11.5: Legislator Behavior

Representatives and senators are often referred to as legislators or lawmakers in recognition of their primary role. Though much of what Congress does is making laws, members also regularly engage in activities less connected to the legislative process.

New Jersey Senator Cory Booker takes advantage of his chamber’s high cloture threshold to speak for 25 hours and 5 minutes, setting the record for the longest speech in Senate history.

In keeping with their role of representation, members of Congress and their staffs often use their authority to provide services to constituents on an individual basis. This casework generally involves members contacting bureaucratic agencies to resolve issues brought to their attention by their constituents. Many of the letters, phone calls, and emails representatives and senators receive from constituents are not demands to vote for or against bills but rather requests for help with personal matters. These matters include lost or delayed Social Security checks, stalled immigration paperwork or payments for government contracts, and letters of recommendation to military academies. Each case may only really matter to a single person or family, but members nevertheless try to fulfill as many requests as possible. This helps them develop a good reputation as legislators who care about the folks back home in their state or district.

Congress also uses its power of oversight to check the executive branch. When a Cabinet department or agency is suspected of incompetence or corruption, congressional committees issue subpoenas and hold hearings to determine the extent of the problem and how it can be remedied. Cabinet secretaries and agency heads embroiled in scandal may be “hauled before a committee” to account for their actions or those of their subordinates. These hearings are not formal trials where the accused is subject to legal punishment if found guilty. Still, they can embarrass the subpoenaed officials (as well as the presidents who oversee them) and may lead to firings or demotions.

How and how much individual members of Congress choose to engage in the activities available to them depends upon many competing motivations. Contrary to the stereotype of the out-of-touch politician, many members want to be true public servants and advocate for the interests of their constituents and the country as a whole. However, they also want to promote the success of their party (both within the chamber and in American politics overall), as doing so will help it win or maintain a congressional majority, earn coveted committee chair positions, and pursue policy goals. Furthermore, they have strong individual motivations— reelection, status within the chamber, fame outside of it, and sometimes ambitions for higher office or comfortable careers as highly paid lobbyists after their retirement from Congress.

Times when these public, partisan, and personal motivations conflict provide the most galling examples of Congress’s “brokenness.” The House and Senate are often mired in gridlock, unable to pass even widely popular and clearly necessary legislation, because one or both parties are unwilling to compromise. When Congress does come together to pass bills, they are often loaded with pork, discretionary spending on pet projects in specific states or congressional districts (a potato research grant in Idaho, a new tennis court in Connecticut, a teapot museum in North Carolina, and so on). These spending items often seem more like undeserved giveaways than wise uses of taxpayer dollars, but they allow members of Congress to brag about having brought funding back to their constituents the next time they run for reelection. Members also sometimes buck their party’s position on controversial votes to avoid taking positions that could cost them electoral support in their state or district.

The degree to which members of Congress seem to orient their behavior around the goal of reelection—skipping votes to campaign or raise funds, inserting “earmarks” into bills to bring pork to their constituencies, going against their party to avoid damaging their popularity back home—strikes many Americans as distasteful, selfish, or even unethical. But focusing on reelection need not prevent a member from being an honest or good legislator. Senators and representatives can only wield power for as long as they retain their seats, so reelection is a prerequisite for most of their other goals. Moreover, caring about reelection can be a good thing if it motivates members to act in the interests of the constituents on whose votes their legislative careers depend. Reelection is not just a mechanism for voters to retain good and effective politicians. It is also an incentive for those politicians to do a good and effective job. In some ways, we should be glad that members of Congress care enough about being reelected to behave in ways that enable them to keep their seats term after term.

Term limits for members of Congress are a perennially popular reform according to polls, and several states term-limit their state legislators. Supporters of term limits argue that forced retirement after a specified number of terms prevents legislators from becoming “career politicians” and allows for more electoral competition and fresh ideas. Opponents counter that term limits rob legislatures of experienced members and remove the incentive of reelection that encourages good behavior.