In
examination of the most contemporary version of the United States House of
Representatives, a significant percentage of House legislation that is brought
to the floor does so by one of two methods. The House Committee on Rules may
procedurally designate the bill to be subject to special rule which could
result in privileged floor access for the bill, or the Speaker of the House may
motion to suspend the rules and then make a motion to a penultimate debate and
subsequently vote on legislation, passing with a two-thirds majority. This
system of agenda-setting exists on a plane parallel to the House rules for
setting the agenda via debating bills in the order in which they are brought to
the floor following committee and then subsequently added to a specific House
calendar based on the contents of the legislation. The House has refaced its
former policies from a previously independent and unbiased committee-heavy
calendar system to the modern system which places a significant level of
discretionary power to party leadership.

The
major era of transformation for House agenda-setting was from 1875 to 1895. The
change in political environments coupled with the “suppression of filibustering
in the U.S. House,” resulted in an increase in the majority party’s agenda-setting
power (Cox and McCubbins 2005). Due to the threat of a filibuster,
agenda-setting may be influenced as legislators may obstruct as a ploy to force
a separate issue onto the chamber agenda. During this developmental reformation
of the agenda-setting process, it is important to highlight the delegation from
legislators to leaders, as individual congressmen actively decided how much
power to delegate to committee chairs. Sinclair highlighted in 1995 that
ceteris paribus legislators prefer the minimum amount of delegation to their
respective leaders (Sinclair 1995).

The
rudimentary idea of delegation is understood across a multitude of scenarios. Power
originates from a principal actor whom, in exchange for a form compensation,
will delegate that power to an agent. In consideration, the principal must next
determine how best to monitor the agent, and the incurring costs of this
monitoring, ideally resulting in the minimization of the agent’s ability to
advance their personal interests or that of their agency. The resulting
decision will only yield in delegation if by doing so enough surplus is gained
to offset the cost of the compensation and monitoring of the agent and risk of
agency loss. By applying this general idea to that of the legislature, the
principal may be regarded as the collective membership of the body. Committee
leaders are agents, as is the Speaker of the House as well as both minority and
majority party leadership. The different varieties of political surplus gains
directly resulting from the delegation of agenda-setting are:

Efficiency:
the resulting transactional costs resulting from collectively setting the
agenda may be reduced through delegation. Costs here may refer to time consumed
from debate and voting on personal or party agenda interests. 

Selection:
An agent may assuage interests that procure maximum levels of payoff if the
requested floor time exceeds maximum availability. This is the definition of
positive agenda-setting (Cox and McCubbins 2005).

Suppression:
Costs may be incurred from debate of specific pieces of legislation. This
occurs when subjects that majority party members are not in agreement (Cox and
McCubbins 2005) or issues that would prompt legislators to decide between
constituencies or to make a statement regarding solid policy against the
popular opinion. Agenda-setting may provide gains to agents from keeping
legislation closed from debate.

Legislators
may be held accountable for providing recompense to their leaders. Despite
current day Speakers enjoying increased salary and resources for staff, history
has only strengthened the prestige and power that accompanies holding office.
This idea echoes Sinclair (1995) in that ceteris paribus legislators have
preference to reserve delegation to further their own agendas and also simultaneously
accept accolades for them. Two primary problems result from monitoring and loss
from agency. The first is that leadership may actively decide scheduling questions
that are out of line with the primary interests of their principals. Pushing
agendas for bills that do not make it past the floor, coercing votes, and
legislative suppression all may result in a net constructive payout to most of
their principals. Such behavior could result in harsh contention with party
leadership and may pose potential to conceive challenges in the current or
subsequent Congress. Secondly, the idea that once a legislature begins the
occupancy of their office, they are naturally in a position to crucify
adversaries, reward allies and possibly raise challenges for the next leader.
Because of this, legislative members are more inclined to favor leadership
delegation as political opportunities.

Legislators
tend to show preference to leaders whom have secured seats and territories and
districts that are considered safe for their party since this will produce
minimum levels of agency loss (Cox and McCubbins 2007). In close relation to
this, conditional party government is grounded in the belief that the positive
outcomes stemming from delegation will only increase as the opposing parties
have increasingly different agendas (Rohde 1991; Aldrich and Rohde 2000). The
empowerment of the leader can result in an increased ability to steer legislative
policy steering while the delegation costs decrease as majority party member’s preference
in the chamber becomes more unified. This idea gives way for alternative
motivational factors for delegation, however. The positive outcomes of
delegation allow for efficiency to increase in the legislative process (Cooper
1970). Additionally, as the measures available for consideration by the chamber
decrease the more incentive there is to reserve delegation of agenda control to
leadership. This is crucial to understanding the decision making process of
legislators as they barrel through floor procedures and then authorize
delegation to party leadership.

The
calendar system that resulted from the first ninety years of practice no longer
provided support for consideration of significantly larger amounts of
legislation, nor allowed for proper deliberation over key pieces of
legislation. The procedures observed in the House in 1870 were structured to
empower committees with automated and just access to the floor. After
considering legislation, committees then brought the legislation to the
Committee of the Whole. If the bill failed to immediately pass, the House
designated the issue to be reserved to one of many legislative calendars. The
political definition of a calendar is a list of legislation presented in the
order in which they were reported that are waiting to be heard. Theoretically,
the House was able to then hear issues that had waited the longest. This
allowed committees the opportunity to finally consider these pieces of
legislation for future report for the consideration of the full House. (Cooper
1970).

Due
to the power invested in the Speaker to appoint members to committee, parties
were enabled to push their personal legislative interests. As stated by the
rules of the first Congress, the majority elect their leader (the Speaker) who
then possessed the power of appointment. This process is complex and requires district-based
balancing, inter/intraparty impartiality, and fulfilling necessary experience
required for the office (Alexander 1915, 67-8; Follett 1973). Within these
original restrictions, the Speaker was able to form committees with minimal
consideration given to other unspoken rules of the House such as seniority and
most favorable policies to the party. Political scientists and critics alike make
mention that “the Speaker is responsible for the constitution and forming of
Committees in tandem with his own political ideologies, and that the candidate
is in the maximum level of agreement among party members…due to the more
popular opinions regarding the most prominent questions of the day,” (Wilson
1884). Therefore, parties are apt to seek out their own policy choices with a
universal response by placing faith in a double-tiered delegation process.
Non-leadership legislators have designated a Speaker whom has the ability to
stack committees.

Near
the commencement of the 41^rd Congress, Garfield wrote, “business of
Congress must have more than tripled during the last fifteen years. I cannot be
away a week without discovering a large amount of departmental business
accumulating while requiring immediate attention,” (Binder 1998). Historically,
accounts of the House workload increasing have been preceded by taking on more
responsibilities, allowing for more legislators, and increased levels of
legislation brought before Congress. As Civil War pensions and claims were
filed, the complex nature of interstate commerce required federal solutions.
Additionally, the number of congressmen did not change drastically, from 178 in
1860 to 357 in 1900.

Allowing
for the increase of size of the House and number of responsibilities brought
about challenges for legislators. The effectiveness of dilatory tactics
increased due to the pressure surrounding legislation increased the likeliness
of spending erroneous time debating controversial measures (Cooper 1981). In
contrast, the accumulation of legislation was made worse by the obstructionism
made possible by rules allowing each legislature to act as a player with a
veto. Additionally, the former formal system of House rules was unable to
support the processing of legislation in time to keep up with legislation that
had already been introduced. This is to say that new bills were being created
more rapidly than the system of rules allowed the House to process prior bills.

The
most effective way of quantifying these expectations is the number of bills
reported from committee to the amount of legislation considered by the House.
This is the unofficial standard by which members consider reformation of their
floor procedures. Within the duration of the 45^th Congress, the
House was unable to consider 1300 committee reports. In the 47^th
congress the number had been reduced to under one thousand pieces of
legislation. These figures compared to the fact that in 1860, the House voted
to reform its procedural rules because “nearly half” of the 600 bills on all
calendars received floor consideration (Cooper 2015).

The
surge of members and bills that had been introduced resulted in high levels of
pressure on the standing calendar system that had originally been framed to
allow for “automatic and fair” considerations of committee reports. Out of
necessity, the amount of bills that committees were forced to veto through
inaction increased alongside the number of bills which died on the calendars of
the House.

Despite
the normal disagreements felt over legislators considering various policies to
be adopted, the inability of the House to pass good legislation coupled with
its failure to clearly set an agenda was more broadly a problem with the institution
as the whole. Legislators eventually forced to adopt the new set of rules to
continue governing despite long arduous battles on the floor of the House
during the 19^th century. Despite legislators needs to quickly pass
legislation or to grant priority to important bills, the calendar system was
discouraging of this special rule to specific bills. Members were able to
sidestep the calendar system for crucial bills such as motions to suspend rules
through supermajorities and often resulted in controversial or partisan
legislation.

To
combat these and other challenges related to agenda-setting in the House,
members adopted two varieties of efficiency reformation. The first was to
eliminate and completely gut all time deemed unnecessary from the daily schedule
such as nullifying procedures that required legislators to make a motion for
permission for the introduction of a bill (Cooper and Young 1989). The second
was a reformation of rules which dealt with obstructionist tactics to allow
deliberation and consideration of controversial legislation.

On May 1, 1879 the House Rules Committee made a proposal which was then later adopted which called for the removal of first names and any initials from legislators’ names from roll call. According to congressional records, while the number of members increased the amount of time necessary for one single roll call had risen to forty minutes (Congressional Record, 46-1, 1017). This is an example of efficiency reform; the cost of saving time came at a minimal one to the members and the normal procedure of governing had not been disturbed. Garfield reported this rule from Committee as a minority member and motioned to adopt without the presence of a roll call.

Another
major component of the 1880 reform was to ensure that members could file
reports without being filibustered by changing the daily schedule. Through this
revision, an additional number of committees were able to get their legislation
on a calendar in ultimate hopes of consideration. Again in 1885, the house
underwent further efficiency reformation. This eliminated the debate on motions
to stop debate in the Committee of the Whole. Furthermore, correspondences from
the President and the Senate were now to be kept and read on the floor at the
beginning of the next day, disallowing the interruption of these messages
during floor debate and proceedings.

The
Reed Rules of 1890 presented a clear and undeniable simplification of House
rules. As previously discussed, these enabled legislators to report directly to
the Clerk as opposed to wasting hours on every Monday. Also, this allowed for
members to directly submit their reports to the clerk allowing or the saving of
roughly an hour of attempting to sidestep efforts to filibuster reports out of
committee. The commonality found within all efficiency reformation is that each
was objectively uncontroversial and acted as beneficial measures to most
members of the House.

Increases
to efficiency via means to suppress and obstruct were much more provocative.
After losing in the 1874 cycle and during the 43^rd Congress,
republicans in the house were forced to confront the inevitable downfall of the
fifteen-year control of the House and the opportunity that they could also
loose the Presidency (Bates 1936). It was clear to republican members that they
needed to vote and approve a significant amount of their shared agenda before
being voted out of power, but obstructionist methods such as constant motions
to adjourn retarded consideration of the civil rights legislative package.
Legislators actively fought to suspend the Rules and vote on a resolution which
would allow the Rules Committee to present a new variety of rule which would be
immune to tactics involving filibusters. Despite the Republican majority in the
house, members could not get to the necessary two thirds majority because
Republicans were skeptical of the greater Democratic agenda which included a
reformation to jurisdiction of federal courts (Binder 1997). Similar accounts
from Democratic struggles exist throughout history as well.

It
is obvious that the U.S. House of Representatives and the agenda-setting
procedures and policies have shaped this nation. By examining the different
gains that legislators may receive from these agenda-setting decisions, it is
discernable that due to the nature of the bicameralism of the United States
government these policies greatly impacted pieces of legislation that were
crucial to the development of this country. Originally, the process of
agenda-setting was painfully slow and did not properly allow for a more
significant portion than not of bills to be considered, effectively rendering
the legislative body unable to govern. However, due to several reformation
processes that the House has underwent, the policies in question have since
been replaced with those that can handle the current infrastructure of the
United States government.

SOURCES
CITED

• Bates, Ernest Sutherland. 1936. The Story of Congress, 1789-1935. New York: Harper & Row.
• Binder, Sarah. 1997. Minority Rights, Majority Rule. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Cooper Joseph, and David W. Brady. 1981. “Institutional Context and Leadership Style: The House from Cannon to Rayburn.” American Political Science Review, 75: 411-25.
• Cox, Gary, and Mathew McCubbins. 2007. Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the House. 2nd edition.
• Follett, Mary Parker. 1974. The Speaker of the House of Representatives. New York: Lenox Hill
• Garfield, James A. 1981. The Diary of James A. Garfield, ed. H.J. Brown and H.D. Williams. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.
• Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Vol. 2. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1975.
• James, Scott C. 1999. Presidents, Parties, and the State. Forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
• Revision of the Rules of the House of Representatives in the Thirty-Sixth and Forty-Sixth Congresses. Miscellaneous House Document No. 16, 49th Congress, 1st Session.
• Sinclair, Barbara. 1994. “House Special Rules and the Institutional Design Controversy.” Legislative Studies Quarterly, XIX, 4: 477-494.
• Sinclair, Barbara. 1995. Legislators, Leaders, and Lawmaking: the U.S. House of Representatives in the Postreform Era. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.