We need to change how we evaluate our lawmakers
The implications of the omnibus era are still sinking in.
Much has been made of the declining number of bills Congress is passing into law. Every two years, it seems, we are treated to news stories decrying ever-rising gridlock, and ever decreasing productivity, in our national legislature.
This narrative, however, masks Congress’ actual productivity. Rather than passing large numbers of standalone bills into separate laws, Congress today passes most things by combining them into large and wide-ranging legislative packages and enacting them all at once. The 116th Congress (2019-20) and the 117th Congress (2021-22) each passed between 300 and 400 bills into law as standalone measures. These numbers are relatively low by historical standards. In the 1960s and 1970s, more than 650 laws were enacted during every two-year Congress. However, as Kroeger et al’s data show us, more than 1,000 additional bills touching on nearly every conceivable policy area were embedded within the enactments of the 116th and 117th Congresses.
This “omnibus” legislating approach, as it is sometimes called, has become the predominant way Congress passes legislation, and it has implications for how we evaluate Congress and its members as effective lawmakers.
Why has omnibus legislating become more common?
Omnibus legislating is part of a broader evolution that has taken place inside of Congress. Once a stubbornly decentralized institution that relied on committee-led and open amending processes to write, consider, and pass legislation, Congress is now a highly centralized institution that places more decision-making power in the hands of its leaders. Congress no longer passes legislation via the step-by-step “How a Bill Becomes a Law” approach that Washington insiders sometimes refer to as “the regular order.” Instead, major legislation is negotiated behind the scenes, with party leaders playing a central role. Rather than free-wheeling debates, committee meetings are now choreographed affairs. House and Senate floor proceedings are also highly structured, with leaders limiting opportunities to debate and amend legislation. Ideas for policy may bubble up from individual members and offices, but a small number of leaders are playing the central role in deciding what moves forward and how.
Omnibus legislating is part of this evolution. Congressional leaders enjoy two prerogatives here: first, to decide which issues will be addressed through major legislation, and second, to structure the opportunities for other lawmakers to try to get their policy ideas incorporated into the final legislative package. Lawmakers today have far fewer opportunities to have their bills considered individually on the floor, or to offer their ideas as amendments to legislation during traditional proceedings.
Congress adopted these processes in response to an increasingly partisan and contentious political environment. Widespread party polarization and partisan conflict, combined with and intense media environment that craves narratives centered around conflict, simply makes the kinds of bipartisan compromises necessary to pass legislation more difficult. Instead, our lawmakers have greater incentives than ever before to try to score political points during congressional proceedings. Open committee and floor processes allow lawmakers to gum up the works, attack and embarrass their opponents, and advance partisan narratives. Right or wrong, centralized processes like omnibus legislating are simply viewed as more efficient from a productivity standpoint. Congress can take up and pass a large number of bills and policy proposals all at once, while reducing opportunities for lawmakers to slow things down or muddy the waters with partisan strife.
How should we evaluate Congress and its members in the era of omnibus?
Whether or not omnibus legislating is an ideal way to do business, it is now the standard operating procedure on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers have adapted how they do their work as a result. This has implications for how we should evaluate Congress and its members as lawmakers.
One implication is that our traditional ways of understanding which of our lawmakers are most “effective” are probably not very revealing these days. Influencing lawmaking has little to do with advancing specific bills or specific amendments in the legislative process. It is about being an active and involved player behind the scenes, with the capacity to shape what is in and what is out of major legislative packages. Metrics that consider the ability of our legislators to get their introduced bills incorporated into laws certainly help—measures like the Center for Effective Lawmaking’s LES 2.0 and Eatough and Preece’s LawProM—but they still do not fully consider the most important forms of influence.
If lawmaking is now mostly about building and passing omnibus-style enactments, then our most effective lawmakers are those who are able to shape the size, scope, and overall contents of major legislation. These lawmakers are, first and foremost, those holding positions of institutional power—party and committee leaders. These individuals are typically the primary negotiators involved in deciding what will be included in, and what will be left out of, a big legislative package. Other influential House members and senators are those viewed as having sufficient clout or expertise in a policy space to persuade meaningful numbers of their colleagues to either support or oppose something. These two categories of members are arguably our most effective “lawmakers,” and they can have this influence without ever introducing a bill or having something they sponsored included in it.
We also need to be more thoughtful in how we take stock of Congress’ productivity in general. Even though we know Congress functions differently than in the past, we have not fully adjusted our assessments of the institution. Rather than viewing an end-of-the-year spending package as a last-minute agreement to keep the government’s lights on, we should be attentive to the many, often major, policy enactments that are included alongside the spending authorizations. Rather than focusing on the many messaging bills that are brought to the floor for the purpose of demonstrating disagreements between the parties but go nowhere in the legislative process, we should pay more attention to the many policy-relevant enactments that pass every two years with little controversy and little fanfare, but have major implications for federal policy and the lives of millions of Americans.
In short, our old ways of thinking about Congress’ productivity, and who within the Capitol influences its output, no longer work. As we look to evaluate Congress during the second Trump administration, we should keep these new realities in mind.
James M. Curry is a professor of political science at the University of Utah. He is author of two books, Legislating in the Dark (2015) and The Limits of Party (2020, with Frances E. Lee), and his research and writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. He received his Ph.D. in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland in 2011 and previously worked on Capitol Hill in the offices of Representative Daniel Lipinski and the House Appropriations Committee.
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