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5 - Scheduling Bills in the Senate

from PART II - SENATE PROCEDURE AND CONSIDERATION COSTS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2011

Chris Den Hartog
Affiliation:
California Polytechnic State University
Nathan W. Monroe
Affiliation:
University of California, Merced
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Summary

In this chapter we turn our attention to the Senate's floor stage and ask whether the majority party has an advantage in influencing which bills reach the floor. Most work on this topic emphasizes hurdles posed by the supermajoritarian nature of Senate scheduling and ways in which these hurdles undercut the majority party's ability to influence the agenda (Beth and Bach 2003; Binder and Smith 1997; Brady and Volden 2006; Krehbiel 1998; Smith 2005; Smith and Flathman 1989). We agree that filibusters, holds, and objections to unanimous consent requests – as well as threats of such tactics – constitute nontrivial consideration costs that limit the majority party by rendering it unable to schedule some bills that it would like to schedule (we consider the role of filibusters in the next chapter). We believe, however, that the emphasis on scheduling obstacles has drawn attention away from equally important questions regarding whether the majority enjoys an advantage among bills that are scheduled. The majority's inability to schedule everything it would like to schedule does not imply there is no majority-favoring bias in the set of bills that do reach the floor. Nonetheless, there is little empirical work that sheds light directly on the nature of bills that are scheduled.

We address this gap by bringing various data to bear on the topic of Senate scheduling.

Type
Chapter
Information
Agenda Setting in the U.S. Senate
Costly Consideration and Majority Party Advantage
, pp. 82 - 98
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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