The senate budget committee: The impact of polarization on institutional design

Abstract

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. Copyright © 2012 American Political Science Association.