Why Bills Fail: Electioneering with the Legislative Agenda.

Abstract

For many political observers, dead-on-arrival (DOA) legislation is the epitome of a broken, dysfunctional Congress. Doomed bills such as repealing the Affordable Care Act, ending the war in Iraq, or defunding Planned Parenthood are viewed as symbolic political theater. In this project, I argue intended legislative failures are not simply used for political grandstanding. Rather, these bills are unique tools utilized by majority party legislators and their allied interest groups. The majority party strategically adds intended failures to its agenda when it most needs electoral support to win unified government. Allied interest groups consistently reward the majority party for advancing DOA legislation. As a result, these organized interests get lawmakers to adopt the intended failure as their working policy alternative. Thus, when the majority party wins unified government, the previously dead-on-arrival legislation is more likely to be enacted. More broadly, this study explains why majority parties in Congress prioritize certain bills but not others. Dead-on-arrival legislation is anomalous because it does not provide lawmakers any policy utility. For this reason, these proposals offer unique insight regarding when and why majority parties prefer extreme DOA bills or compromise legislation. By understanding legislators’ incentives for focusing on intended failures, this project examines the conditions under which the legislative agenda is used for electioneering rather than lawmaking. To develop and support my argument, I use a game-theoretic auction model, statistical methods, and a survey experiment. By focusing on dead-on-arrival bills, this project highlights how electoral considerations influence a majority party’s and its allied interest groups’ legislative strategies. Ultimately, this dissertation reframes dead-on-arrival bills as a tool strategically used for electioneering, an important source for future policy change, and an anomalous feature of the legislative process that offers unique insight into how Congress’s legislative agenda is determined.