Episode 3: The Congressional Black Caucus with Periloux Peay

Hello. Welcome to the third episode of the Policy Agendas podcast. I’m your host, the project

manager of the Policy Agendas Project, E.J. Fagan. Today, I am joined by the

local government expert, the person who has been to more city council meetings than Leslie Knope. Brooke Shannon.

Yeah, that’s me. Hi, everybody. And I’m also joined by a rare person

with a policy genius project states, not just public law, but also comparative politics, a barranca.

Hi. Thanks for having me today. So we we just record a great episode with parrello p-a of the University

of Oklahoma. We talked about his working paper, crosscutting legislation and the impact of committee reform

on the pursuit of black interests in the House of Representatives. So, Brooke, tell us what’s on the agenda

for this paper. He described this as working paper. Yes. So this paper and Piers, research agenda

at large is really about sort of the effects of committees, multiple referrals

of policy and policy packages, things like omnibus bills from the Congressional

Black Caucus in particular. And he really looks at that effect on cross-cutting legislation and

the overall strategy of the CBC of the last 20 years or so. It’s a great paper. All right.

But what of this discussion really stuck out to you? Like what did you learn from the great call we just had? So

what it really added to my understanding of the CBC was how its

strategies have developed under different Congresses in the past and how going forward

they may hone their position within the Democratic Party as a mover on policy

agendas and multi-dimensional policymaking is a big aspect of that. Yeah. So the episode

will follow, will go into it in a second. But first I want to say that this is our third episode. If

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think that we should interview, please email us at policy agendas at G-mail dot com. And with that,

here’s our interview with parrello p-a. We are now joined by parrello p-a. He’s a graduate

student, the University of Oklahoma. We’re going to be discussing his paper, Crosscutting Legislation

and the impact of committee reform on the pursuit of black interests in the House of Representatives. P.A.,

welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me, guys. Yeah. This is this is a fun paper.

It’s the first paper. We’ve done this in our third episode that really deals directly with the data

that we produce, the policy agendas, projects where we’re very excited. I was a little fist pump when I when I hear

about people using our data such like you to begin just key. Can you summarize the argument of the paper and

what you find? Yeah. So I originally looked at the

crosscutting legislation that I define as legislation that gets referred to multiple committees

as a driving question in my research. And it was inspired

by the Jobs and Justice Act that was proposed. This May or this

passed me by the Congressional Black Caucus and it got me thinking what

happens when the CBC gets into the omnibus game or the mini bus game

and doesn’t increase their chances of achieving their legislative goals? So what?

What I found was when they do sponsor legislation that gets referred to multiple committees,

they have a much better chance of clearing the committee stage and the

vote on the House floor. So it does significantly increase the probability of that occurring. So

very briefly, that’s pretty much what I found. But then I drove a little bit deeper and I saw

that as far as the institution evolved over time, you start to see things

that weren’t significant that were in later Democratic majority. So prior

to the Contra Act reform the Republican Congress and a hundred for

there was no significant impact on sponsoring multiple legislation and

multiple referrals or legislation that received multiple referrals. But in the

£110 hundred eleven, you did see those significant findings, though, that I found it to be kind of interesting. So

I wanted to dove a little bit deeper into why that would actually take place. Can you explain to

our listeners what multiple referral is for a bill in the House or Senate? Yeah, definitely.

So a bill once once sponsored gets categorized through different procedures

and sent out to different committees that would have jurisdiction over that particular legislation

prior to the hundred board. There was the possibility that a bill could be jointly

referred so to committees would have equal jurisdiction over

a specific bill or in the contract with the American people.

The Gingrich reforms, they did away with the joint referrals and went to more sequential referrals

where one committee would get priority. But if there were elements of the bill that

were in the jurisdiction of other committees, they would get referrals to address those specific areas.

They’ve had several different alterations to that from a hundred and forth to the hundred and ten. But

generally the process is now is that think they can refer a bill to multiple committees

based on the elements or the issues that are tackled in a particular bill. So the omnibus bill

could cover six to seven or more different committees if you package

it that way. And why might a cross-cutting piece of legislation have?

What would you explain your theory of why these it will be more successful bills both in getting out of committee

and on the floor? Yeah, well, it starts at the very core that the more eyes that

you get on a bill, you’re able to garner more attention

or more interest. You been able to get more diverse perspectives into the bill.

That’s Barbara. Claire mentioned this in the latest version of unorthodox lawmaking.

She says when there’s when a bill is considered by a number of committees, multiple perspectives are brought to bear

on complex problems. And in the things that I study, the black

issues are about as complex as they can get for a number of reasons. But

that allows you to say build coalitions around these bills to try

to bring in or break down different barriers that might exist in trying to get your legislation

passed the committee stage on the House floor. So it’s all rooted in

increasing attention, broadening the scope of conflict,

for example, for rooted in Schneider’s work and Johns and Baumgartner’s

work. All of that comes into play whenever you’re sponsoring bills that can receive multiple

referrals and lesbian. All these before we get to specific questions. Can you explain just the empirical strategy you use?

So what data are you bringing to bear and what are the big dependent independent variables you’re using? Right. So

I take Bill sponsored by Congressional Black Caucus members

and the hundred and third to 112 Congress comes up to about four

thousand three hundred twenty six bills and about fifteen hundred of those

I identify as bills that are sponsored in targeted policy areas.

And I don’t identify those through looking at the expressed CBC agenda

that they publish annually on their website and in the Congressional

Record. And my Dipendra variables in this case are the dichotomous indicators

that a bill can receive a report out of committee or has passed a roll-call vote and or

and or the independent variable that I look at or dichotomous

indicated that a bill has received multiple referrals and one that has

an additive measure of the number or the count of committees that a bill is

referred to. And it happens that the Comparative Agendas Project

Dataset facilitates that rather well. So getting back to the idea of

multiple referrals and that process in Congress and

its effect on cross-cutting legislation, I’m wondering if this is a unique

strategy in general. Can you talk a little bit about the uniqueness of crosscutting

as a strategy and whether or not that is more like specific to the Congressional Black

Caucus or if other groups in Congress abide by the same strategy?

I’m not 100 percent sure if it’s unique to the CBC. I do propose that

it is part of a strategy that is employed by the CBC as a

way to kind of cut through barriers and there are other things that they do. And this is part of what motivated

the the study itself. It’s trying to lift the hood

on some of the activities that the Black Caucus as an organization does.

And I think as research moves on, we’re finding that these organizations are rather

sophisticated in what what they’re trying to do it. It doesn’t appear that they

were rather successful in that. When you compare them to the House average, the proportion

of bills that they sponsored that were referred to multiple committees was lagging behind

all the way up to the 100th and ninth Congress. But then you see a huge surge in the number of

bills or the proportion of bills that they’re able to sponsor that are getting to multiple committees

and honored to be rather interesting. So that might signal a shift in tactics. It

might signal just a different approach to lawmaking as the omnibus

packages become more and more likely to cut through some of these barriers or

more likely to garner attention. I’m seeing that increase as them changing their

approach to how they’re going to package these bills moving forward. Do you take this as an indication that more.

Multi-dimensional policy is more out of CBC appeal within Congress as a whole than unit dimensional

policy. I would I would believe so. And the work of blank roots shows

that people are willing to jump on board of multidimensional

policies if there if it appeals to their particular policy interests. So

like I say, this is the opportunity for them to build coalitions around these issues or break through some of the structure or

interpersonal barriers that exist in lawmaking and to look

for the lack of a better word. Make these policies a little bit more palatable to

their colleagues in the Democratic caucus or to the institution as a whole in terms of the barriers.

And you touch on these sort of theoretically more robustly in the winnowing paper

that this sort of set to drop deep. So we’ll have both papers for everybody in the in the description of this

podcast. We’re talking about one of the working papers, but he actually has a second working paper

that’s closely related to this one that will also have in there on the winnowing of bills.

So one of one of the factors in your welcome to speak to any of the six that you you sort

of outlined was about education of the Congress being facilitated

by other branches of government. So the executive and bureaucratic initiative

taking when it comes to minority focused issues or interests

that would indicate the CBC was one of the few to speak to that a little more because there seemed

to be a lot of sort of theoretical robustness in that area. Yeah, I mean,

one thing that we found over the past year was specifically dealing with issues like voting rights or criminal justice is

that in previous administrations they allowed

the judiciary or the executive branch, the agencies, particularly the DOJ,

to take the lead in being the enforcers or the the

litigators of black issues. The

Department of Justice or the civil rights branch of the Department of Justice, for example, they were front

and center in challenging voting rights. And even as the Shelby decision

became clear that that was going to be the downfall or

of a huge portion of the Voting Rights Act. The DOJ was still front and center.

Now, that’s that’s slightly changed in the past two years. So

that might also increase congressional responsiveness to voting rights. And we’ll see

where that goes with the new House majority. But we often wait

or Congress often waits for the judiciary branch or for

these different agencies to take the lead or even abdicating their responsibility altogether

and trying to come up with policy solutions for these different problems

that they have. And it adds to the complexity of these issues. Yeah. So

also in the in the accompanying piece on winnowing, it said that

it’s shown that institutionalized racism, it really accelerates the process of winnowing, especially for

CBC members. Do you do you see the

the strategy, I guess, of these big omnibus packages, the big bill sponsored,

particularly on things like social policy? Is this a strategy that could backfire?

It potentially could. But you’re seeing increasingly the CBC

members kind of infiltrating the institution that has been historically

averse to increases of racial like racial gains in

terms of policy. So as members become more incorporated into the

institution, that it’s that in and of itself may provide opportunities for

these policies to make it through. So when you see, for example, a John years or a Charlie

Rangel as the chairman of these major committees, they’re wielding the gavel.

And you might be able to get it through those committees where prior in prior Congresses

you may not have. And then with the omnibus packaging that allows you to get to these

different these different venues, what that provides a better opportunity for you get

through the committee stage. So I want to move on, talk a little bit about your empirical findings and some

empirical analysis here. The first is that you so you are comparing for people haven’t read the paper

all bills in Congress against bills on a defined set of sub topics based

upon the ten, I believe task forces of the Congressional Black Caucus

maintains. Right. And then you’ve mapped the subjects of those task forces on to those sub topics.

Why? Why did you use this approach? Did you consider maybe using

also your approach based upon the bills sponsored by members of the Congressional Black Caucus? Or any other alternate approaches.

So are we looking specifically and on the winnowing paper or on I’m looking at the

at the other paper table one in the appendix. Well, you have the sense

of some type of cheese selected. Right. So in the crosscutting legislation, those are bills

that were sponsers specifically by Black Caucus members. And I look at it broadly

as in all bills that were sponsored by them as well as in those those policy

areas, those task force areas. And that they gave me that dataset of about fifteen

hundred a little bit more than fifteen hundred bills. So the reason why I

chose to do it that way is because they the Black Caucus publishes their

their agenda. And there are some very targeted policy areas, but

there are also some references to policy areas very broadly. And it

becomes a little bit complicated to directly tie

one specific piece of legislation to the policy areas

that they speak about broadly. Right. So what they talk about improving K-12 education, for example,

but not so I’m pretty well to the policies of topics provided by the Comparative Agendas Project.

But if they if they talk about civil rights broadly, they it it may or

may not, depending on which areas that they’re focusing on in their bill sponsorship. So what I did

was I delve into the actual bills that they respond through and looked at

what topics matched their written expressed agenda and

then it mapped out well to those policy sub topic areas.

So what you’re showing is that the behavior of these bills differs from behavior of other bills. I’m curious

if you could if you could kind of run down how what those differences are. So what what’s different about these issues

versus the other issues present before Congress? Right. So one thing that we notice when

when talking about black issues, they are perceived to be more contentious

than other issues that aren’t brought in front of Congress. But you also

do see a variety of different issues that the caucus identifies as part of their

their legislative agenda. And this might be signaling that the caucus itself is evolving.

And still a number of scholars have looked at how the evolution of the caucus

has taken place over the past 20 to 30 years. If you think about

Cannon’s work on the politics of difference or the politics of commonality and that’s been adopted

or adapted by Andra Gillespie or Catherine Tate or like they

they’ve they’ve come to the realization that the Black Caucus isn’t just concerned necessarily

about black issues, but still at their core, those core

issues that they’re looking for to improve the lives of the constituencies that they represent. So

they’re likely complex, too. They’re there. They are contentious. Oftentimes, if you look at voting rights,

there’s a lot of partisan contingencies around the Voting Rights Act.

Should we make it easier for black and brown people to vote or should voting processes

be as stringent as possible as a partisan battle or that there’s not a lot of middle

ground, too, when it comes to congressional activity? Also, if you look at things like

how to reduce poverty through through assistance, through food assistance to low income housing,

for example, these different tracks towards improving the lives of these

minority constituents are often those that are more

likely, as my first paper says, to be to not make it through a lot of the key check

points in the congressional process. Is it because that they’re more polarized issues or because

even Democrats don’t who aren’t in the CBC don’t attend to those issues as much as the CBC

members? I think it’s a combination of both. If you look at

Democratic actions over the past couple of decades, since the caucus has become

increasingly liberal after the polarization within the institution,

non minority Democrats are still relatively hesitant to tackle these

racialized policy issues. And at the end of the day, it’s not out of the

ordinary to expect for Black Caucus members to try to tackle these issues on their own. Now, there are

increasingly a number of liberal liberal lawmakers

who are taking on these issues that are being more vocal in taking on voting rights, for

example, as an issue, taking on small business or

advancing these communities in education and things like that. But at the end of the day,

these racialized policy areas are definitely more contentious and this is likely.

Not just a partisan thing. It’s not just a product of polarization. They’re just a different

beast altogether. And certain certain scholars have pointed to the

likelihood of a voter backlash as reasons why they are not necessarily

willing to tackle these issues. Your work

obviously references and seems to extend existing previous work that

indicates there may be electoral benefits to sort of cross-cutting policymaking

and broad on out of constituency meaning

district constituency policymaking and policy proposals by

black legislators, do you. So your work seems to

indicate there’s institutional benefits in addition to electoral benefits and sort of public

approval benefits. Can you just talk to sort of that dual benefit

pitch that that your work seems to make? Yeah, definitely. On the one

hand, probably at its core is that these lawmakers are are bound to their constituency.

They have an obligation to improve their situations, the legislation. But

at the same time, they have to they still have these motivations that

all lawmakers have the desire to,

you know, improve their positioning and gain power within within the legislation. The

desire to be able to take credit for accomplishing things. And if these omnibus

packages are a means to accomplish that, they

I forward that they they can accomplish both through packaging

legislation and in a way that their constituents are being served and they’re able to improve their position through

through coalition building, through credit, claiming in all of these things that matter to lawmakers.

In terms of the issues that you see Congressional Black Caucus members sponsoring.

Do you see more of sort of appropriations bills versus like a substantive

policy and then more broadly defined? How do you how do you look to define

black interests? One thing that I’m finding in not just just work, in other words, that

their agendas over the years are evolving. They are moving

towards more less contentious policy areas.

But it’s not as drastic as some would think. You would think that as we increase the number

of progressives in the caucus, for example, or the the mean median

age declines. Right. That there would be a generational or ideological

shift within a caucus. And you’re seeing that somewhat. But the old guard

still still has some some pull on the legislative agenda.

You also see them becoming more cohesive around those core policy

areas that people would suggest they are moving away from. You

do find that they’re still rather strong in their in their support and within the

group for some of those core policy issues that that people would think that

are contentious policy areas like criminal justice reform, like civil rights and voting rights.

And a lot of that might be because increasingly those policy areas are

becoming more under attack than they were in previous administrations.

But the substantive policy areas are essentially

still at the core of the caucus and their agenda. I like to move on to talk a little bit about the CBC as

an organization, generally kind of just outside the paper. Like to pick your brain and its we actually we got some great discussion

over dinner when we were preparing for the show about the CBC. We’re recording this in late November.

And so the Democrats are currently holding their leadership elections and the CBC is playing a very large role in that.

And and so when you listen to this in January, put yourself in that frame of mind.

My question, the first question is, is the CPC an intraparty organization

or rather, is it primarily an intra party organization or is it something different?

The I think they’re going through a phase where they’re realizing

their potential to be a legislator. A an agenda

shaping organization. A lot of the literature leading up to

one hundred and ten pounds, the 11th Congress painted them as a cohesive intra-party

unit. Write us a very reliable voting bloc that voted Liberal more

more likely than not and voted together. I think

after seeing the rise of the Freedom Caucus and other organizations that I’ve been

able to kind of mold the legislation or the out legislative

output of the House of Representatives particularly, they’re seeing that they can they can wield

more power. And I think that you’re seeing that with them leveraging certain policy

policies for leadership, for example, or trying to

accrue different committees, leadership space or sub subcommittee leadership spots.

We see where that came. Jeffrey’s winning the Democratic caucus chairmanship.

These are they’re occupying very pivotal roles within the

Democratic caucus. Will that translate into a huge shift in the

party agenda? Ross, it yet to be seen, but they’re situating themselves or

positioning themselves in a way that they can achieve those legislative goals as

much as the Freedom Caucus did during the Republican House majorities. Now,

are they going to take that same route where they use that voting bloc as leverage?

I’m not sure. I don’t know. Because this is this is a different

era of politics now than it was in one hundred and

thirty, for example, and almost different than it wasn’t a hundred TYP and a hundred eleven.

There’s not a lot of room for there’s not a lot of middle ground when it comes to policy.

So they may have to use it to get some policy wins, but to facilitate

the Democratic majority as well. When we think about caucuses, normally the

the typical caucus is fairly loosely crafted.

Even something like the Freedom Caucus doesn’t have a lot of full time staffers. It’s

exclusive to their caucus. But my impression is that the CBC is a whole different

type of organization that’s much better resource and organized than pretty much any other caucus to the point that

it’s it’s something different. It’s it’s bigger than any of those other. There’s other organizations.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. They do have a sophisticated infrastructure with those task forces and those working

groups that can supplement or even compete

against the existing committee structure. For example, they also have these external

non nonprofit institutes that conduct a lot of research to facilitate that information sharing

or the information gathering on specific policy areas where the normal committee structure might

fall short. I think a lot of this has come out of the reform era of the

Republican reign. A hundred and forth where they actually did away with the legislative service organizations. They just have

a really good paper by Andrew Clark. It came out not too long ago that talks about how

doing away with Lesotho’s decrease, the capacity of those

groups of those members to legislate. So I think as

time has passed, they become, well, more sophisticated in their organizational structure,

in their and their goals and their agenda. So to

facilitate a better and better achieving their legislative goals.

So with the new class of House members, particularly the progressives, how do you see the CBC

interacting with those folks and potentially forcing open a new window of opportunity

for these types of policies? So I honestly see it as an opportunity

for the young member of the new members, none of whom are young. The new

members to step in and. Potentially take the reins

from the old guard. You know, we we have MAXINE

Waters, Elijah Cummings, John Lewis, all these are right front and center when

it comes to the CBC actions, right. But the the new the new

cohort of members or are far more vocal in the early

stages of their careers than the old guard were in

the ninety third of 100 third whenever they first got here. So it’s it’ll be interesting to see how

they’re able to shape policies. And the first agenda that they put out

potentially in January will reflect, I believe,

that evolution in the membership. I feel like you might actually get more progressive

policies out of there and maybe even provide a more of an increasing opportunity

for them to bridge that gap between the Democratic caucus and the CBC as a whole, or

with whatever moderate Republicans still exist within the House and

maybe some of those fringe CBC policies or secondary policy here is.

So with this anticipated potential greater effectiveness and sort of

power realization, do you think there will be a continued sort

of strategy of this month, multi-dimensional policymaking, or do you think it’ll

be sort of more uni dimensional as that sort of strategic

honing or power honing occurs?

That’s an interesting question. I think it all depends on

the actions on the from the broader Democratic caucus and in their dealings with

Nancy Pelosi. I mean, try to reclaim some of that rank and file power.

I’m not 100 percent certain that the leadership is just going to be willing to give up

the influence over the agenda, over the broader agenda. But I

do see it as a tactic. I don’t see them going back to pre-reform unilateral

bill scar ship or uni dimensional bill sponsorship.

They saw that it worked in a hundred and two hundred and eleven, even even at a small

scale. They saw that there was an improvement in their positioning when it comes to

the success of their bills at the committee stage on a floor level. So if they just take that at

face value, I don’t see any reason for them to go back to the old their old ways.

These bills might actually look different moving forward. But

I’m not 100 percent certain that they would move away from it, especially now concede

that they don’t have to sell the Senate. They don’t have a friendly

president in the Oval Office. So they might move towards let’s

put out these omnibus bills and let them shoot it down and then we can use that on the campaign trail, for example, you know

that I can see that sort of tactic. So last last real question

in this election, a large number of the new

new black freshman class aren’t representing non majority

minority districts. In fact, some of them represent quite, quite white districts. How will this change

the CBC? I think that’s part of the evolution of the

caucus that’s been taking place over the past 20 years. These districts are

changing rather than gentrification or through draw redrawing

district lines. These districts don’t look the same. They’re just mobility

of people moving into new areas. These districts don’t look the same that they did in

the 80s and 90s. So this is part of the reason why you’re seeing these progressive politics

or these these non racialized policy pursuits.

And Andra Gillespie has a great book on Cory Booker that talks about how

these policies are changing. You’re seeing these policies actually

take the shape of more compromising or less contentious policy proposals

coming out of the Black Caucus. And I think that you’ll see an increase of that. But that also provides an opportunity

for them to actually build on these omnibus packages by saying, hey, let’s also

take care of all of these things that matter to everybody and that might actually increase the likelihood of them garner

support from those white liberal members of Congress. This is this has

been great. Are you presenting a this work at these Southern Political Science Association conference, which will occur about a week after

this episode goes up? Yeah. Actually, I will be presenting the crosscutting legislation paper

on Friday. I believe that Southern. So I look forward to anybody that would like to attend and choose

some questions if you have any. All right. And last but not least, we always ask our guests or aren’t your

eyes our third gas? We are asking our guests for a reading recommendation. So what? What piece

of work that you’ve read recently, a recent piece of political science. Do you think we should go out and read

it since we’re talking about the Congressional Black Caucus? Concordance by Catherine Tate

is a 2014 piece that that I’ve taken a look at over the

past couple of months. And that actually shows that evolution of the caucus

playing out from the Reagan era to now basically,

and how the membership has changed, how their goals have changed, so on and so forth.

So I see it with another Andra Gillespie book that I read was was really fascinating because that also shows at

an individual level how these motivations are different than previous

black lawmakers that might have been raised in the civil rights era, for example, like a John Lewis or somebody like

that, or MAXINE Waters, for example. So those are a couple of books that I would,

if you want to look at where the Black Caucus or black lawmakers are now. I would definitely

take a look at that. Peter, thank you for joining us. It’s been great. Everybody, thank you for listening. We’ll be back

next week with an interview to be announced. I appreciate it, guys.