Punctuating the Congressional Agenda: Strategic Scheduling by House and Senate Leaders

Abstract

Despite general agreement that indicates deadlines “matter” to legislative behavior, there have been few empirical investigations of the use of deadlines in Congress. This study focuses on the use of recess deadlines (such as the August recess). I hypothesize that congressional leaders schedule votes before major recesses to create additional deadlines within the congressional term where votes can be taken under the pressures of time constraint. Using negative binomial regression, I demonstrate that “rushes” of roll call votes do take place before major recesses, and this preliminary evidence suggests that congressional leaders in the House use recesses as deadlines for most roll call votes. Initial findings also suggest that the powers of House leaders to control their voting schedule before recess deadlines outweigh the powers of their counterparts in the Senate.