Note 39. Congressional Party Organizations, Briefly
Each of the four congressional parties (two in each house) has three major organizational features: a caucus (or conference) comprised of all party members in the chamber, a few party committees, and several elected and appointed leaders. All four party caucuses meet in late November or early December after each election to organize for the new Congress, which convenes in January. They elect their leaders, choose their candidates for House speaker, Senate pro tem, and other chamber officers, revise their rules, and begin to make assignments to standing committees. In recent Congresses, all four caucuses have met weekly or biweekly while Congress is in session. These meetings usually serve as forums for the discussion of party strategies. To facilitate candid discussion and avoid media reports of party infighting, caucus meetings are generally not open to the public or the press.
A Note about Labels
Among the four congressional parties, only House Democrats call their organization a caucus. House Republicans, Senate Democrats, and Senate Republicans call their organizations conferences. The difference in labels dates back to the 1910s, when the House Democrats used their caucus, the so-called King Caucus, to make policy decisions and required party members to support those positions. The Democrats’ binding caucus was so distasteful to House Republicans that they symbolized their differences with the Democrats by calling their organization a conference. Senate parties followed suit and use the term conference. In everyday use, caucus and conference are used interchangeably on Capitol Hill. Some confusion remains: members can form factions or special interest groups called “caucuses” and the two houses sometimes use “conference committees” to negotiate their differences.
Internal Organization
Each party has a set of elected or appointed leaders and a set of committees (Tables 39-1 and 39-2). The policy committees discuss and sometimes endorse policy positions; the campaign committees provide advice and money to party incumbents and candidates; the committees on committees or steering committees assign party members to standing committees. For several decades, the policy committees of the House and Senate Republicans have sponsored weekly luncheons that serve as forums on matters important to the party. Senate Democrats adopted the practice of weekly luncheons in 1990.
Party staffs provide a wide range of services to members. Services include timely reports on floor activity, briefing papers on major issues, media advice and technical assistance, newspaper-clipping services, recorded messages on current floor activity, personnel services, and limited research assistance. The Senate parties operate closed-circuit television channels that provide senators and their staffs with informative details about floor action. They also provide radio and television studios that allow senators to appear live on home-state stations. Over the last few decades, most new party leaders have found additional services to promise and deliver to the membership. In the last few decades, all four congressional parties enlarged their public relations and communications staffs and organized party committees to manage them. As a result, the party staffs have become large and expensive, with nearly all of the funding provided through appropriations.
Party Leaders
The Constitution provides for presiding officers in Congress but says nothing about parties or party leaders. It provides that the members of the House “shall choose their Speaker,” makes the vice president of the United States the president of the Senate and requires that the Senate select a president pro tempore (“president for the time being”) to preside over the Senate in the absence of the vice president. Although the Constitution does not explicitly require the Speaker or the Senate president pro tempore to be members of Congress, all have been.
At the start of each Congress, the House majority and minority parties nominate their top leaders for Speaker. The majority party’s leader is then elected Speaker, usually on a party-line vote. When the Speaker chooses to attend to other business rather than preside over the House, he or she appoints a Speaker pro tempore, who usually is an experienced legislator of the same party. When the House is meeting in the Committee of the Whole, as it does to debate and consider amendments to major bills (see Chapter 7), the Speaker does not preside and appoints a colleague to chair the session.
Only in the House is the presiding officer, the Speaker, also the top leader of the majority party. The House majority party also elects a majority leader and a whip to serve as the second- and third-ranking leaders in the party. The House minority party elects a minority leader and a whip as its first- and second-ranking leaders. In the Senate, the vice president, who also holds the formal title “President of the Senate,” and the president pro tempore are not considered to be top party leaders. Each party elects a floor leader, a majority leader or a minority leader, and a whip as its top leaders.
In the modern Senate, the vice president is away from the Capitol and not presiding over floor session most of the time. Since the 1940s, the majority party has named its most senior member president pro tempore. The president pro tempore is often busy with the duties of a major standing committee chair and the everyday activities of a senator and chooses not to preside most of the time. The president pro tempore, working with majority leader and his staff, schedules junior senators of the majority party to take turns presiding over Senate sessions.
Major Functions of Party Leaders
Few specific statements about party leaders’ jobs can be found in chamber or party rules. Leaders’ jobs have evolved in response to their colleagues’ expectations that leaders must promote the common electoral and policy interests of their parties. These responsibilities are primarily assigned to the top leader in each party, although the burden is shared among the top three or four leaders in each party.
Building Coalitions on Major Legislation. Building coalitions in support of party policy positions is a large part of the job of leaders. Because the majority party is often divided to some degree on controversial issues, such majorities do not automatically materialize. Rather, leaders carefully count votes, craft legislation, and use various means of persuasion to try to unify their own party and attract votes from members of the opposition party to pass or block legislation. Leaders also work to build majority coalitions in committees and conference committees from time to time, but, at least on legislation that is not of great importance to the party, they tend to be deferential to committee leaders at those stages.
Extra-large majorities must often be mustered as well. In the Senate, 60 votes must be secured to invoke cloture on a filibuster, unless the matter concerns the Senate’s standing rules, in which case a two-thirds vote (67, if all senators vote) is required. On a few other occasions in the Senate, such as to waive a budget restriction, a 60-vote majority must be found. In both chambers, a two-thirds majority of members present and voting is required to override a presidential veto. In such cases, support from at least a few minority party members is usually required for the majority party leaders to win.
Managing the Floor. Managing floor activity is primarily the responsibility of the majority party leadership. This responsibility includes scheduling sessions of the chambers and arranging for the consideration of individual pieces of legislation. The stark differences between House and Senate floor scheduling practices are noted in Chapter 7. In the Senate, minority members’ power to obstruct proceedings requires that the majority leader work closely with the minority leader, if possible. In fact, if the minority is not too obstructionist, there is nearly continuous consultation between the two leaders and their staffs. A much more distant relationship between the majority and minority party leaders is common in the House.
Serving as Intermediary with the President. Congressional leaders of the president’s party often have dual loyalties. Their most immediate obligation is to their congressional colleagues who elected them, but they also feel an obligation to support the president. Tensions frequently arise as congressional leaders seek to balance the competing demands of the president and their congressional party colleagues.
Serving as intermediaries between the congressional party and the president has been a regular duty of party leaders since the early twentieth century. Leaders of the president’s party normally meet with the president once a week while Congress is in session. They often report on those meetings at party luncheons or caucuses. On matters central to the president’s legislative agenda, the leaders work closely with executive branch officials to build majority support in Congress.
Leaders of the out-party – the party that does not control the presidency – meet sporadically with the president, usually to be briefed on foreign policy matters. The relationship between a president and out-party leaders is not often one of genuine consultation, for obvious reasons. Occasionally, political circumstances or personal friendship may strengthen the bond. Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen, for example, was a confidant of Democratic president Lyndon Johnson during the 1960s, and Dirksen’s support for Johnson’s civil rights and Vietnam War policies proved crucial to the president’s legislative success. In more recent decades, deteriorating relations between the parties has cooled relations between presidents and out-party leaders in Congress.
Enhancing the Party’s Reputation. Public relations is a central leadership responsibility in the modern Congress. Skillfully managing media relations is now considered an essential element of a good legislative strategy. The objectives are to win public support for legislative positions, to persuade undecided legislators of the political support for party positions, and to persuade voters that the party’s legislative efforts deserve to be rewarded at election time.
Media skills were seldom a major consideration in leadership selection in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. Service to colleagues, mastery of the mechanics of the legislative game, and the interests of party factions were given greater weight. Perhaps because of their weak institutional position and lack of national media coverage, only House Republicans made media skills much of an issue in leadership contests. In general, party leaders took a back seat to committee leaders as opinion leaders on matters of policy. In fact, the leading studies on party leadership of the 1960s did not catalog service as party spokesperson or anything similar among the major functions of party leaders.
Expectations have changed. The importance of television as a medium of political communication, presidents’ domination of television news, and the around-the-clock cable news programs seem to have intensified demand for leaders adroit in public relations. Since the mid-1960s, out-party congressional leaders have sought and been granted time on the television networks to respond to presidential addresses. By the early 1980s, the role of party spokesperson had become so prominent as to warrant listing it among leaders’ primary responsibilities. Since the 1990s, the use of social media, blogs, and websites has expanded the range of media efforts in which the party leaders and their staffs are engaged.
Congressional party leaders realize that to compete with the president, television pundits, interest group leaders, radio talk show hosts, and other opinion leaders, all of whom actively court public opinion in an effort to generate pressure on legislators, they need media strategies of their own. All top leaders have daily contact with reporters from print, radio, television, and online news outlets. The House Speaker and Senate leaders usually have brief press conferences before their chambers’ daily sessions and often after party meetings. They sometimes commission their own public opinion polls to gauge how well their party’s message is being received. In addition to their own press secretaries and speech writers, they all have party committees charged devising and implementing media strategies in important legislative battles.
Winning Elections. Providing campaign support to colleagues is a regular part of leaders’ activity. All modern leaders help their colleagues raise money and join them at campaign events. Leaders’ efforts are not altruistic, of course. Party leaders want to see party colleagues reelected in order to maintain or gain a majority for their party, and they hope that their kindness will be repaid in loyalty. In fact, most candidates for top leadership posts now spend time and money on their colleagues’ campaign to attract support and demonstrate the kind of leaders they will be.
All leaders, and most aspirants for leadership posts, form political action committees, known as “leadership PACs,” so they may receive contributions that they can donate to the campaigns of their colleagues. Starting in the 1970s, a few of the top congressional party leaders created political action committees (PACs) to raise funds that they could donate to the campaigns of colleagues. This allowed a powerful leader, who had the influence with wealthy individuals, to assist colleagues’ campaign efforts and gain some credit with colleagues whose support may be needed in the legislative arena. Soon, ambitious members who were seeking leadership posts found it useful to raise and spend funds on their colleagues’ campaigns. That practice continues. A leadership PAC can contribute to any other congressional campaign, subject to the contribution limits for PACs (Chapter 3) and can make unlimited independent expenditures.
All four congressional parties also have campaign committees, whose chairs and staff take the lead in recruiting and consulting with candidates. The campaign committees raise funds that are then directed to the parties’ candidates. The chairs are elected by the party caucuses and are considered to be a part of the leadership. As the fourth-ranking leader, a campaign chair often sees the post as a step to higher leadership positions.
Managing the Party. Organizing the party is an important duty of party leaders. The conference or caucus chairs preside over party meetings, but the top leaders play a central role in setting the agenda for party meetings. The most obvious political aspects of this job include leaders’ involvement in making committee assignments and appointments to various party positions.
Managing the Chamber. More administrative in character are the selection and supervision of chamber officers and other employees. For example, the top majority party leaders in the two houses nominate and supervise the chief clerks and sergeants at arms, whose appointment must be approved by the houses, and they share responsibility for choosing a director for the Congressional Budget Office.
The Power of Top Party Leaders
I have emphasized in several other Notes (1, 2, 4, 9, 15, 35) that party leaders have become more central players in policy making than they were in the mid-20th century. Keen inter-party competition for control of the House and Senate and deep partisan polarization on the issues have increased the importance of party strategies in setting and acting upon the congressional policy agenda. In turn, top party leaders are expected to assert themselves in devising and implementing legislative and electoral strategies.
The result of these developments has been rising expectations for the effectiveness of central leaders, expectations that are often hard to meet. One reason those expectations are hard to meet is that, even with polarized parties, fellow partisans often differ about the best tactics to pursue in legislative battles. This can be particularly troublesome for majority party leaders working with small majorities, as they often have been in recent decades.
A second reason that leaders’ struggle to lead is that they are given relatively few sources of direct influence over their party colleagues. Leaders take the lead in allocating committee assignments, which might be used as a way to reward or punish party colleagues, but there is a very strong “property right” norm—members are routinely reappointed to committees in each new Congress. They also can facilitate action on legislators’ bills, make appoints to some special committees or boards, direct campaign funding to party members, attend fundraisers, and perform a variety of other small favors. They continually appeal to their colleagues’ commitment to the party’s collective interests and work hard to provide arguments that their party colleagues can use at home, and seek to directly influence public opinion through their own public relations effect. Nevertheless, there are real limits to leaders’ influence. Leaders rarely can directly influence a legislator’s primary or general election results—legislators are on their own when it comes to getting reelected. Leaders have a very difficult time persuading a legislator to support a party policy position that he or she believes will put reelection at serious risk.
More important than direct influence is indirect influence acquired by shaping the choices that their colleagues must make and crafting a party reputation that is favorable to the political interests of most party members. For the majority party, particularly in the House, the most important advantage is control of the floor agenda. In the House, this is facilitated by the speaker’s control of the Rules Committee and the right of recognition without appeal (see Note 20). In the Senate, the majority leader benefits from the right of first recognition, giving him the opportunity to make the next motion, but he may find that he is obstructed by the minority (see Note 23). By selectively bringing issues to a vote, a leader can influence the public record that legislators’ votes create.
Moreover, leaders benefit from having easy access to reporters, the media, and the president, which can be used to shape the political messages the public receives about the party and its policy priorities. While congressional leaders may not be able to match the president in shaping a party’s reputation, they believe that they can have a marginal influence on the public’s receptiveness to legislative activity of the party and its members.