The Senate Budget Committee: The Impact of Polarization on Institutional Design

The latest virtual issue of PS features articles written by alumni of the Congressional Fellowship Program (CFP) from 2010 to 2015. The CFP fellows serve yearlong placements in congressional and executive offices, and they chronicle their firsthand experiences in the pages of PS. Enjoy the full virtual issue here.

PSC 49 V2 CoverThe Senate Budget Committee: The Impact of Polarization on Institutional Design

Joseph Bafumi, Dartmouth College

“The Senate Budget Committee is a unique and potentially powerful institution in the US legislature. It was begun to help coordinate the federal budget making process in the US Senate. Long-term trends and short-term institutional dynamics have weakened the coordinating capacity of the committee to the point that the budget process was entirely ignored in 2011. This article explores these changes. It shows evidence for Democrats and Republicans on the committee moving further apart ideologically since the 1970s resulting in more partisanship and less deliberation on the committee. It also shows how a combination of a narrow Democratic majority on the committee along with a recent uptick in ideological heterogeneity among Democrats but without prospects for bipartisanship, resulted in no budget process in 2011.” Read More.


PS: Political Science & Politics / Volume 45 / Issue 01 / January 2012, pp 161-167