Republicans Prepare New Rules, but Fixing Congress Isn’t So Easy

Then they would move each bill across the floor of the House and the Senate one by one in the spring and summer, work out differences between the two chambers and get them signed by the president before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30 so the government wouldn’t be disrupted. The lawmakers who oversaw the appropriations subcommittees were labeled “cardinals,” reflecting the extent of their power, and jealously protected their control over their areas of the federal government. The spending panels were the place to be for lawmakers who wanted to exert influence.

But those days seem as distant as when bills were written with quill pens. Some of the foundational work still takes place as members of the appropriations panels — and, importantly, their staffs — assemble the bills, but the process is done with far less public review and transparency. And because it is so difficult to move individual pieces of legislation through both chambers — filibusters are the rule, no longer the exception, in the Senate — the measures are now almost always mashed together into giant packages.

Just six of the 12 separate appropriations bills were considered by the House last year, and none reached the Senate floor.

Instead, the senior members of the committees agreed among themselves what the “top line” spending number would be, worked out versions of the individual bills and then huddled with the leaders of the Senate and the House to get agreement on the final legislation in late December. Members were then faced with a take-it-or-leave-it proposition as the year came to a close, with the threat of much more time in Washington over the holidays and a crippling Christmas government shutdown being the alternative if they opted to leave it. The leadership added a few more bills seen as must-pass items to the mix, including an overhaul of the way presidential electoral votes are counted.

House Republicans stayed out of the machinations, though Senate Republicans had a large say since they were needed to provide enough votes to overcome a filibuster. It was a textbook case of legislating ugly, and House Republicans have vowed it will never happen again.

But there are explanations for why it happened, and one of them is the heightened partisanship in Congress. While the appropriations process always contained a dose of bipartisanship — and the appropriators were treated almost as a party unto themselves — that aura has faded as deeper polarization has taken hold.

Now the bills themselves have become a ripe target for political attacks when they reach the floor, leading both parties to restrict the opportunity to propose amendments to save their members from taking tough votes. The limits have chafed, and Republicans are promising to ease them. But it will make legislative life difficult, as Democrats discovered.