This chapter describes the patterns of congressional policymaking in the context of Congress’s three major functions: lawmaking, representation, and oversight. These are the main points of this chapter:

The major function of Congress is to enact legislation. Congress is not well suited to the development of broad and carefully coordinated policy programs. Its divided chambers, weak leadership, and committee structure, as well as the concern of its members with state and district interests, make it difficult for Congress to initiate solutions to broad national problems. Congress looks to the president for such proposals, but has strong influence on the timing and content of major national programs. Presidential initiatives are passed by Congress only if they meet its members’ expectations and usually only after a lengthy process of compromise and negotiation.

Congress is more adept at handling legislation dealing with problems of narrow interest. Legislation of this sort is decided mainly in congressional committees, where interested legislators, bureaucrats, and groups concentrate their efforts on issues of mutual concern. Narrowly focused bills emerging from committees usually win the support of the full House or Senate. Committee recommendations are always subject to checks on the floor, and larger policy groups—issue networks, iron triangles, and caucuses—have increasingly intruded on the committee process. Nevertheless, most narrow policy issues are settled primarily by subgroups of self-interested legislators rather than by the full Congress, although the success of these subgroups in the long run can depend on their responsiveness to broader interests.

A second function of Congress is the representation of various interests. Members of Congress are highly sensitive to the state or district on which they depend for reelection. As result, interest groups that are important to a member’s state or district are strongly represented in Congress. Members of Congress do respond to overriding national interests, but for most of them, local concerns generally come first. National and local representation often work through party representation, particularly on issues that have traditionally divided the Democratic and Republican parties and their constituencies.

Congress’s third function is oversight, the supervision and investigation of the way the bureaucracy is implementing legislatively mandated programs. Oversight is usually less rewarding than lawmaking or representation and receives correspondingly less attention form members of Congress.

Congress is a slow and deliberative institution. It is also a powerful one; the process by which a bill becomes law is such that legislative proposals can be defeated or stymied rather easily. Congress is admired by those who believe that broad national legislation should reflect a wide range of interests, including local ones; that policies developed through a lengthy process of compromise and negotiation are likely to be sound; and that minorities should be able obtain selective benefits and should have ways of blunting the impulses of the majority. Critics of the congressional process argue that it serves special interests, particularly entrenched economic groups; makes it hard, and sometimes impossible, for majorities to get their way; and prevents timely responses to pressing national needs.