modest change, such as obligating the House
Parliamentarian to publish the chamber’s previously privately kept precedents, can influence the
fate of legislation.
Congressional reforms can upend the status quo by affecting the institutional distribution of
power: who has it, who wants it, and who benefits or loses from the proposed revisions—for
example, Members, committees, parties, or some combination. Whether a particular innovation
would resolve the problem for which it was designed—or even whether it would produce
positive, negative, or unanticipated consequences—is uncertain. Even the most useful reforms
can over time become ineffective, unnecessary, or obsolete. Reforms of one era can spark their
repeal or renovation in another.

1 Mary McInnis, ed., We Propose: A Modern Congress, Selected Proposals by the House Republican Task Force on
Congressional Reform and Minority Staffing (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1966), p. xii.
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In sum, the goals of this report are to provide an analysis of three joint reorganization
committees—1945, 1965, and 1993—with sweeping mandates to study the organization,
operation, and role of the legislative branch and to make recommendations for improving and
strengthening the work of Congress and its Members. Specifically, the report’s main purpose is to
analyze several key factors and forces that influenced each panel’s creation, work, and
accomplishments, including the historical context of the times and the role of top party leaders.
Some of the factors are unique to each joint panel, and some overlap all three.2 First, it is useful to
discuss several reform objectives that commonly permeate legislative reform initiatives.3
Reform Objectives
A distinctive feature of legislative reform, wrote a congressional scholar, is that “Congress is an
institution that reforms itself, and therefore special conditions must obtain before the membership
will be moved to upset familiar ways of doing business.” He added that “the roots of reform are
to be found in how members look at themselves and their perceptions of how others look at
them.”4 For example, frustration, dismay, and general disgruntlement with Congress’s
performance could provoke Members’ reform impulses. Their focus might range from enhancing
the authority of the majority or minority parties; strengthening the role of individual lawmakers in
shaping policy; encouraging greater oversight of the executive branch; emphasizing “textbook”
legislating (committee hearings, markups, and floor amendments, for instance) over
nontraditional lawmaking (bypassing committee review); or augmenting staff expertise on
Capitol Hill. Several broad aims of congressional reform are these half-dozen: improve
efficiency, redistribute power, promote transparency, enhance public standing, achieve policy
results, and strengthen congressional prerogatives.
Improve Efficiency
The Founding Fathers designed a complex, bicameral Congress, now numbering 535 Members
who represent the diversity of interests and values of their districts or states in a nation of over
330 million people. Efficiency in lawmaking was not their highest objective. Simply put, the
Framers designed a constitutional separation of powers system that makes it difficult to enact
laws without some measure of public support and the requirement of favorable House and Senate
action and presidential signature. Efficiency, therefore, is not easy to attain in an institution
replete with policy disagreements, personality clashes, procedural controversies, and partisan
conflicts.
Nonetheless, efficiency has long been an objective of legislative reformers. After all, Members
typically want their structures, processes, and procedures to function with significant
effectiveness, minimizing unnecessary conflict, delay, or expense. They recognize the value of
efficiency in such matters as scheduling the congressional workweek, minimizing committee

2 This report does not discuss the array of external matters that affect the House and Senate, such as campaign
fundraising and gerrymandering House district boundaries.
3 In response to criticisms and other developments, the House and Senate have many ways to advance and structure
legislative reforms. Joint committees are one mechanism to carry out this work. Other reform devices include the
formation of select committees or commissions of the House or Senate. In addition, the caucuses and conferences of
each House and Senate party have a long history of advancing procedural and structural changes. See CRS Report
RL31835, Reorganization of the House of Representatives: Modern Reform Efforts, by Judy Schneider and Christopher
M. Davis; and CRS Report RL32112, Reorganization of the Senate: Modern Reform Efforts, by Judy Schneider et al.
4 Charles O. Jones, “Will Reform Change Congress,” in Lawrence C. Dodd and Bruce I. Oppenheimer, eds., Congress
Reconsidered (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1977), pp. 251-252.
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meeting conflicts, divesting Congress of nonessential functions, or improving the legislature’s
capacity to address and analyze public problems. The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946,
signed into law by President Harry Truman, was even entitled “An Act to Provide for Increased
Efficiency in the Legislative Branch of Government.”
Redistribute Power
Reforms that redistribute power are among the most difficult to enact. Those who gain from
existing institutional and party arrangements are unlikely to yield power voluntarily and may try
to thwart reform efforts. Significant committee jurisdictional realignment often triggers sharp
disagreements between the champions of committee restructuring and the affected committee
chairs, who typically oppose jurisdictional shifts that diminish their authority. Sometimes, rank-
and-file Members advocate reforms to increase procedural opportunities for individual legislators
to advance policy ideas.
A traditional clash over power is that between advocates of centralization (party leaders as
paramount decisionmakers) versus decentralization (committees and their chairs dominate
policymaking). These two centers of power in Congress—committees and parties—have
prompted many reform movements. A committee-centric era (roughly the 1920s into the 1970s)
gradually gave way to today’s party-centric, partisan polarized period. Representative John
Dingell, the longest serving Member of Congress (1955-2015), captured the fundamental
difference between the committee and party eras: “It used to be that the chairman would call the
Speaker up and say, ‘I want this bill on the floor at this time.’ Now it’s the opposite.”5
Heightened intensity of electoral competition between two parties with large ideological and
policy differences—intensified by outside groups affiliated with each party and reinforced by
partisan media outlets—is among the factors that shifted the internal distribution of power
between committees and party leaders. This change occurred gradually and brought with it a
sharper, more combative partisanship that largely reflects the divergent perspectives of the people
lawmakers represent (the GOP “red” states and the Democratic “blue” states). Partisan
polarization in a closely divided Congress and nation elevates the policy and political stakes of
holding or winning majority control of the House or Senate—a fundamental job of majority and
minority party leaders.
Promote Transparency
Another reform impulse is to promote greater transparency of Congress’s decisionmaking
processes. In recent decades, the House and Senate have taken significant actions to improve the
public visibility of their actions. For example, committee hearings and markups are mostly open
to public observation; there is the presumption in House and Senate rules that conference
committees—created to resolve bicameral differences on legislation—should conduct open
negotiating sessions; and both chambers—the House in 1979 and the Senate in 1986—provide
gavel-to-gavel coverage of their floor (and many committee) proceedings over C-SPAN (the
cable satellite public affairs network).
A current transparency issue is that major legislation is often drafted in private meetings by a few
lawmakers—sometimes only of the majority party—and top executive officials. The “regular
order” of committee consideration (hearings, markups, and reports) may be set aside, a
policymaking pattern commonly seen on omnibus appropriations measures. Members of both

5 Paul Glastris and Haley Sweetlands Edwards, “The Big Lobotomy,” Washington Monthly, June/July/August 2014, p.
57.
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chambers have sometimes lamented this type of lawmaking. For example, Senator John McCain
explained what can happen when omnibus spending bills negotiated by a select few are taken up
in the Senate.
We walked into [the chamber], and here was this bill [hundreds of pages in length] … that
no one had read, no one had a chance to peruse, and even if we had, we couldn’t do anything
about it because the bill was not amendable because if we amend it, then it bounces back
to the [House], and we run out of time, and the government shuts down. That is the wrong
way to do business.6
There can be good reasons for circumventing the committee process (e.g., fast-approaching
deadlines, emergencies). If circumvention becomes commonplace, it can trigger bipartisan calls
for reform from legislators who urge policymaking that is more open, inclusive, and deliberate.7
An ongoing challenge is to determine the balance between openness and secrecy. As former
Representative Lee Hamilton pointed out, “congressional negotiators need space to find common
ground without being forced to posture for the cameras, there is a place for secrecy. But
transparency ought to be the rule.”8
Enhance Public Standing
Reelection-minded lawmakers are typically sensitive to the public’s view of Congress’s
performance. They understand that citizen approval of Congress as an institution is traditionally
not high. Part of the reason for Congress’s low public standing is the complexity of what pundits
call its “sausage-making” procedures that are often messy and filled with conflict. Members
typically realize, too, that the press and the media are replete with negative views of the
legislative branch. Today, media pundits, think-tank analysts, and journalists regularly state that
Congress is “broken,” “dysfunctional,” “weak,” or in “decline.”
A number of lawmakers share these sentiments and favor concrete reforms that address and
ameliorate these negative characterizations. While public opinion can be diffuse, inchoate, and
mercurial, if it generates reformist sentiment in the country or solidifies behind a reorganization
proposal (e.g., ethics), it can be an idea whose time has come. Criticism of Congress during the
World War II era contributed to the formation of the 1945 joint reorganization as “members of
both parties believed reorganization could improve Congress’s tattered reputation.”9 In short,
legislative reforms may occur if there is a strong sense in the public that Congress must resolve
certain institutional ailments. (Paradoxically, voters typically disapprove of Congress but approve
of the performance of their House and Senate Members, as manifested by their high reelection
rates.10)

6 Sen. John McCain, “Omnibus and Defense Authorization Bill,” Congressional Record, vol. 162 (March 9, 2016), p.
S1370.
7 The 117th House adopted a rule “requiring committee hearing and markup on bills and joint resolutions.” For some
legislation considered by the chamber, House Rule XXI states: “It shall not be in order to consider a bill or joint
resolution pursuant to a special order of business reported by the Committee on Rules that has not been reported by a
committee.” Several exceptions are allowed, including for legislation not referred to committee. Congressional Record,
vol. 167 (January 4, 2021), pp. H14-H15.
8 Lee H. Hamilton, “How To Fix Distrust in Government,” Center on Congress at Indiana University, November 9,
2011, p. 2. See also Yuval Levin, “Transparency Is Killing Congress,” The Atlantic, February 9, 2020.
9 Eric Schickler, Disjointed Pluralism: Institutional Innovation and the Development of the U.S. Congress (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 143.
10 Two political scientists wrote that Congress is “structured to embody what [people] dislike about modern democratic
government, which is almost everything” [long debates, imperfect solutions, conflict, etc,]. See John R. Hibbing and
Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, Congress as Public Enemy (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 158.
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Achieve Policy Outcomes
The impetus for legislative reforms is often linked to Congress’s failure to pass certain
legislation. For decades, as an example, the Senate’s filibuster—extended debate and other
actions taken to prevent a vote—was blamed for the chamber’s inability to pass civil rights
legislation. Although the Senate does have a formal rule (Rule XXII) to end “talkathons,” a
supermajority vote of 60 of 100 Senators is required to invoke cloture (the closure of debate) on
bills and resolutions. This voting threshold is difficult to attain, especially in closely and deeply
divided Senates, such as the 50-50 party alignment of the 117th Senate. Nonetheless, Senate
reformers have succeeded periodically in amending Rule XXII, such as in 1975, when the vote to
invoke cloture was lowered to the current 60 (three-fifths of Senators duly chosen and sworn)
from the previous standard of 67 (two-thirds of Senators present and voting). Perhaps
unexpectedly, a new normal gradually emerged as an institutionalized norm of the Senate: Today,
60 votes are often required for enacting virtually all types of legislative proposals.
Given the intensity of partisan polarization and the procedural hurdle of attracting 60 votes to
bring extended debate to a close, filibusters are once more a significant reform issue. Consider
President Biden’s ambitious and often contentious policy agenda. Many Senate Democrats worry
that their party’s policy agenda, even on measures that enjoy bipartisan support, would be
blocked by filibusters conducted by a few opposition-party lawmakers. Today, Senators of both
parties are discussing whether to abolish, change, or retain the legislative filibuster.
Strengthen Institutional (Inter-Branch) Prerogatives
Many legislative reforms seek to strengthen Congress as a co-equal branch of government (the
“first branch” in the Constitution). Changes of this sort might occur if Congress’s Article I
prerogatives are challenged by presidential actions. A major reason why Congress passed the
landmark Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 was the chief executive’s
refusal to spend (i.e., willingness to impound) appropriated dollars to fund national priorities that
he disagreed with. The President’s aggressive use of impoundments was a major stimulus that
prompted Congress to revamp its budgeting system to reclaim greater control over federal
expenditures. For example, the 1974 act created three new institutional entities: the House Budget
Committee, the Senate Budget Committee, and the Congressional Budget Office, which provides
independent analyses to the two budget panels as well as to other legislative entities.11
Another source of periodic disagreement between Congress and the President is over their shared
war powers. The Constitution states that the President is commander-in-chief of the nation’s
military, while Congress has the power to declare (authorize) war. Upset with the presidential
conduct of the Vietnam War, Congress enacted, over President Nixon’s veto, the War Powers
Resolution. Its fundamental purpose is to limit the President’s power to deploy U.S. military
forces to war without congressional approval. The resolution was controversial when enacted, and
it remains so today. In the face of undeclared and unconventional warfare, there is large concern
that Congress’s war-declaring authority has migrated to the President.

11 Allen Schick, Congress and Money (Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 1980). Schick said this about
impoundments, for example: “Far from administrative routine, Nixon’s impoundments in late 1972 and 1973 were
designed to rewrite national policy at the expense of congressional power and intent” (p. 46).
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The 1945 Joint Committee on the Organization of
Congress
Context
On the eve of World War II, many leaders inside and outside Congress expressed concern about
the condition of the legislative branch. They had witnessed the fall of parliamentary systems in
Europe and the expansion in the executive branch’s authority. Widespread public interest in
congressional reform was triggered by articles in the press and popular journals, radio debates,
civic discussions, and reports by professional groups. Bipartisan champions of legislative reform
in both chambers, such as Representatives Jerry Voorhis and Everett McKinley Dirksen and
Senators Robert LaFollette Jr. and Claude Pepper, urged Congress to revamp its organization and
operations. Academics, led by the Committee on Congress of the American Political Science
Association prepared reports on ways to improve Congress. The committee also mobilized
scholarly and public support for congressional reform.12
The mood or atmosphere of this historical period sparked significant interest in legislative
reorganization. It was an era of national transition. World War II was winding down, it was the
dawn of the Atomic Age, the United States was emerging as a global power, and a new President
(Harry Truman) occupied the White House. Reform-minded lawmakers also recognized the
challenges Congress confronted by the expanding power of the President and the executive
branch. The times encouraged and supported efforts to modernize Congress’s old ways of doing
business and to bolster its constitutional Article I powers.
In brief, several main stages led to passage of the Legislative Reorganization Act (LRA) of 1946,
an omnibus reform bill that made an array of significant institutional changes to the House and
Senate. Among the key stages:
 In February 1945, the 12-member bipartisan joint reorganization panel began its
work—to study and make recommendations concerning the organization and
operation of the legislative branch. The joint panel held hearings from mid-
March to the end of June 1945, and issued its final report on March 4, 1946. That
report contained 37 specific reform recommendations to improve the
performance of Congress.
 Subsequently, the Senate created a Special Committee on the Reorganization of
Congress, chaired by Senator LaFollette (who also chaired the Joint Committee).
This special committee drafted the reform bill (S. 2177) for the Senate’s
consideration. A Senate majority approved the measure and sent it to the other
body. The House took charge of the Senate-passed bill, eliminated provisions it
disliked, and returned the amended bill to the Senate. Foregoing a conference
committee, the Senate agreed to the House’s amendments to S. 2177, which
cleared the measure for presidential consideration.
 President Harry Truman signed the measure into law (P.L. 79-601).

12 The Reorganization of Congress, A Report of the Committee on Congress of the American Political Science
Association (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1945).
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Restricted Charter
The Joint Committee was established by concurrent resolution and its leadership and membership
appointed in 1945. The chair of the panel, as noted, was Senator LaFollette; its vice chair was
Representative Mike Monroney. (The joint panel was informally known as the LaFollette-
Monroney Committee.) The Joint Committee’s mandate was broad, but there were certain
restrictions. Its authorizing resolution prohibited it from making “any recommendation with
respect to the rules, parliamentary procedure, practices, and/or precedents of either House, or the
consideration of any matter on the floor of either House.” The restricted charter softened
opposition to the Joint Committee’s creation, but it meant that the panel could not recommend
changes on matters that the legislative “power structure” (influential committee chairs and party
leaders) wanted left untouched—such as the filibuster, the seniority system, and the role of the
House Rules Committee. However, people who testified before the Joint Committee did discuss
those topics.
Role of Party Leaders
The top leaders of the House and Senate agreed that the Senate should begin consideration of the
reform bill (S. 2177). Majority Leader Alben Barkley supported congressional self-improvement.
He offered amendments regarding budgetary matters and encouraged Senators to stay informed of
reform developments. Senator Barkley and the minority leader (Senator Wallace White) both
voted for legislative reorganization. Senator White was also part of the 12-person, bipartisan joint
reorganization panel: six from each chamber equally divided by party (counting Progressive
LaFollette as a Republican). As the majority floor manager, Senator LaFollette led the debate on
Senate passage of the LRA. He was aided in this assignment by Senator White, among others,
who worked to defeat unwanted amendments. After four days of debate (June 6-10, 1946), the
Senate approved the reform bill (S. 2177) by a 49-16 vote and sent the measure to the House. The
Senate bill closely tracked the Joint Committee’s recommended reform proposals.
House party leaders exerted major influence over the contents of the Senate-passed reorganization
bill. Speaker Sam Rayburn, Majority Leader John McCormack, and Minority Leader Joe Martin
opposed certain controversial provisions that appeared to weaken their leadership prerogatives,
such as the creation of party policy committees and a legislative-executive council. House leaders
also objected to the Senate’s proposal “to stimulate joint action between the twin committees of
the two houses.”13 These proposals aimed to strengthen party responsibility and accountability
and improve coordination between the two chambers and the legislative and executive branches.
Contrarily, Speaker Rayburn and the House’s influential seniority leaders—the committee
chairs—believed that these recommendations would erode their agenda-setting authority.
House opposition to the Senate’s bill became quickly evident. When the House receives a Senate-
passed bill, typical practice is to refer the measure to the appropriate standing committee(s).
Instead, S. 2177 was held at the Speaker’s desk in the chamber for nearly two months until the
two floor managers (Democrat Monroney and Republican Dirksen) agreed to drop the
troublesome provisions. (House Rule XII states that the Speaker refers bills.)
Speaker Rayburn even took the unusual step of addressing the Committee of the Whole—the
chamber’s traditional amending forum, which the Speaker does not preside over and rarely
addresses. In this case, Rayburn spoke against an amendment adopted in the Committee of the
Whole to establish a monthly committee “docket day”—lawmakers whose bills had not received

13 George B. Galloway, “The Operation of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946,” American Political Science
Review, March 1951, p. 44.
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committee consideration could appear before the panel to discuss their legislation and argue for
its consideration by the House. Speaker Rayburn’s opposition and that of the committee chairs
led to House rejection of the docket day proposal. In brief, the combination of Speaker Rayburn
and influential committee chairs was sufficient to defeat the reform recommendations they
opposed.
Time as a Legislative Resource
Time is a resource that suffuses all lawmaking, because measures must be enacted within the two-
year life of a Congress, which includes signature by the President. Deadline lawmaking abounds
on Capitol Hill, and the types also vary, such as statutory, political, emergency, or individual.14
Eleventh-hour legislating can occur when each side waits until the final hours before accepting a
compromise in the belief that it heightens its bargaining leverage.
The Speaker and Senate majority leader are largely in charge of scheduling the business of their
respective chambers. As a Senate majority leader stated: “Deadlines here, deadlines there. But
always deadlines. Management by crisis.”15 Consider timing’s influence in enactment of the 1946
LRA.
Debate on the reform bill (S. 2177) began on June 5, 1946, and concluded five days later with
Senate passage by a 49-16 vote. The bill was then forwarded to the House. Recall that the House
(i.e., the Speaker) delayed floor consideration for almost two months to win concessions from the
other body, such as elimination of the Senate provision establishing party policy committees in
each house.16 On July 25, 1946, the House took up S. 2177 under an open amendment process.
After adopting a number of amendments, the House passed S. 2177, as amended, by a division
vote of 229-16. (Division votes provide only vote totals with no record of how individual
Members voted.) The House returned the amended bill to the Senate.
By this time, many lawmakers seeking reelection were already exiting Washington, DC, for a key
reason. The sine die adjournment of Congress was only a few days away (it occurred on August
2, 1946), and Members wanted to concentrate their attention and energy full-time on campaigning
for reelection. The Senate faced a difficult decision: agree to the Senate bill as amended by the
House (sending the measure to the White House) or seek a conference with the House to
negotiate their bicameral differences. With time for legislative action fast running out, Senator
LaFollette proposed that the Senate accept the House’s amendments to S. 2177. His
recommendation was agreed to by voice vote. In short, time had run out for the Senate to
negotiate its differences with the House. Confronted by this reality, the Senate opted to “take” the
bill rather than “leave it” behind to an uncertain fate. On August 2, President Truman signed the
legislation into law, calling “it one of the most significant advances in the structure of Congress
since its establishment.”

14 A 2021 Senate example involving a bipartisan infrastructure package is illustrative of the panoply of ways that time
could influence decisionmaking. As two journalists reported: “It was clear from the outset that Wednesday’s [July 21]
vote would fail. But Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) pressed ahead, hoping to signal to the
senators crafting the deal that time was not unlimited,” as liberal colleagues were “impatient with the slow pace of the
Senate talks.” Seung Min Kim and Tony Romm, “Senate Republicans Block Debate on Infrastructure Bill, but a Deal
Is Close,” Washington Post, July 22, 2021, p. A7.
15 Jake Sherman and Burgess Everett, “Congress Faces a Fall from Hell,” Politico, July 29, 2015, p. 11.
16 Galloway, “The Operation of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946,” p. 51. In 1947, the Senate established and
funded party policy committees.
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Outreach
The Joint Committee worked diligently to generate public and Member support for congressional
reorganization. Many civic groups, radio stations, and national magazines backed the Joint
Committee’s recommendations. The League of Women Voters made congressional reorganization
their top priority. Life magazine (June 1945) ran a cover story on legislative reorganization (“U.S.
Congress: It Faces Great New Tasks With Outworn Tools”). All House and Senate members
received from the Joint Committee articles and bills on legislative reorganization; members of the
Joint Committee “talked up” reform with their colleagues. In brief, this public outreach program
represents a mid-1940s version of the more sophisticated political messaging strategies
commonly employed today.
Sweeteners
Sometimes it is easier to make hard choices if there are “sweeteners” that encourage, in this case,
lawmakers to vote for the LRA because it contains attractive provisions that garner support and
overcome opposition. As Vice Chairman Monroney said, a few “ice cream” provisions “make the
‘spinach’ provisions more palatable.” He often said “that the 1946 act had been approved partly
because it had been accompanied by a pay raise and a retirement plan desired by most
members.”17 Specifically, the sweeteners hiked Members’ salaries from $10,000 to $12,000. In
addition, the act included a $2,500 tax-free expense allowance and granted lawmakers the
opportunity of enrolling in the federal retirement system. Other provisions also aided Members by
lightening their workload (e.g., delegating private claims to the Court of Claims) and providing
permanent professional and clerical staff to the standing committees.
Summary of Major Provisions, 1946 LRA
The 1946 LRA addressed a wide variety of topics, such as committee procedures, legislative
oversight, and lobby regulation. Three goals, however, were paramount. First in priority was
modernization of the committee system. As Vice Chair Monroney stated, the “keystone of the
reorganization of Congress was the reorganization of the committees.”18 The number of standing
committees was reduced in each chamber, many inactive and unnecessary. The House went from
48 to 19 committees, the Senate from 33 to 15. Committee jurisdictions were also codified by the
1946 act. In sum, committee realignment aimed to reduce jurisdictional overlaps, imbalances in
committee workload, and the number of committee assignments per lawmaker. Perhaps
unexpectedly, the reduction in the number of standing committees soon spawned the growth of
subcommittees.
Second, the 1946 law created a Joint Budget Committee (composed of members from the tax and
appropriations committees of each chamber) to prepare a budget for Congress, somewhat similar
to the concurrent budget resolution of the 1974 Budget Act. Monroney later said that this proposal
was a total failure. He wrote: “The hostility of the leaders of the appropriations committees to the
idea of a legislative budget has been so intense that it is difficult to achieve any sort of

17 John F. Bibby and Roger H. Davidson, On Capitol Hill: Studies in the Legislative Process, 2nd ed. (Hinsdale, IL:
Dryden Press, 1972), p. 253.
18 Mike Monroney, The Strengthening of American Political Institutions (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1949),
p. 9.
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enthusiastic cooperation on this important provision.”19 The legislative budget became a nullity,
languishing on the statute books.
Third, all standing committees were provided, for the first time in history, permanent professional
(six) and clerical staff (four). “More and better staff aids for members and committees of
Congress were a major objective of the Act,” wrote the staff director of the joint panel, “and
much progress in the staffing of Congress has been achieved.”20 This provision has generally
stood the test of time, with Member and committee staff gradually increasing—with reductions at
times—over subsequent decades.21
The 1965 Joint Committee on the Organization of
Congress
Context
In the mid-1950s and into the 1960s, there were again calls for congressional reform from
lawmakers, commentators, journalists, and scholars. Despite the improvements made by the 1946
LRA, advocates of legislative reorganization argued that the job was not done. A legislative
expert who worked closely with the Joint Committee wrote, “Inevitably, some of the 1946 act’s
deficiencies, omissions, and outright failures, combined with new grievances that emerged in the
following years, generated another call for massive congressional reform.”22 Congress also faced
new developments: the addition of two new states, a population hike in the millions, the birth of
the space age, a communications and technology revolution, and at least a doubling in the
workload of Members.
Inside and outside Congress there was large support for legislative reorganization. Inside,
lawmakers such as Representative Richard Bolling and Senator Joseph S. Clark were critical of
Congress’s organization and operation. Bolling, for instance, wrote House Out of Order (1964),
and Clark penned Congress: The Sapless Branch (1963). Outside, the influx of change-oriented
Members from the 1958 and 1964 elections fueled the drive for a new joint reorganization panel.
Scholars and commentators were critical of the legislative branch. NBC televised in prime time
an hour-long special titled “Congress Needs Help.” In short, there were favorable conditions
inside and outside Congress for another comprehensive review of the legislative branch. (Because
the 1970 LRA required over five years to become law, other contextual factors also emerged to
bolster the urgency of congressional reform, particularly sharper legislative-executive conflicts
over the Vietnam War and national budgeting.)
In 1964, Mike Monroney, now a Senator, announced that he would introduce legislation (S. Con.
Res. 2) to establish a successor to the 1945 Joint Committee. Reform ranks were swollen in both
chambers by the large influx of change-oriented Democrats, especially after the landslide election

19 Monroney, The Strengthening of American Political Institutions, p. 9.
20 Galloway, “The Operation of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946,” p. 53.
21 Recent years have sparked concern that Congress has not invested sufficiently in its staffing given the complexity of
many contemporary challenges. See Timothy M. LaPira, Lee Drutman, and Kevin R. Kosar, eds., Congress
Overwhelmed: The Decline in Congressional Capacity and Prospects for Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2020).
22 Walter Kravitz, “The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970,” Legislative Studies Quarterly, August 1990, pp. 375-
376.
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of November 1964 (House, 295D, 140R; Senate, 68D, 32R). House companion legislation was
introduced in January 1965 by Representative Ray J. Madden, a member of the Rules Committee.
Senator Monroney told his Senate colleagues that the intent of his proposal was “to seek solutions
to the problems of Congress on which there is consensus that something should be done.”23 In
March 1965 the second Joint Committee was established. Its mandate was similar to the 1945
joint panel: to study and make recommendations to improve the organization and operation of
Congress. Informally, the joint panel was referred to as the Monroney-Madden Committee after
the two co-chairs. The joint panel consisted of 12 members, six from each chamber equally
divided between the two parties.
Charter Restrictions
Like its predecessor, the 1965 Joint Committee was prohibited from recommending changes in
House or Senate rules that would affect either chamber’s power structure, such as seniority or the
filibuster. These constraints encouraged a moderate and centrist approach to reorganization by the
Joint Committee. The joint panel received testimony on many other topics during hearings
conducted from May to September 1965. The Joint Committee’s printed testimony consumed
over 2,300 pages.
On July 21, 1966, after 10 months of negotiations, the Joint Committee unanimously reported 66
reform recommendations. The Joint Committee’s report (S. Rept. 1414) contained a list of
reforms on such matters as the elimination of proxy voting in committee, more availability of
budget information to lawmakers through automatic data processing, additional oversight
assistance to committees by the General Accounting Office (GAO)—renamed the Government
Accountability Office in 2004—and allowing broadcasting of committee hearings. In the view of
Co-Chair Monroney, “A lot of little reforms add up to big reform. If we’re going to get an up-to-
date, modern Congress, it will be a mosaic you build from lots of little improvements.”24
Role of Party Leaders
After the Joint Committee issued its final report in July 1966, the Senate, emulating the approach
of its predecessor, established a Special Committee on the Organization of Congress (composed
of the Senate members of the Joint Committee). Its mission: transform the reform
recommendations into legislative language (the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1966).
Although the 1966 measure was introduced in both houses, neither chamber acted on the bill
before the 89th Congress adjourned. When the 90th Congress convened, Senator Monroney
introduced the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1967 (S. 355). On a bipartisan basis, the
Senate’s leadership backed the bill. Majority Leader Mike Mansfield set aside six weeks for the
consideration for S. 355, which gave Senators ample time to have their say on reform. On March
7, 1967, the Senate passed S. 355 by a vote of 75-9. The reform bill was then sent to the House.
Speaker John McCormack opposed the Senate bill and referred it to the House Rules Committee,
headed by conservative Chairman William Colmer. Colmer also opposed the measure. A member
of the Rules Committee remarked that the Speaker had “put the bill in the refrigerator”—where it
would stay for the next three years.25

23 Bibby and Davidson, On Capitol Hill, p. 253.
24 Bibby and Davidson, On Capitol Hill, p. 255.
25 Bibby and Davidson, On Capitol Hill, p. 257.
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Chairman Colmer held one day of hearings on S. 355; thereafter, the bill languished in the Rules
Committee until the 90th Congress adjourned in October 1968. Various groups of reform-minded
Democrats and Republicans tried unsuccessfully to pressure the Rules Committee to report S. 355
for House consideration. For example, Representative Donald Rumsfeld formed an ad hoc group,
dubbed “Rumsfeld’s Raiders,” to stall House action in the hopes of forcing the Speaker to
schedule floor consideration of the reorganization bill. The pressure tactics did not succeed.
When the 91st Congress began in January 1969, Richard Nixon was in the White House, liberal
Democrats and reform-minded Republicans were anxious to put the House in order, nearly half
the House had sponsored or co-sponsored reform bills, and many House Democrats were
intensely frustrated and discontented with their top leaders and the way the chamber was being
managed. Representative Allard Lowenstein compared the House to the “Black Hole of Calcutta.
Nothing prepares you for its horrors.”26
In this legislative climate, liberal Representative Morris Udall challenged John McCormack for
the speakership. Udall’s action in the Democratic Caucus failed, but it sent an unmistakable
message: It was time for legislative reorganization. The Speaker and Rules Chairman Colmer
agreed to take action despite their arguably limited commitment to reform. In 1969, Chairman
Colmer appointed a three-person Rules subcommittee to draft a reform bill. After considerable
work, including hearings over three months (October, November, and December), the
subcommittee produced a draft bill (H.R. 17654). It was presented to the Rules Committee early
in 1970. The legislation made it to the floor in July 1970 and, after intermittent debate over nearly
10 weeks—a reform Member said of the slow pace, the Democratic leadership is “loving this bill
to death”27—the measure was agreed to by the House (326-19) in September 1970 and sent to the
Senate. After two days of debate, the Senate agreed to H. R. 17654 with amendments on October
6 by a vote of 59-5. Two days later, bypassing the conference stage, the House agreed to the
Senate’s amendments and sent the LRA of 1970 to the White House. President Nixon signed the
legislation into law (P.L. 91-510) on October 26, 1970.
Persistence and Adaptation
Congressional reform, like so many issues, is not for the faint-hearted. It can take years—even
much longer—for some ideas to become law. Many unexpected and unwanted things can happen
along the procedural and political pathway to foil the plans of reorganization leaders. Recall that
time ran out on the 1966 LRA. Neither the House nor Senate considered the reform bill. The next
year, the Senate, over a three-month period, debated and passed the 1967 LRA. The House
refused to call up the bill. After the 1968 election, momentum began to develop for enactment of
legislative reform. From start to finish, enactment of the reorganization bill required close to five-
and-one-half years of commitment and effort. Senator Monroney, who was defeated for
reelection, was not even serving in the Congress that passed his progeny: the 1970 LRA.28
Congressional reorganization is neither easy to achieve nor ever over. As a dynamic institution,
Congress adapts constantly to internal and external developments. Purposeful reforms enable
Members of the House and Senate to respond and adjust to new challenges and conditions.
Reform success often depends on a variety of overlapping factors, such as skillful leaders who
can produce a reform product that attracts sufficient support to win enactment in one or both

26 Norman C. Miller, “Updating Congress,” Wall Street Journal, March 27, 1969, p. 1.
27 Bibby and Davidson, On Capitol Hill, p. 273.
28 In the November 1968 election, Senator Monroney lost his Oklahoma seat to Henry Bellmon, the state’s GOP
governor.
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chambers and adroit strategies that both harness the backing of diverse lawmakers and surmount
the inevitable obstacles to institutional change (lawmakers who perceive losses to their influence,
for instance). Skillful leaders and good strategies contributed to the enactment of the 1970 LRA.
Unlike the ambitious aims of its 1946 counterpart (e.g., major committee restructuring), the 1970
LRA “did solve or alleviate a wide range of procedural and institutional problems.”29 For
instance, the requirement that standing committees adopt formal, written procedural rules (regular
meeting days, for instance) weakened the arbitrary scheduling authority of powerful committee
chairs.
Bicameral Coordination
When the 90th Congress began, the first major measure taken up by the Senate was the Legislative
Reorganization Act of 1967 (S. 355). Debate on the bill consumed 18 days, extending from
January 25 to March 7, before the Senate passed the 1967 bill by a 75-9 vote. The momentum and
outlook for reform appeared bright. Instead, upon receipt of the 1967 bill from the Senate, the
House pigeonholed S. 355 in the largely anti-reform Rules Committee. The measure was never
subject to floor consideration.
When the 91st Congress began, an informal, bicameral understanding was reached: The House
would act first on legislative reorganization to see if the votes were there to pass the reform
measure (H.R. 17654). Simply put, the Senate did not want to waste valuable floor time debating
the bill if the House was unlikely to act on legislative reform. Acting first, the House debated,
amended, and passed (326-19) the reform bill, a period that extended from July through
September 17, 1970. The House bill was then sent to the Senate. That chamber amended and then
adopted H.R. 17654 on October 6 by a wide margin (59-5). The measure was returned to the
House, which agreed to the Senate amendments on October 8 by voice vote, clearing the bill for
presidential consideration. On October 26, 1970, President Nixon signed H.R. 17654 into law
(P.L. 91-510).
Outreach: Building Public Support
Although press and media coverage of the reorganization effort was not extensive, one House
bipartisan floor amendment to the LRA did attract considerable national publicity and support.
The amendment’s purposes—anti-secrecy and transparency—resonated with the general public as
well as many Members of both parties. The bipartisan amendment would require the votes of
Members to be recorded in the House’s key amending forum: the so-called Committee of the
Whole. Prior to this new change (which was referred to as “recorded teller voting”), the ballots of
lawmakers in the Committee of the Whole were not recorded. Amendments passed (or failed) by
voice votes or raw numerical counts—150 ayes, 80 nays, for example—with no notice of how
individual lawmakers voted. A consequence of the recorded teller change was to weaken Member
deference to committee chairs and their policy positions. In the view of a legislative expert, “By
denying members the anonymity they previously enjoyed, the new [recorded teller vote] rule
encouraged them to vote on amendments as they believed their constituents wanted them to, even
if this meant defying committee leaders.”30
This “sunshine” amendment, which was adopted, helped to generate an outside reform
constituency of people and groups who favored stronger Member accountability to their

29 Kravitz, “The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970,” p. 396. This article identifies a wide array of legislative
reforms that Kravitz characterized as “modest” but important nevertheless.
30 Kravitz, “The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970,” p. 391.
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constituents. A leader in this effort was former journalist Dick Conlon, the staff director of the
Democratic Study Group, a liberal House reform organization. He understood the need to
mobilize the support of lobby groups (the AFL-CIO, for instance) and the editors of the nation’s
press. Conlon’s strategy won outside support that contributed to House adoption of recorded teller
voting. To illustrate: The Member who chaired the Democratic Study Group “wrote to the editors
of 600 newspapers, as well as to national political columnists. A two-page letter [signed by 22
bipartisan House members] was mailed to 2,000 editorial page editors and news editors.” An
official of the University of Missouri’s Freedom of Information Center “alerted 770 daily
newspapers and 600 radio and television stations in urban areas” to champion adoption the anti-
secrecy amendment.31
House adoption of recorded teller voting increased floor amending activity, which contributed to
the gradual weakening the committee-centric model of decisionmaking then in place. A
congressional scholar stated: “Whereas standing committees—and their senior members, in
particular—had in the past been the primary shapers of legislation, the floor became an
increasingly critical battleground in the 1970s.”32
Several Notable Provisions of the 1970 LRA
In general, the broad themes of the 1970 LRA were threefold: strengthen the analytical capacity
of Congress, achieve a prudent balance between majority and minority party prerogatives, and
enhance transparency.33 Several specific changes pertinent to each theme are mentioned next.
 Transparency. The law ended unrecorded votes in the Committee of the Whole,
required advance public notice of committee hearings, allowed radio and
television broadcasting of hearings, and made committee roll call votes public.
 Majority and minority rights. The law granted each committee’s minority party
one-third of the investigative funds allocated to the majority, allowed the
committee minority party one day in which to call witnesses of their choosing,
banned general proxies (absentee voting) in committee—a practice that
augmented the chairs’ powers (they could cast the votes of absentee
lawmakers)—and guaranteed the House minority party half the floor debate time
for consideration of conference reports.
 Analytical capacity. The law authorized professional training for committee
staff, renamed the Legislative Reference Service the Congressional Research
Service and granted it a larger role in policy analysis, and assigned additional
program performance responsibilities to GAO.
The 1970 LRA addressed a large number of other topics, such as authorizing installation of
electronic voting in the House, requiring House and Senate committees to prepare biennial
oversight reports, directing the House Appropriations Committee to hold annual hearings on the
President’s budget, publishing House precedents, and creating the Capitol Guide Service.

31 Bibby and Davidson, On Capitol Hill, p. 270. Also see Schickler, Disjointed Pluralism, pp. 213-217.
32 Schickler, Disjointed Pluralism, p. 217.
33 For a detailed discussion of House and Senate changes wrought by the 1970 Act, see Kravitz, “The Legislative
Reorganization Act of 1970.”
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The 1993 Joint Committee on the Organization of
the Congress
Context
Many factors and interests influence major reform efforts, as noted by the 1945 and 1965
initiatives. Three developments encouraged the creation of the 1993 Joint Committee, which
emulated the aims of its two predecessors.34 First, a more aggressive form of partisanship was
taking hold in Congress, especially in the House. Gradually, House Republicans became more
and more frustrated at being the “permanent minority”—Democrats were the majority party for
40 years (1955-1995). Many Republican lawmakers opposed actions of the majority party that
minimized the role of the minority, such as restricting GOP opportunities to offer floor
amendments.35 Democrats disputed the minority’s views, arguing that restrictive rules facilitated
the orderly conduct of business and blocked politically charged GOP amendments designed to
create reelection grief for vulnerable House Democrats. Even so, legislative reform soon became
a key theme for many GOP lawmakers as well as for newly elected, change-oriented Democrats.
They stoked reform interest in both legislative parties.
Second, the so-called House bank scandal triggered huge public anger at Congress. A GAO report
in September 1991 revealed that many lawmakers had collectively written thousands of checks
without sufficient funds in their accounts, yet the House bank covered their overdrafts with no
penalty. Many constituents were livid at this practice, and implicated lawmakers of both parties
were defeated in the November 1992 elections. (There was also a Postal Service scandal in 1991
involving Members who converted office funds into cash for personal use. In the Senate,
allegations in 1990 and 1991 suggested that several Senators sought to influence federal
regulators at the behest of Charles Keating, a campaign contributor.)
Third, public approval of Congress plummeted and fueled the urgency of institutional reform.
Gallup polls revealed that public approval of Congress was 26 percent in 1990 and 18 percent in
1992. Extensive media coverage heightened the electoral potency of the scandals, which
encouraged lawmakers to support creation of a joint reorganization panel. In short, reelection
incentives encouraged some Members to be pro-reform advocates.
Bipartisan lawmakers in both chambers urged formation of another joint reorganization panel.
Among the major bipartisan and bicameral advocates of a new joint reform panel were Senators
David Boren and Pete Domenici; the initial House champions were Lee Hamilton and Bill
Gradison. (Representative Gradison resigned from the House in January 1993. He was replaced
as vice chair of the joint panel by David Dreier.)
In July 1991, companion legislation was introduced in each chamber and adopted (H. Con.
Res.192) first by the House (412-4) on June 18, 1992, and unanimously by the Senate in July
after it approved one amendment. That amendment, which the House concurred in, prohibited the
joint panel from conducting business until after the November elections. The 28-member
bipartisan panel (14 from each chamber) was co-chaired by Representative Hamilton and Senator

34 This discussion of the 1993 Joint Committee, as well as the earlier section on reform objectives, draws upon the
observations made by C. Lawrence Evans and Walter J. Oleszek, Congress Under Fire: Reform Politics and the
Republican Majority (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997).
35 William F. Connelly Jr. and John J. Pitney Jr., Congress’ Permanent Majority? Republicans in the U.S. House
(Lanham, MD: Littlefield Adams, 1994).
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Boren. The vice chairs were Representative Dreier and Senator Domenici. The majority and
minority leaders of each chamber served as ex officio members of the Joint Committee.
Hearings and Related Activities
The Joint Committee devoted the first half of 1993 to an extensive round of televised (over C-
SPAN) hearings to review the broad landscape of reorganization alternatives. The Speaker and the
top two party leaders of each chamber testified and offered their perspectives on reform. The joint
panel also held four roundtables (budget process reform, committee structure, legislative-
executive relations, and staffing) with a number of current and former congressional staff,
academics, and outside experts. The joint panel sponsored surveys of House and Senate Members
and staff to solicit their ideas and views of congressional reform options. In addition, outside
organizations also prepared commissioned reports for the joint panel. In June 1993, the
committee held a two-day retreat at the U.S. Naval Academy, and the four chairs of the joint
panel sent a letter and op-ed article on legislative reform to 1,600 newspaper editors requesting
that they let their readers know that the Joint Committee wanted to hear their views on reform.
Over a thousand individuals responded to the joint panel’s request.
Markup
An early clue of the bicameral and partisan difficulties ahead concerned the markup phase of
committee decisionmaking. There was no bicameral markup by the Joint Committee because of
partisan and policy disagreements between the two chambers. Instead, the Joint Committee split,
and each chamber devised its own markup proposal. Senators Boren and Domenici had little
difficulty in drafting a consensus reform plan for markup by the Senate Members of the Joint
Committee. The Senate side easily adopted the Boren-Domenici plan.
On the House side, Representative Hamilton drafted a stripped-down “mark” that included only
reform proposals that enjoyed broad bipartisan support. Sharp party differences on key issues
provoked this development. Partisan polarization was also more evident in House proceedings.
Specifically, Representative Dreier wanted the Joint Committee’s markup package to include a
number of minority rights proposals, such as an end to proxy voting in committee. Panel
Democrats, along with the Democratic Caucus, opposed consideration of the GOP’s proposals for
enhanced minority rights until the Senate agreed to revamp its filibuster (prolonged debate)
procedure. Senate leaders did not agree to this proposal. In the end, the House members of the
joint panel agreed to a package of changes that somewhat resembled the Senate’s bipartisan plan.
Recommendations
Each House and Senate group made a number of recommendations unique to their chambers
concerning the committee system, floor procedure and scheduling, staffing, the ethics process,
and legislative-executive relations. There were also similar reform recommendations included in
each group’s recommendations, such as applying workplace safety laws to Congress. Biennial
budgeting was endorsed by both groups. The House’s version of the proposal stated that there
should be two-year presidential budget submissions, two-year concurrent budget resolutions,
multi-year authorizations, and two-year appropriations. The Senate’s version was somewhat
similar: two-year budget resolutions and biennial appropriations, with the spending bills adopted
during the first session and authorizations enacted in the second session of a Congress. For a
review of the Joint Committee’s reform proposals, three final reports of the panel provide detailed
information regarding the scope of its recommendations, such as the committee system, floor
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procedure and scheduling, the budget process, staffing, application of laws to Congress, ethics,
legislative-executive relations, information technology, and public understanding of Congress.36
Legislative Reorganization Act of 1994
Despite the inter-chamber divide on the Joint Committee, the two sides introduced on February 3,
1994, their version of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1994 (S. 1824 and H.R. 3801).
Neither bill received floor consideration in its respective chamber. On the Senate side, the
reorganization bill introduced by Senators Boren and Domenici was referred to the Committee on
Rules and Administration. The panel held hearings on their bill in the spring and then, at a June
meeting, Rules and Administration divided the measure into three parts and favorably reported a
modified version of S. 1824 and two resolutions: S. Res. 27 (committee size reductions) and S.
Res. 28 (floor procedure). The Senate did not consider these measures, in part because legislative
leaders did not want to open fissures in majority party ranks in a mid-term election year.
Frustrated that the majority leader would not schedule floor consideration of the reform measures,
Senators Boren and Domenici offered an amendment to the District of Columbia appropriations
bill that included all the recommendations of the Joint Committee. The Boren-Domenici
amendment was rejected by the Senate.
In the House, Representative Hamilton introduced the Legislative Reorganization Act (H.R.
3801), which was referred jointly to three committees (Rules, House Administration, and
Government Operations). Rules took the lead on the measure. The vice chair of the Joint
Committee, David Dreier, chose not to co-sponsor the legislation because Speaker Thomas Foley
would not commit in advance to an open floor amendment process. The Rules Committee, led by
Chairman Joe Moakley, held two public markup sessions on the bill. During the midway point of
the second markup (September 21), Chairman Moakley recessed the meeting, went into a nearby
room, and spoke with Speaker Foley about two controversial amendments opposed by many in
the majority party: banning proxy voting in committee and revamping committee jurisdictions.
When Moakley returned to the markup session, he declared the meeting over. No further House
action occurred on H.R. 3801, which died at the end of the 103rd Congress.
Reform Resurrected
The November 1994 mid-term elections produced an electoral earthquake: Republicans won
control of the House after 40 consecutive years of Democratic majorities. The Senate went
Republican for the first time in a decade. Because of Representative Dreier’s lead role on the
Joint Committee, the soon-to-be new Speaker, Newt Gingrich, asked him to take the lead in
recommending legislative reforms to be part of the package of House rule changes adopted on the
opening day of the 104th Congress. After four decades in the minority, the new majority wanted
major institutional change. A response: Representative Dreier ensured that many of the Joint
Committee’s recommendations became part of the House’s new rules, such as banning proxy
(absentee) voting in committee, designating a primary committee of jurisdiction when a measure
is jointly referred, and restricting the number of subcommittees per most standing committees.
Dreier also backed restructuring the 104th House’s committee system, something that he could not
achieve as vice chair of the Joint Committee but could as Speaker Gingrich’s reform leader. For

36 Organization of the Congress, Final Report of the House Members of the Joint Committee on the Organization of
Congress, House Report 103-413, vol. I, December 1993; Organization of the Congress, Final Report of the Senate
Members of the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, Senate Report 103-215, vol. I, December 1993; and
Organization of the Congress, Final Report of the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, House Report
103-413, vol. II, and Senate Report 103-215, vol. II, December 1993.
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example, rules for the new House eliminated three standing committees (District of Columbia,
Post Office and Civil Service, and Merchant Marine and Fisheries) and renamed several others:
For instance, the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee became the Natural Resources
Committee. Consider that the first bill signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1995 was the
Congressional Accountability Act—applying workplace safety laws to Congress—recommended
by the Joint Committee and popular among numerous lawmakers of both parties.
Republican initiatives also accelerated the House’s shift from the “committee-centric” model of
decisionmaking to today’s “party-centric” form of governance—a fundamental transformation in
the dynamics of congressional power. Gingrich spurred this development. For example, he took
actions that simultaneously strengthened the Speaker’s authority and reduced the influence of the
committee chairs, long a rival center of power. Two party rule changes were instrumental in this
transition. First, Gingrich transformed the GOP’s committee assignment process by augmenting
the Speaker’s authority. New Republican Conference rules made the Speaker the chair of the
party assignment panel, allowed the Speaker to influence the membership of the panel, and gave
the Speaker more votes (five) than any other Republican when balloting was utilized by the party
committee. Second, Gingrich backed a six-year term limit for committee (and subcommittee)
chairs, ensuring that committee chairs recognize that they are not independent actors—common
in the rigid seniority system of the committee-centric era—but dependent on the majority
leadership for their positions. The bottom line: Not since the 1946 LRA did the House reorganize
itself in so many significant ways.
Concluding Observations
History demonstrates that Congress is a dynamic institution, willing to reform its procedures,
structures, and processes to meet new circumstances and to better fulfill its major responsibilities:
crafter of federal laws, voice of the people (as Members interpret), and overseer of the executive
branch. Institutional alterations occur in various ways—formal and informal, planned and
unplanned. Their fate is uncertain and variable. For example, some reforms and changes are
permanent and others temporary; some become obsolete and are discarded; some require periodic
repair and renewal; some fail outright or in a short time period; some are comprehensive and
some incremental; some occur rather quickly; others may take years or decades to emerge as
significant parliamentary developments. Consider this momentous transformation. Where power
was once dispersed among many powerful committee chairs, it is now centralized in the hands of
majority party leaders. No legislative reform committee—like the three formed in 1945, 1965,
and 1993—recommended this consequential change in the lawmaking process. It emerged over
time for many reasons that have been examined by numerous scholars, such as the intensity of
electoral competition between the two political parties to win or hold majority control of the
House and Senate, as well as the White House.37
Legislative reorganizations commonly address an array of similar reform topics. They include
such matters as: committee structure (e.g., the number, workload, and jurisdiction of committees);
floor procedure for debate and amendment in the House and Senate; legislative staffing for
Members, committees, party leaders, and legislative support units; the power relationship
between committees and party leaders; the budget process (authorizations, appropriations,

37 Frances E. Lee, Unstable Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2006). Also see Nathaniel Persily, ed., Solutions to Political Polarization in America (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2015); James A. Thurber and Antoine Yoshinaka, eds., American Gridlock: The Sources, Character,
and Impact of Political Polarization (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); and Nolan McCarty,
Polarization: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).
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Congressional Reform: A Perspective

continuing resolutions, and so on); or the schedule of chamber business (e.g., four- or five-day
workweeks or three weeks in Washington, DC, and one week in the district or state). These
constants of reform occur because they are core features of Congress and fundamental to its
organization and operation. Congressional committees, for instance, have been in existence since
the 1st Congress, albeit early on mainly as temporary panels.
In the ever-changing institution that is Congress, different types of reform proposals emerge to
reflect evolving developments (social, electoral, economic, and so on) in Congress and the
country. Examples include employing new technologies in the work of Congress (Zoom hearings
in Congress and remote voting on the House floor, both prompted by Coronavirus Disease 2019);
encouraging greater civility and comity in lawmaking in this period of sharp, sometimes
combative, partisan polarization (wider use of bipartisan committee staff and Member retreats);
and improving the working conditions and retention rates of congressional staff (better
compensation, more diversity, and professional training opportunities). In short, change and
reform are permanent features of the legislative branch. Thomas Jefferson emphasized that “as
new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the
change in circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.”38

Author Information

Walter J. Oleszek

Senior Specialist in American National Government

Disclaimer
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38 Letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition, vol. 15
(Washington, DC: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States, 1904), p. 41.
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