One thing I recall is the (informal) Hastert Rule. Namely that in the House, nowadays leadership often doesn’t even bring bills up for a vote unless a majority of their party is in favor. Whereas if all bills came up for a vote, then you could imagine that even in a D/R-controlled legislature, occasionally a bill might pass that 100% of the minority and 20% of the majority would vote for.
Yup, this is very much part of it. But overall, it’s the tightening of a thousand screws rather than One Weird Trick.
In the House, in addition to the tradition changes that MondSemmel mentions, successive speakers over time have modified the formal House Rules iteratively to (generally) consolidate more power under the Speaker in a bunch of bureaucratically technical but important ways. (E.G., the Federalist Society on the right argues that Gingrich’s decision to cut committee staff sizes and impose term limits for committee chairs nerfed the power of committees relative to the Speaker https://fedsoc.org/commentary/fedsoc-blog/navigating-the-rules-of-the-people-s-house). Note that some view the current Speaker as intentionallychoosing to begin to reverse this trend as part of commitments he voluntarily made to his side of the aisle to somewhat empower individual Members, but this is seen even by his biggest fans as only a first step, and certainly not universally agreed upon even within his own Party.
In the Senate, similar trends are combined with a slow but fairly steady erosion of the scope of the filibuster (as well as the maximization of procedural hacks around the filibuster, such as how to use reconciliation), which de facto increases the power of the Senate Majority Leader in closely-divided Senates (most have been for the past 20 years). But this is not as far along as in the House, and various Senate Majority Leaders have approached this question differently, even within the same party, so bright line conclusions are harder to draw here. (E.G., Reid and Schumer had somewhat different approaches from each other, as do McConnell and Thune)
Can you elaborate on how the erosion of the filibuster empowers the party leaders? I figured the filibuster empowers the members (because there are ~never 60 votes for anything) to veto/stop arbitrary legislation, and thus any erosion of the filibuster would weaken the members’ ability to veto/stop legislation and thereby empower their ability to enact legislation instead.
Also, it’s my understanding that a majority of Senators could at any point abolish the filibuster, but they never want to no matter which party is in power, because it empowers individual Senators.
can you expand on “leadership of committees and the parties consolidating more role-based power (especially in the House)”?
One thing I recall is the (informal) Hastert Rule. Namely that in the House, nowadays leadership often doesn’t even bring bills up for a vote unless a majority of their party is in favor. Whereas if all bills came up for a vote, then you could imagine that even in a D/R-controlled legislature, occasionally a bill might pass that 100% of the minority and 20% of the majority would vote for.
Yup, this is very much part of it. But overall, it’s the tightening of a thousand screws rather than One Weird Trick.
In the House, in addition to the tradition changes that MondSemmel mentions, successive speakers over time have modified the formal House Rules iteratively to (generally) consolidate more power under the Speaker in a bunch of bureaucratically technical but important ways. (E.G., the Federalist Society on the right argues that Gingrich’s decision to cut committee staff sizes and impose term limits for committee chairs nerfed the power of committees relative to the Speaker https://fedsoc.org/commentary/fedsoc-blog/navigating-the-rules-of-the-people-s-house). Note that some view the current Speaker as intentionally choosing to begin to reverse this trend as part of commitments he voluntarily made to his side of the aisle to somewhat empower individual Members, but this is seen even by his biggest fans as only a first step, and certainly not universally agreed upon even within his own Party.
In the Senate, similar trends are combined with a slow but fairly steady erosion of the scope of the filibuster (as well as the maximization of procedural hacks around the filibuster, such as how to use reconciliation), which de facto increases the power of the Senate Majority Leader in closely-divided Senates (most have been for the past 20 years). But this is not as far along as in the House, and various Senate Majority Leaders have approached this question differently, even within the same party, so bright line conclusions are harder to draw here. (E.G., Reid and Schumer had somewhat different approaches from each other, as do McConnell and Thune)
Can you elaborate on how the erosion of the filibuster empowers the party leaders? I figured the filibuster empowers the members (because there are ~never 60 votes for anything) to veto/stop arbitrary legislation, and thus any erosion of the filibuster would weaken the members’ ability to veto/stop legislation and thereby empower their ability to enact legislation instead.
Also, it’s my understanding that a majority of Senators could at any point abolish the filibuster, but they never want to no matter which party is in power, because it empowers individual Senators.