Inside Congressional Committees: Function and Dysfunction in the Legislative Process

by Maya Kornberg

It is widely believed that Congress has broken down. Media accounts present the storied legislature as thoroughly gridlocked, paralyzed by partisan rancor. Political scientists find that Congress is passing fewer laws and spending less time on legislative work. Which parts of a supposedly dysfunctional legislature continue to function?

Maya L. Kornberg examines the legislative process beyond voting patterns, emphasizing the crucial role of congressional committee hearings. In committees, lawmakers hear from expert witnesses, legislators revise and discuss bills before bringing them to a vote, and the public has an opportunity to engage with Congress. Kornberg scrutinizes the inner workings of committees—the different types of witnesses who testify, the varied hearings Congress holds, and the distinct effects that committee work has on congresspeople. She deploys original mixed-methods datasets that span from insider interviews to sentiment analysis examining the language used in hearings. Kornberg evaluates how committees operate and the conditions affecting their performance, finding that committee work can be more deliberative and productive than the politics of the Congress floor.

Through a comprehensive exploration of who committees hear from and how they listen, this book demonstrates that Congress is not as dysfunctional as is often claimed. Inside Congressional Committees also suggests timely reforms based on these findings that can strengthen Congress.

Genres: Politics

328 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 7, 2023

Reviews

[Kevin Kosar]

Dr. Maya Kornberg has written a fine book that explains the centrality of committees to policymaking and oversight. She explains their functions, operations, and their virtues and vices in the Congress of today.

You can listen to my 20-minute interview with Dr. Kornberg at https://www.aei.org/podcast/what-do-c... and you can watch my hour-long disucssion with her at https://www.c-span.org/video/?525313-...

[Frank Stein · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is much about this book that is simply confusing. To the authors' credit, she conducted over 65 off-the-record interviews with representatives, senators, and staffers, which provide some heplful context for contemporary committee behavior. On the other hand, she seems to be confused about what an anonymous interview means. At one point she notes that Rep. Dan Lipinski was the one Democratic congressman to support a cybersecurity bill to give the agency NIST power over government cybersecurity audits. The next page, she quotes an anonymous Democratic representative who said the hearings led him to switch his vote and become the only democrat to support the bill. In another section, she quotes a "two-time chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee" from Indiana who died in 2019, namely Richard Lugar. The book is also filled with a lot of statistics that don't prove anything. Her textual analysis shows that most witnesses across every committee use "analytical" language," which is not surprising.

There is some useful information here, for instance about how bipartisan committees like Foreign Affairs, Veterans, and even Commerce tend to use "joint lists" of witnesses, where both parties are consulted. Sometimes the majority will decide on broad categories of witnesses and then send the categories to the minority for suggestions. The book also notes that staffers emphasized how travel for hearings wasn't paid, so many witnesses came from the DC area, which reinforced the fact that witneses are often called simply becaues committee members or staffers already know them and they are part of narrow "information networks." She highlighted how congress members did really think they got education from hearings, even if, especially in the Senate, they rarely can stay for them. There are just fun factoids, like the fact that the Senate didn't have bathrooms for women senators utnil 1992.

The book also highlights Lewallen's famous study of hearings that show the proportion of "substantive" policy hearings dropped steadily from 60 percent in the 1970s to less than 30 percent in modern times. One does get the impression here that congressional committees, or at least the hearings that are the focus here, just aren't all that important relative to other factors in policymaking. But no book about committees could say as much. And this book seems incurious about looking into specifics.

[Mark Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

A crystal-clear description of congressional committees and how they operate today. Dr. Kornberg presents an all-encompassing look into the most essential part of our democracy, using clear examples and an incredibly thorough methodology. I would recommend for anyone looking to take a closer look at how things really work.

[Jesse · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is a lot of interesting history and background, but the book is padded out with constant regurgitation of her methodology and each chapter rehashes the whole book’s structure. It’s not a pure history or explainer nor is it call for reform, though sometimes it suggests it. Worth a pick up but does not reward you for reading all the way through.