Why Senators Surrendered Power to Party Leaders
For much of its history, the Senate did not rely on powerful party leaders to pass legislation. Instead, it used a decentralized process to develop and debate major bills. Committee chairmen and ranking minority members played central roles, along with rank-and-file senators who had a particular interest in the legislation under consideration.
The majority and minority leaders helped that process work. They did not control it.
Today’s Senate operates differently. The majority leader makes most important procedural decisions before major legislation reaches the floor, often in negotiations with the minority leader. He routinely decides which bills the Senate will consider, which amendments senators may offer, how long they may debate, and when they will vote. Rank-and-file senators are then asked to accept or reject terms that have already been settled.
The majority leader still consults his colleagues. But consultation does not necessarily mean meaningful participation. Leaders often present their preferred course as the only practical option and push back against senators who want to proceed differently. Members may express their views, but only after leadership has narrowed the available choices.
The Senate’s rules do not require the chamber to operate this way. They remain largely the same as they were when committees and individual senators exercised far more influence. But the change occurred because rank-and-file senators increasingly deferred to the majority leader. Centralized leadership made the Senate’s work more predictable, reduced the effort required to pass major bills, and protected senators from difficult votes.
So the present leader-dominated Senate is not simply the product of ambitious leaders taking power from unwilling lawmakers. Rank-and-file senators helped create it because centralized leadership offers benefits that the older, more participatory process did not.
The Participatory Senate
The Senate last relied primarily on a decentralized process during the 1960s and 1970s. Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, D-Mont., exemplified the role of the majority leader in that process.
Mansfield believed his job was to help the Senate work its will, not impose his preferred outcome on the chamber. He deferred to committees to develop legislation. And he accommodated individual senators during floor debate.
Under Mansfield, what happened on the floor mattered. The bill senators began debating was not necessarily the bill that ultimately passed. Senators could amend its provisions, raise issues that were not already in the legislation, and force their colleagues to take positions on their priorities.
Rank-and-file senators possessed leverage because they did not need the majority leader’s permission to participate in floor debate. The Senate’s rules allowed them to offer germane and nongermane amendments. They could use those amendments to change a bill or obstruct it.
But that process took time. To pass a major bill, the Senate had to first accommodate senators who wanted to speak and offer amendments. Howard Cannon, D-Nev., later recalled of the Mansfield era, “It sure took a hell of a lot longer to get things out of Congress.”
That was the cost of a process in which senators influenced legislation.
Why Senators Wanted a Different Process
The cost of participation increased as the Senate’s political environment changed. During the 1970s and 1980s, more issues competed for attention. Floor debate also competed with committee hearings, constituent meetings, fundraising, media appearances, and senators’ desire to travel home.
Partisanship became more important as well. Senators’ political fortunes were increasingly connected to the performance of their national party. In 1980, Ronald Reagan campaigned for Republican Senate candidates using common themes. With his help, Republican candidates defeated several Democratic incumbents, and the GOP won majority control of the Senate for the first time since the 1950s.
As a result, same-party senators had stronger incentives to act together moving forward. Majority control of the Senate meant more committee seats, more chairman gavels, larger committee staffs, and control of the floor. Lawmakers’ policy positions also aligned more closely with those of their partisan colleagues.
These developments increased the costs of debating legislation in a decentralized process that accommodated all senators. Senators placed holds on bills and objected to unanimous consent requests more often. Debates also lasted longer.
Yet senators and their constituents still expected the chamber to legislate. They simply wanted it to do so on a predictable schedule. For example, senators wanted to know when votes would occur, to avoid late-night and weekend sessions, and to make reliable plans to travel home each week.
Meeting those expectations required a more centralized process. It also required powerful party leaders because they were the only senators positioned to coordinate the actions of rank-and-file senators.
From Managing Participation to Managing Senators
Howard Baker, R-Tenn., and Bob Dole, R-Kan., were the first majority leaders to move the Senate toward a more leader-directed process. Dole was less willing than Mansfield to accommodate senators who wanted to delay legislation, and he sought to discourage them from using the rules to obstruct. He forced votes on amendments he wanted the Senate to act on and required opponents to obstruct in person. He also made it harder for senators to obstruct by threatening around-the-clock and weekend sessions, if necessary, to complete action on legislation. He even threatened to cancel upcoming recesses if senators did not relent.
Baker and Dole also weakened Senate holds. In 1982, Baker announced that he would not automatically consider a senator’s hold binding. Then Dole declared in 1986 that he would no longer keep a senator’s hold confidential. Senators could still place holds on bills. But the costs associated with using holds to stop the Senate from advancing legislation were greater.
Later leaders went further. George Mitchell, D-Maine, Tom Daschle, D-S.D., Trent Lott, R-Miss., Bill Frist, R-Tenn., Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., each played a more prominent role in developing legislation and building party support for it. Reid and McConnell also coordinated their parties’ communications strategies and actively raised money to help incumbents win reelection.
Party leaders were especially important when a bill included provisions under the jurisdiction of multiple committees. When that happened, the majority leader led the effort to combine each committee’s product into a single piece of legislation. He then consulted his party members on the final product and negotiated changes to it to neutralize opponents before the bill reached the floor.
As a result, the majority leader became the only senator with a comprehensive view of the Senate and its internal dynamics. He had a better idea of which provisions in a bill could jeopardize its passage. And he had a better understanding of which amendments could succeed and which would create political problems for his rank-and-file members. Successive majority leaders used that knowledge to manage Senate debates even though the chamber’s rules continued to empower rank-and-file senators.
The minority party centralized in response. Its members gained leverage by deferring to the minority leader to negotiate on their behalf. As a result, the two party leaders became involved in nearly every important procedural decision.
The Benefits and Costs of Leader Control
Rank-and-file senators acquiesced in this shift because a centralized process gave them something that a decentralized process could not: order and predictability.
Leaders negotiated disputes among party leaders before bills reached the floor. Senators knew when votes would occur and when the Senate would adjourn. They avoided lengthy floor debates. Today, the threat of late-night and weekend sessions is usually sufficient to persuade senators to refrain from using the Senate’s rules to obstruct legislation. The majority leader can also block amendments that divide the party or force its members to choose between competing constituencies. Senators who want to offer an amendment can complain that they have been denied a vote, and their colleagues can avoid taking a position on it by voting.
The Senate’s leader-dominated process endures because it benefits rank-and-file senators. They regularly criticize the Senate’s lack of amendments and meaningful debate. But a more decentralized process would require them to remain in Washington, negotiate with colleagues, defend their positions, and cast votes whose political consequences cannot be known in advance.
Many senators want the influence associated with participation without accepting its costs.
Yet the Senate’s centralized leader-dominated process has changed it significantly. Committees are less important because party leaders rewrite their bills or bypass them altogether. Floor debate also matters less because the most important decisions are made in advance.
Rank-and-file senators are also less important. The Senate’s rules still empower them to act independently to advance their priorities and obstruct legislation they oppose. But they are less willing to use those rules to achieve their goals because doing so could disrupt their party’s schedule or undermine its strategy. And party leaders actively work against senators who choose to use them.
The Takeaway
The majority leader does not dominate today’s Senate because the Senate's rules have changed. Senators changed how they use those rules. They defer to party leaders because a centralized process makes legislating easier and more predictable. It protects them from difficult votes and doesn’t require them to expend as much effort as a decentralized process.
But convenience comes at the expense of senators’ influence. The rank-and-file are less important today because they have surrendered opportunities to influence what happens in the Senate.