Politics 30:
The United States Congress
Pomona College, Spring 2008
Prof.
David Menefee-Libey
Legislative Case Study Exercise
This semester you will be required to do a case study of a particular bill
or law from the 105th (1997-98) through the 109th (2005-2006) Congress. Though
you will only be required to hand in the case study at the end of the semester,
we will draw on the case studies frequently in class discussion throughout
the semester, so you should get started with it as early as possible.
Using the research links available through the course web page index
at the left (or here), find a particular bill
or law that interests you. Over the course of the semester, you will
investigate it in ways that track with each segment of the course as we
consider:
-
Congress as an institution: Was the bill submitted in both the House
and the Senate? To which committee(s) and subcommittee(s) was the
bill referred? Were hearings held? Did any procedural rules
affect the bill's development or fate? Did the bill survive in both
chambers? Were the two versions identical, and if not, was it referred
to a conference committee? For all of these questions, ask "why?"
and "so what?"
-
Congress as a collection of politicians: Who introduced the bill?
Did that member find any cosponsors, either at the outset or as the legislation
made its way through the process? Was the bill partisan, or bipartisan?
If hearings were held, who did the supporters and opponents bring in to
testify? If the bill came to vote(s) who voted how? Again,
why and so what?
-
Congress as a governing legislature: Look at the legislative
process again, more closely, and look for clues. Is the coalition
of cosponsors a standard grouping of members, or an unusual one?
What is the basis for their alliance? Is this bill a competitor with
an alternative bill sponsored by a competing alliance? What governmental
agencies -- and interest groups -- sent representatives to testify at the
hearing(s)? What else relevant was going on as the bill went through
the process? Again, why and so what?
This list of questions is only a start, and I may develop it further as
we go along. Still, it should be clear from this that the case studies
will be useful to our class discussions -- and your understanding of Congress
--throughout the semester. If this general encouragement is not enough
to get you going, let me offer a further incentive: in coming assignments,
I will ask questions that will be easier for those who have gotten somewhere
in their case study.
How to get started?
The first steps are fairly simple. But remember one thing: keep
good notes of what you find, and put them all in one place! You'll
want to refer back to them later, and your memory won't be enough to keep
track. Trust me on this, as you follow these easy steps:
1. Go to the "Course-Related Links" section in the index
at the left side of the course web page (if you're reading this on paper,
it's at http://www.politics.pomona.edu/dml/congress.htm
) and click on "Legislative Links" (or just click here
).
2. In the "Federal Law" section, click on The Lexis-Nexis Congressional
Compass.
3. Search for a bill or law from the 105th (1997-98) through the 109th
(2005-2006)
Congress by a) keyword, b) sponsor, or c) bill number. If successful, the
search will link you to the "legislative history" of the bill, which
you should print out and keep. Make a particular note of the "bill
number" (such as HR 3298 or S 1738), which you can use to search for information
on the bill elsewhere.
4. The page with the legislative history will also let you link
to the full text of the bill, which you probably shouldn't print out because
it maybe hundreds of pages long. Still, if you do your homework and
learn about the bill, you may want to skim around in the full text to look
at particular details.
5. Go back to the Congressional Compass home page and hit the
button for publications. Once you're on that page, use the
bill number and the Congress number to search for documents relating to
the bill such as hearing records, committee reports, or conference reports.
The hearing records will include a full roster of all witnesses and their
affiliations, and will link to full transcripts of their testimony.
Those may come in useful later.
What next?
This is enough to get you started. You can now use the information
you've gained to look in Thomas for more information about the bill, its
sponsors, its legislative history, or comments on it in the Congressional
Record. You can use the "Member Links" I've provided to find more information
about the bill's sponsors and opponents. You can also look
for relevant reports by the General Accounting Office (GAO), the Congressional
Research Service (CRS), or the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
Or you can use the web to find information about the political organizations
and interest groups who supported or opposed the bill. For example,
use the pages of Project Vote Smart or the Federal Elections Commission
to find out if any of those organizations have contributed money to the
campaigns of various members.
You're now connected to enough information about the bill to
write a book on it. But relax, you don't need to track it all
down, collect it and analyze it. Just get started for now, and I'll
let you know how far to go as the semester goes on.
Need topic suggestions?
Let me give you three rules of thumb. First, find a bill that got pretty
far along in the legislative process, at least to the point of hearings
and a committee-level vote. Better still, find a bill that became a law.
You'll have more to work with then.
Second, find something that looks interesting. You'll be working on
this thing at least occasionally for the next three months. Don't pick
something that you'll tire of quickly.
Third, find something that got press coverage. Though there is
plenty of information in the sources I lead you to above, it will be much
easier to write your paper if you can find some newspaper or other articles
that put the bill in a broader context. Check in Lexis-Nexis
before you go very far.
Fourth, run your idea by me. I may be able to help you focus on
something manageable. I'll also keep you from duplicating somebody
else's case study.
You probably already have several topics that you're interested in.
If so, read no further. You're ready to jump right in.
But if you need some suggestions, I developed the following list by
skimming around in The Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report's retrospective
on the major legislative issues of the last two years. If you don't
find something you like here, go to the Government Documents section of
Honnold and look through back issues of CQWR yourself and see what
you can track down. Here, for example, is a partial list of major legislative issues
from the 106th Congress, in no particular order:
-
Campaign finance reform.
-
Grants to the states to hire teachers and reduce class size.
-
Reform of banking, securities, and insurance regulations
-
Criminal background checks for purchasers at gun shows.
-
Steel import quotas.
-
Debt relief for poor nations.
-
Expanding the Medicare prescription drug benefit.
-
Allowing farm and medicine exports to Cuba.
-
Federal fuel efficiency standards for vehicles.
-
Reining in a president's power to designate federal lands as national monuments.
-
Repeal of inheritance ("estate" or "death") taxes.
-
Most Favored Nation trade status for China.
-
The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage site in Nevada.
-
The US/NATO intervention in Kosovo.
-
Increasing the minimum wage.
-
Various permutations on a "patient's bill of rights."
-
Implementing legislation for the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
-
"Partial-birth" abortion.
-
The income tax "marriage penalty."
-
Expanding federal hate crime protections to homosexuals, disabled.
-
Funding for anti-drug campaign in Colombia.
-
Restricting the use of genetic information by insurers.
-
Revisions of the 1996 welfare reform.
-
Funding for international family planning.
-
Private property rights.
-
Regulation of managed care providers.
-
Tax cuts for various groups.
You get the idea: it's everything including the kitchen sink. There
should be something there that will interest you. Jump in.
© David Menefee-Libey
Last modified: January 22, 2008