Empirical tests of congressional organization theories have generally focused on the prerequisites for committee power (e.g., committee composition and rule-based institutional power) rather than on the policy implications of this alleged power. Although policy scholars have long studied the allocation patterns of federal outlays, congressional scholars have heretofore generally provided—but not systematically tested—hypotheses regarding the disproportionate allocation of policy benefits to committee members. This analysis presents a critical, but tractable, test of the policy expectations of distributive theory across two House committees with varying jurisdictional dimensionality. Based on 1980s federal outlays to districts in agriculture, education, and labor programs, the evidence indicates that committees differ in regard to the level of allocational benefits they can confer upon themselves and that this difference is likely related to jurisdictional characteristics. In addition, the results indicate that district need drives a large portion of relative district outlays.
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