{"id":18,"date":"2019-01-08T00:01:03","date_gmt":"2019-01-08T00:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/thepolicyagenda\/?post_type=podcast&p=18"},"modified":"2020-11-16T19:45:57","modified_gmt":"2020-11-16T19:45:57","slug":"episode-3-the-congressional-black-caucus-with-periloux-peay","status":"publish","type":"podcast","link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/thepolicyagenda\/podcast\/episode-3-the-congressional-black-caucus-with-periloux-peay\/","title":{"rendered":"Episode 3: The Congressional Black Caucus with Periloux Peay"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We talk with Periloux Peay on multiple referrals, the representation of minority interests, and the Congressional Black Caucus. 
Peay<\/a> is a graduate student at the University of Oklahoma. The working papers that we discuss are found here:
Cross-Cutting Legislation and The Impact of Committee Reform on the Pursuit of Black Interests in the House of Representatives <\/a>

Un-Equal Opportunity Lawmaking?: Agenda Denial and The Disproportionate Filtering of Minority Issues in the House of Representatives<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We talk with Periloux Peay on multiple referrals, the representation of minority interests, and the Congressional Black Caucus.  Peay is a graduate student at the University of Oklahoma. The working papers that we discuss are found here: Cross-Cutting Legislation and The Impact of Committee Reform on the Pursuit of Black Interests in the House of […]","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/thepolicyagenda\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2019\/01\/Policy-Agendas-Podcast-Ep-3.mp3","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"40.56M","filesize_raw":"42529088","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":""},"tags":[18,23,19,22,20,21,17,16,15],"categories":[],"series":[2],"class_list":{"0":"post-18","1":"podcast","2":"type-podcast","3":"status-publish","5":"tag-black-caucus","6":"tag-committee","7":"tag-congress","8":"tag-legislation","9":"tag-minority","10":"tag-oklahoma","11":"tag-peay","12":"tag-periloux-peay","13":"tag-preiloux","14":"series-the-policy-agenda","15":"entry"},"acf":{"related_episodes":"","hosts":[{"ID":613,"post_author":"38","post_date":"2020-07-01 18:02:41","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-01 18:02:41","post_content":"\n

Fagan is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He studies political parties, Congress, think tanks, agenda setting, lobbying, and economic policy. In particular, he is interested in how legislatures process information and solve problems, and how party elites influence policy. He is also a graduate research fellow and former project manager with the Policy Agendas Project<\/a>. He produces and co-hosts the Policy Agendas Podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before graduate school, Fagan worked for five years in Washington, DC. From 2011-2014, he was Deputy Communications Director for Global Financial Integrity<\/a> (GFI), a research and advocacy organization based in Washington, DC. GFI works to study and curtail illicit financial flows from developing countries. <\/p>\n","post_title":"E. J. Fagan","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"e-j-fagan","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-10-23 16:53:07","post_modified_gmt":"2020-10-23 16:53:07","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/thepolicyagenda\/?post_type=speaker&p=613","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":638,"post_author":"38","post_date":"2020-10-27 15:48:58","post_date_gmt":"2020-10-27 15:48:58","post_content":"\n

Ph.D. candidate and teaching assistant in the department of government at the University of Texas at Austin who specializes in research on local and urban policy, agendas, and Latinx politics.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Brooke Shannon","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"brooke-shannon","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-10-27 15:48:59","post_modified_gmt":"2020-10-27 15:48:59","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/thepolicyagenda\/?post_type=speaker&p=638","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":645,"post_author":"38","post_date":"2020-10-27 15:57:47","post_date_gmt":"2020-10-27 15:57:47","post_content":"\n

Abe Barranca is a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin's Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice and a Survey Statistician and Federal Statistical Research Data Center Administrator at the U.S. Census Bureau. Before joining the doctoral program, he worked in the D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development's Inclusionary Zoning program. Before that, he was a Policy Associate for The Committee for Hispanic Children and Families in New York City.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Abe Barranca","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"abe-barranca","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-10-27 15:57:49","post_modified_gmt":"2020-10-27 15:57:49","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/thepolicyagenda\/?post_type=speaker&p=645","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"guests":[{"ID":568,"post_author":"38","post_date":"2020-06-30 19:19:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-06-30 19:19:04","post_content":"\n

Peay is currently an Assistant Professor in the department of Political Science at Georgia State University. His scholarly interest center on questions of the influence of racial identity and the representation of group-specific policy interests in political institutions. Through an emphasis on agenda-setting and elite political behavior, he examine how those from under-represented communities employ collective strategies to shape political processes and outcomes from within \u2013 and even outside \u2013 key political institutions in America. I received my Ph.D. from The University of Oklahoma in 2020.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Periloux Peay","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"periloux-peay","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-10-27 15:59:00","post_modified_gmt":"2020-10-27 15:59:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/thepolicyagenda\/?post_type=speaker&p=568","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"transcript":"

Hello. Welcome to the third episode of the Policy Agendas podcast. I’m your host, the project<\/p>\n

manager of the Policy Agendas Project, E.J. Fagan. Today, I am joined by the<\/p>\n

local government expert, the person who has been to more city council meetings than Leslie Knope. Brooke Shannon.<\/p>\n

Yeah, that’s me. Hi, everybody. And I’m also joined by a rare person<\/p>\n

with a policy genius project states, not just public law, but also comparative politics, a barranca.<\/p>\n

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

of Oklahoma. We talked about his working paper, crosscutting legislation and the impact of committee reform<\/p>\n

on the pursuit of black interests in the House of Representatives. So, Brooke, tell us what’s on the agenda<\/p>\n

for this paper. He described this as working paper. Yes. So this paper and Piers, research agenda<\/p>\n

at large is really about sort of the effects of committees, multiple referrals<\/p>\n

of policy and policy packages, things like omnibus bills from the Congressional<\/p>\n

Black Caucus in particular. And he really looks at that effect on cross-cutting legislation and<\/p>\n

the overall strategy of the CBC of the last 20 years or so. It’s a great paper. All right.<\/p>\n

But what of this discussion really stuck out to you? Like what did you learn from the great call we just had? So<\/p>\n

what it really added to my understanding of the CBC was how its<\/p>\n

strategies have developed under different Congresses in the past and how going forward<\/p>\n

they may hone their position within the Democratic Party as a mover on policy<\/p>\n

agendas and multi-dimensional policymaking is a big aspect of that. Yeah. So the episode<\/p>\n

will follow, will go into it in a second. But first I want to say that this is our third episode. If<\/p>\n

you’re listening to this podcast, hopefully you enjoy what we do. If you do, please tell other people about it. Please share this<\/p>\n

on Twitter, on Facebook. Tell your colleagues, tell your friends, send it out to your e-mail lists. Do whatever<\/p>\n

you can to help us promote this podcast because we’re really proud of it. We’re going to keep doing it at least through this semester. And if<\/p>\n

we get a good reaction, we’ll keep doing it into perpetuity. Also, if you have any feedback for us or any guests that you<\/p>\n

think that we should interview, please email us at policy agendas at G-mail dot com. And with that,<\/p>\n

here’s our interview with parrello p-a. We are now joined by parrello p-a. He’s a graduate<\/p>\n

student, the University of Oklahoma. We’re going to be discussing his paper, Crosscutting Legislation<\/p>\n

and the impact of committee reform on the pursuit of black interests in the House of Representatives. P.A.,<\/p>\n

welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me, guys. Yeah. This is this is a fun paper.<\/p>\n

It’s the first paper. We’ve done this in our third episode that really deals directly with the data<\/p>\n

that we produce, the policy agendas, projects where we’re very excited. I was a little fist pump when I when I hear<\/p>\n

about people using our data such like you to begin just key. Can you summarize the argument of the paper and<\/p>\n

what you find? Yeah. So I originally looked at the<\/p>\n

crosscutting legislation that I define as legislation that gets referred to multiple committees<\/p>\n

as a driving question in my research. And it was inspired<\/p>\n

by the Jobs and Justice Act that was proposed. This May or this<\/p>\n

passed me by the Congressional Black Caucus and it got me thinking what<\/p>\n

happens when the CBC gets into the omnibus game or the mini bus game<\/p>\n

and doesn’t increase their chances of achieving their legislative goals? So what?<\/p>\n

What I found was when they do sponsor legislation that gets referred to multiple committees,<\/p>\n

they have a much better chance of clearing the committee stage and the<\/p>\n

vote on the House floor. So it does significantly increase the probability of that occurring. So<\/p>\n

very briefly, that’s pretty much what I found. But then I drove a little bit deeper and I saw<\/p>\n

that as far as the institution evolved over time, you start to see things<\/p>\n

that weren’t significant that were in later Democratic majority. So prior<\/p>\n

to the Contra Act reform the Republican Congress and a hundred for<\/p>\n

there was no significant impact on sponsoring multiple legislation and<\/p>\n

multiple referrals or legislation that received multiple referrals. But in the<\/p>\n

\u00a3110 hundred eleven, you did see those significant findings, though, that I found it to be kind of interesting. So<\/p>\n

I wanted to dove a little bit deeper into why that would actually take place. Can you explain to<\/p>\n

our listeners what multiple referral is for a bill in the House or Senate? Yeah, definitely.<\/p>\n

So a bill once once sponsored gets categorized through different procedures<\/p>\n

and sent out to different committees that would have jurisdiction over that particular legislation<\/p>\n

prior to the hundred board. There was the possibility that a bill could be jointly<\/p>\n

referred so to committees would have equal jurisdiction over<\/p>\n

a specific bill or in the contract with the American people.<\/p>\n

The Gingrich reforms, they did away with the joint referrals and went to more sequential referrals<\/p>\n

where one committee would get priority. But if there were elements of the bill that<\/p>\n

were in the jurisdiction of other committees, they would get referrals to address those specific areas.<\/p>\n

They’ve had several different alterations to that from a hundred and forth to the hundred and ten. But<\/p>\n

generally the process is now is that think they can refer a bill to multiple committees<\/p>\n

based on the elements or the issues that are tackled in a particular bill. So the omnibus bill<\/p>\n

could cover six to seven or more different committees if you package<\/p>\n

it that way. And why might a cross-cutting piece of legislation have?<\/p>\n

What would you explain your theory of why these it will be more successful bills both in getting out of committee<\/p>\n

and on the floor? Yeah, well, it starts at the very core that the more eyes that<\/p>\n

you get on a bill, you’re able to garner more attention<\/p>\n

or more interest. You been able to get more diverse perspectives into the bill.<\/p>\n

That’s Barbara. Claire mentioned this in the latest version of unorthodox lawmaking.<\/p>\n

She says when there’s when a bill is considered by a number of committees, multiple perspectives are brought to bear<\/p>\n

on complex problems. And in the things that I study, the black<\/p>\n

issues are about as complex as they can get for a number of reasons. But<\/p>\n

that allows you to say build coalitions around these bills to try<\/p>\n

to bring in or break down different barriers that might exist in trying to get your legislation<\/p>\n

passed the committee stage on the House floor. So it’s all rooted in<\/p>\n

increasing attention, broadening the scope of conflict,<\/p>\n

for example, for rooted in Schneider’s work and Johns and Baumgartner’s<\/p>\n

work. All of that comes into play whenever you’re sponsoring bills that can receive multiple<\/p>\n

referrals and lesbian. All these before we get to specific questions. Can you explain just the empirical strategy you use?<\/p>\n

So what data are you bringing to bear and what are the big dependent independent variables you’re using? Right. So<\/p>\n

I take Bill sponsored by Congressional Black Caucus members<\/p>\n

and the hundred and third to 112 Congress comes up to about four<\/p>\n

thousand three hundred twenty six bills and about fifteen hundred of those<\/p>\n

I identify as bills that are sponsored in targeted policy areas.<\/p>\n

And I don’t identify those through looking at the expressed CBC agenda<\/p>\n

that they publish annually on their website and in the Congressional<\/p>\n

Record. And my Dipendra variables in this case are the dichotomous indicators<\/p>\n

that a bill can receive a report out of committee or has passed a roll-call vote and or<\/p>\n

and or the independent variable that I look at or dichotomous<\/p>\n

indicated that a bill has received multiple referrals and one that has<\/p>\n

an additive measure of the number or the count of committees that a bill is<\/p>\n

referred to. And it happens that the Comparative Agendas Project<\/p>\n

Dataset facilitates that rather well. So getting back to the idea of<\/p>\n

multiple referrals and that process in Congress and<\/p>\n

its effect on cross-cutting legislation, I’m wondering if this is a unique<\/p>\n

strategy in general. Can you talk a little bit about the uniqueness of crosscutting<\/p>\n

as a strategy and whether or not that is more like specific to the Congressional Black<\/p>\n

Caucus or if other groups in Congress abide by the same strategy?<\/p>\n

I’m not 100 percent sure if it’s unique to the CBC. I do propose that<\/p>\n

it is part of a strategy that is employed by the CBC as a<\/p>\n

way to kind of cut through barriers and there are other things that they do. And this is part of what motivated<\/p>\n

the the study itself. It’s trying to lift the hood<\/p>\n

on some of the activities that the Black Caucus as an organization does.<\/p>\n

And I think as research moves on, we’re finding that these organizations are rather<\/p>\n

sophisticated in what what they’re trying to do it. It doesn’t appear that they<\/p>\n

were rather successful in that. When you compare them to the House average, the proportion<\/p>\n

of bills that they sponsored that were referred to multiple committees was lagging behind<\/p>\n

all the way up to the 100th and ninth Congress. But then you see a huge surge in the number of<\/p>\n

bills or the proportion of bills that they’re able to sponsor that are getting to multiple committees<\/p>\n

and honored to be rather interesting. So that might signal a shift in tactics. It<\/p>\n

might signal just a different approach to lawmaking as the omnibus<\/p>\n

packages become more and more likely to cut through some of these barriers or<\/p>\n

more likely to garner attention. I’m seeing that increase as them changing their<\/p>\n

approach to how they’re going to package these bills moving forward. Do you take this as an indication that more.<\/p>\n

Multi-dimensional policy is more out of CBC appeal within Congress as a whole than unit dimensional<\/p>\n

policy. I would I would believe so. And the work of blank roots shows<\/p>\n

that people are willing to jump on board of multidimensional<\/p>\n

policies if there if it appeals to their particular policy interests. So<\/p>\n

like I say, this is the opportunity for them to build coalitions around these issues or break through some of the structure or<\/p>\n

interpersonal barriers that exist in lawmaking and to look<\/p>\n

for the lack of a better word. Make these policies a little bit more palatable to<\/p>\n

their colleagues in the Democratic caucus or to the institution as a whole in terms of the barriers.<\/p>\n

And you touch on these sort of theoretically more robustly in the winnowing paper<\/p>\n

that this sort of set to drop deep. So we’ll have both papers for everybody in the in the description of this<\/p>\n

podcast. We’re talking about one of the working papers, but he actually has a second working paper<\/p>\n

that’s closely related to this one that will also have in there on the winnowing of bills.<\/p>\n

So one of one of the factors in your welcome to speak to any of the six that you you sort<\/p>\n

of outlined was about education of the Congress being facilitated<\/p>\n

by other branches of government. So the executive and bureaucratic initiative<\/p>\n

taking when it comes to minority focused issues or interests<\/p>\n

that would indicate the CBC was one of the few to speak to that a little more because there seemed<\/p>\n

to be a lot of sort of theoretical robustness in that area. Yeah, I mean,<\/p>\n

one thing that we found over the past year was specifically dealing with issues like voting rights or criminal justice is<\/p>\n

that in previous administrations they allowed<\/p>\n

the judiciary or the executive branch, the agencies, particularly the DOJ,<\/p>\n

to take the lead in being the enforcers or the the<\/p>\n

litigators of black issues. The<\/p>\n

Department of Justice or the civil rights branch of the Department of Justice, for example, they were front<\/p>\n

and center in challenging voting rights. And even as the Shelby decision<\/p>\n

became clear that that was going to be the downfall or<\/p>\n

of a huge portion of the Voting Rights Act. The DOJ was still front and center.<\/p>\n

Now, that’s that’s slightly changed in the past two years. So<\/p>\n

that might also increase congressional responsiveness to voting rights. And we’ll see<\/p>\n

where that goes with the new House majority. But we often wait<\/p>\n

or Congress often waits for the judiciary branch or for<\/p>\n

these different agencies to take the lead or even abdicating their responsibility altogether<\/p>\n

and trying to come up with policy solutions for these different problems<\/p>\n

that they have. And it adds to the complexity of these issues. Yeah. So<\/p>\n

also in the in the accompanying piece on winnowing, it said that<\/p>\n

it’s shown that institutionalized racism, it really accelerates the process of winnowing, especially for<\/p>\n

CBC members. Do you do you see the<\/p>\n

the strategy, I guess, of these big omnibus packages, the big bill sponsored,<\/p>\n

particularly on things like social policy? Is this a strategy that could backfire?<\/p>\n

It potentially could. But you’re seeing increasingly the CBC<\/p>\n

members kind of infiltrating the institution that has been historically<\/p>\n

averse to increases of racial like racial gains in<\/p>\n

terms of policy. So as members become more incorporated into the<\/p>\n

institution, that it’s that in and of itself may provide opportunities for<\/p>\n

these policies to make it through. So when you see, for example, a John years or a Charlie<\/p>\n

Rangel as the chairman of these major committees, they’re wielding the gavel.<\/p>\n

And you might be able to get it through those committees where prior in prior Congresses<\/p>\n

you may not have. And then with the omnibus packaging that allows you to get to these<\/p>\n

different these different venues, what that provides a better opportunity for you get<\/p>\n

through the committee stage. So I want to move on, talk a little bit about your empirical findings and some<\/p>\n

empirical analysis here. The first is that you so you are comparing for people haven’t read the paper<\/p>\n

all bills in Congress against bills on a defined set of sub topics based<\/p>\n

upon the ten, I believe task forces of the Congressional Black Caucus<\/p>\n

maintains. Right. And then you’ve mapped the subjects of those task forces on to those sub topics.<\/p>\n

Why? Why did you use this approach? Did you consider maybe using<\/p>\n

also your approach based upon the bills sponsored by members of the Congressional Black Caucus? Or any other alternate approaches.<\/p>\n

So are we looking specifically and on the winnowing paper or on I’m looking at the<\/p>\n

at the other paper table one in the appendix. Well, you have the sense<\/p>\n

of some type of cheese selected. Right. So in the crosscutting legislation, those are bills<\/p>\n

that were sponsers specifically by Black Caucus members. And I look at it broadly<\/p>\n

as in all bills that were sponsored by them as well as in those those policy<\/p>\n

areas, those task force areas. And that they gave me that dataset of about fifteen<\/p>\n

hundred a little bit more than fifteen hundred bills. So the reason why I<\/p>\n

chose to do it that way is because they the Black Caucus publishes their<\/p>\n

their agenda. And there are some very targeted policy areas, but<\/p>\n

there are also some references to policy areas very broadly. And it<\/p>\n

becomes a little bit complicated to directly tie<\/p>\n

one specific piece of legislation to the policy areas<\/p>\n

that they speak about broadly. Right. So what they talk about improving K-12 education, for example,<\/p>\n

but not so I’m pretty well to the policies of topics provided by the Comparative Agendas Project.<\/p>\n

But if they if they talk about civil rights broadly, they it it may or<\/p>\n

may not, depending on which areas that they’re focusing on in their bill sponsorship. So what I did<\/p>\n

was I delve into the actual bills that they respond through and looked at<\/p>\n

what topics matched their written expressed agenda and<\/p>\n

then it mapped out well to those policy sub topic areas.<\/p>\n

So what you’re showing is that the behavior of these bills differs from behavior of other bills. I’m curious<\/p>\n

if you could if you could kind of run down how what those differences are. So what what’s different about these issues<\/p>\n

versus the other issues present before Congress? Right. So one thing that we notice when<\/p>\n

when talking about black issues, they are perceived to be more contentious<\/p>\n

than other issues that aren’t brought in front of Congress. But you also<\/p>\n

do see a variety of different issues that the caucus identifies as part of their<\/p>\n

their legislative agenda. And this might be signaling that the caucus itself is evolving.<\/p>\n

And still a number of scholars have looked at how the evolution of the caucus<\/p>\n

has taken place over the past 20 to 30 years. If you think about<\/p>\n

Cannon’s work on the politics of difference or the politics of commonality and that’s been adopted<\/p>\n

or adapted by Andra Gillespie or Catherine Tate or like they<\/p>\n

they’ve they’ve come to the realization that the Black Caucus isn’t just concerned necessarily<\/p>\n

about black issues, but still at their core, those core<\/p>\n

issues that they’re looking for to improve the lives of the constituencies that they represent. So<\/p>\n

they’re likely complex, too. They’re there. They are contentious. Oftentimes, if you look at voting rights,<\/p>\n

there’s a lot of partisan contingencies around the Voting Rights Act.<\/p>\n

Should we make it easier for black and brown people to vote or should voting processes<\/p>\n

be as stringent as possible as a partisan battle or that there’s not a lot of middle<\/p>\n

ground, too, when it comes to congressional activity? Also, if you look at things like<\/p>\n

how to reduce poverty through through assistance, through food assistance to low income housing,<\/p>\n

for example, these different tracks towards improving the lives of these<\/p>\n

minority constituents are often those that are more<\/p>\n

likely, as my first paper says, to be to not make it through a lot of the key check<\/p>\n

points in the congressional process. Is it because that they’re more polarized issues or because<\/p>\n

even Democrats don’t who aren’t in the CBC don’t attend to those issues as much as the CBC<\/p>\n

members? I think it’s a combination of both. If you look at<\/p>\n

Democratic actions over the past couple of decades, since the caucus has become<\/p>\n

increasingly liberal after the polarization within the institution,<\/p>\n

non minority Democrats are still relatively hesitant to tackle these<\/p>\n

racialized policy issues. And at the end of the day, it’s not out of the<\/p>\n

ordinary to expect for Black Caucus members to try to tackle these issues on their own. Now, there are<\/p>\n

increasingly a number of liberal liberal lawmakers<\/p>\n

who are taking on these issues that are being more vocal in taking on voting rights, for<\/p>\n

example, as an issue, taking on small business or<\/p>\n

advancing these communities in education and things like that. But at the end of the day,<\/p>\n

these racialized policy areas are definitely more contentious and this is likely.<\/p>\n

Not just a partisan thing. It’s not just a product of polarization. They’re just a different<\/p>\n

beast altogether. And certain certain scholars have pointed to the<\/p>\n

likelihood of a voter backlash as reasons why they are not necessarily<\/p>\n

willing to tackle these issues. Your work<\/p>\n

obviously references and seems to extend existing previous work that<\/p>\n

indicates there may be electoral benefits to sort of cross-cutting policymaking<\/p>\n

and broad on out of constituency meaning<\/p>\n

district constituency policymaking and policy proposals by<\/p>\n

black legislators, do you. So your work seems to<\/p>\n

indicate there’s institutional benefits in addition to electoral benefits and sort of public<\/p>\n

approval benefits. Can you just talk to sort of that dual benefit<\/p>\n

pitch that that your work seems to make? Yeah, definitely. On the one<\/p>\n

hand, probably at its core is that these lawmakers are are bound to their constituency.<\/p>\n

They have an obligation to improve their situations, the legislation. But<\/p>\n

at the same time, they have to they still have these motivations that<\/p>\n

all lawmakers have the desire to,<\/p>\n

you know, improve their positioning and gain power within within the legislation. The<\/p>\n

desire to be able to take credit for accomplishing things. And if these omnibus<\/p>\n

packages are a means to accomplish that, they<\/p>\n

I forward that they they can accomplish both through packaging<\/p>\n

legislation and in a way that their constituents are being served and they’re able to improve their position through<\/p>\n

through coalition building, through credit, claiming in all of these things that matter to lawmakers.<\/p>\n

In terms of the issues that you see Congressional Black Caucus members sponsoring.<\/p>\n

Do you see more of sort of appropriations bills versus like a substantive<\/p>\n

policy and then more broadly defined? How do you how do you look to define<\/p>\n

black interests? One thing that I’m finding in not just just work, in other words, that<\/p>\n

their agendas over the years are evolving. They are moving<\/p>\n

towards more less contentious policy areas.<\/p>\n

But it’s not as drastic as some would think. You would think that as we increase the number<\/p>\n

of progressives in the caucus, for example, or the the mean median<\/p>\n

age declines. Right. That there would be a generational or ideological<\/p>\n

shift within a caucus. And you’re seeing that somewhat. But the old guard<\/p>\n

still still has some some pull on the legislative agenda.<\/p>\n

You also see them becoming more cohesive around those core policy<\/p>\n

areas that people would suggest they are moving away from. You<\/p>\n

do find that they’re still rather strong in their in their support and within the<\/p>\n

group for some of those core policy issues that that people would think that<\/p>\n

are contentious policy areas like criminal justice reform, like civil rights and voting rights.<\/p>\n

And a lot of that might be because increasingly those policy areas are<\/p>\n

becoming more under attack than they were in previous administrations.<\/p>\n

But the substantive policy areas are essentially<\/p>\n

still at the core of the caucus and their agenda. I like to move on to talk a little bit about the CBC as<\/p>\n

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

over dinner when we were preparing for the show about the CBC. We’re recording this in late November.<\/p>\n

And so the Democrats are currently holding their leadership elections and the CBC is playing a very large role in that.<\/p>\n

And and so when you listen to this in January, put yourself in that frame of mind.<\/p>\n

My question, the first question is, is the CPC an intraparty organization<\/p>\n

or rather, is it primarily an intra party organization or is it something different?<\/p>\n

The I think they’re going through a phase where they’re realizing<\/p>\n

their potential to be a legislator. A an agenda<\/p>\n

shaping organization. A lot of the literature leading up to<\/p>\n

one hundred and ten pounds, the 11th Congress painted them as a cohesive intra-party<\/p>\n

unit. Write us a very reliable voting bloc that voted Liberal more<\/p>\n

more likely than not and voted together. I think<\/p>\n

after seeing the rise of the Freedom Caucus and other organizations that I’ve been<\/p>\n

able to kind of mold the legislation or the out legislative<\/p>\n

output of the House of Representatives particularly, they’re seeing that they can they can wield<\/p>\n

more power. And I think that you’re seeing that with them leveraging certain policy<\/p>\n

policies for leadership, for example, or trying to<\/p>\n

accrue different committees, leadership space or sub subcommittee leadership spots.<\/p>\n

We see where that came. Jeffrey’s winning the Democratic caucus chairmanship.<\/p>\n

These are they’re occupying very pivotal roles within the<\/p>\n

Democratic caucus. Will that translate into a huge shift in the<\/p>\n

party agenda? Ross, it yet to be seen, but they’re situating themselves or<\/p>\n

positioning themselves in a way that they can achieve those legislative goals as<\/p>\n

much as the Freedom Caucus did during the Republican House majorities. Now,<\/p>\n

are they going to take that same route where they use that voting bloc as leverage?<\/p>\n

I’m not sure. I don’t know. Because this is this is a different<\/p>\n

era of politics now than it was in one hundred and<\/p>\n

thirty, for example, and almost different than it wasn’t a hundred TYP and a hundred eleven.<\/p>\n

There’s not a lot of room for there’s not a lot of middle ground when it comes to policy.<\/p>\n

So they may have to use it to get some policy wins, but to facilitate<\/p>\n

the Democratic majority as well. When we think about caucuses, normally the<\/p>\n

the typical caucus is fairly loosely crafted.<\/p>\n

Even something like the Freedom Caucus doesn’t have a lot of full time staffers. It’s<\/p>\n

exclusive to their caucus. But my impression is that the CBC is a whole different<\/p>\n

type of organization that’s much better resource and organized than pretty much any other caucus to the point that<\/p>\n

it’s it’s something different. It’s it’s bigger than any of those other. There’s other organizations.<\/p>\n

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. They do have a sophisticated infrastructure with those task forces and those working<\/p>\n

groups that can supplement or even compete<\/p>\n

against the existing committee structure. For example, they also have these external<\/p>\n

non nonprofit institutes that conduct a lot of research to facilitate that information sharing<\/p>\n

or the information gathering on specific policy areas where the normal committee structure might<\/p>\n

fall short. I think a lot of this has come out of the reform era of the<\/p>\n

Republican reign. A hundred and forth where they actually did away with the legislative service organizations. They just have<\/p>\n

a really good paper by Andrew Clark. It came out not too long ago that talks about how<\/p>\n

doing away with Lesotho’s decrease, the capacity of those<\/p>\n

groups of those members to legislate. So I think as<\/p>\n

time has passed, they become, well, more sophisticated in their organizational structure,<\/p>\n

in their and their goals and their agenda. So to<\/p>\n

facilitate a better and better achieving their legislative goals.<\/p>\n

So with the new class of House members, particularly the progressives, how do you see the CBC<\/p>\n

interacting with those folks and potentially forcing open a new window of opportunity<\/p>\n

for these types of policies? So I honestly see it as an opportunity<\/p>\n

for the young member of the new members, none of whom are young. The new<\/p>\n

members to step in and. Potentially take the reins<\/p>\n

from the old guard. You know, we we have MAXINE<\/p>\n

Waters, Elijah Cummings, John Lewis, all these are right front and center when<\/p>\n

it comes to the CBC actions, right. But the the new the new<\/p>\n

cohort of members or are far more vocal in the early<\/p>\n

stages of their careers than the old guard were in<\/p>\n

the ninety third of 100 third whenever they first got here. So it’s it’ll be interesting to see how<\/p>\n

they’re able to shape policies. And the first agenda that they put out<\/p>\n

potentially in January will reflect, I believe,<\/p>\n

that evolution in the membership. I feel like you might actually get more progressive<\/p>\n

policies out of there and maybe even provide a more of an increasing opportunity<\/p>\n

for them to bridge that gap between the Democratic caucus and the CBC as a whole, or<\/p>\n

with whatever moderate Republicans still exist within the House and<\/p>\n

maybe some of those fringe CBC policies or secondary policy here is.<\/p>\n

So with this anticipated potential greater effectiveness and sort of<\/p>\n

power realization, do you think there will be a continued sort<\/p>\n

of strategy of this month, multi-dimensional policymaking, or do you think it’ll<\/p>\n

be sort of more uni dimensional as that sort of strategic<\/p>\n

honing or power honing occurs?<\/p>\n

That’s an interesting question. I think it all depends on<\/p>\n

the actions on the from the broader Democratic caucus and in their dealings with<\/p>\n

Nancy Pelosi. I mean, try to reclaim some of that rank and file power.<\/p>\n

I’m not 100 percent certain that the leadership is just going to be willing to give up<\/p>\n

the influence over the agenda, over the broader agenda. But I<\/p>\n

do see it as a tactic. I don’t see them going back to pre-reform unilateral<\/p>\n

bill scar ship or uni dimensional bill sponsorship.<\/p>\n

They saw that it worked in a hundred and two hundred and eleven, even even at a small<\/p>\n

scale. They saw that there was an improvement in their positioning when it comes to<\/p>\n

the success of their bills at the committee stage on a floor level. So if they just take that at<\/p>\n

face value, I don’t see any reason for them to go back to the old their old ways.<\/p>\n

These bills might actually look different moving forward. But<\/p>\n

I’m not 100 percent certain that they would move away from it, especially now concede<\/p>\n

that they don’t have to sell the Senate. They don’t have a friendly<\/p>\n

president in the Oval Office. So they might move towards let’s<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

that I can see that sort of tactic. So last last real question<\/p>\n

in this election, a large number of the new<\/p>\n

new black freshman class aren’t representing non majority<\/p>\n

minority districts. In fact, some of them represent quite, quite white districts. How will this change<\/p>\n

the CBC? I think that’s part of the evolution of the<\/p>\n

caucus that’s been taking place over the past 20 years. These districts are<\/p>\n

changing rather than gentrification or through draw redrawing<\/p>\n

district lines. These districts don’t look the same. They’re just mobility<\/p>\n

of people moving into new areas. These districts don’t look the same that they did in<\/p>\n

the 80s and 90s. So this is part of the reason why you’re seeing these progressive politics<\/p>\n

or these these non racialized policy pursuits.<\/p>\n

And Andra Gillespie has a great book on Cory Booker that talks about how<\/p>\n

these policies are changing. You’re seeing these policies actually<\/p>\n

take the shape of more compromising or less contentious policy proposals<\/p>\n

coming out of the Black Caucus. And I think that you’ll see an increase of that. But that also provides an opportunity<\/p>\n

for them to actually build on these omnibus packages by saying, hey, let’s also<\/p>\n

take care of all of these things that matter to everybody and that might actually increase the likelihood of them garner<\/p>\n

support from those white liberal members of Congress. This is this has<\/p>\n

been great. Are you presenting a this work at these Southern Political Science Association conference, which will occur about a week after<\/p>\n

this episode goes up? Yeah. Actually, I will be presenting the crosscutting legislation paper<\/p>\n

on Friday. I believe that Southern. So I look forward to anybody that would like to attend and choose<\/p>\n

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

eyes our third gas? We are asking our guests for a reading recommendation. So what? What piece<\/p>\n

of work that you’ve read recently, a recent piece of political science. Do you think we should go out and read<\/p>\n

it since we’re talking about the Congressional Black Caucus? Concordance by Catherine Tate<\/p>\n

is a 2014 piece that that I’ve taken a look at over the<\/p>\n

past couple of months. And that actually shows that evolution of the caucus<\/p>\n

playing out from the Reagan era to now basically,<\/p>\n

and how the membership has changed, how their goals have changed, so on and so forth.<\/p>\n

So I see it with another Andra Gillespie book that I read was was really fascinating because that also shows at<\/p>\n

an individual level how these motivations are different than previous<\/p>\n

black lawmakers that might have been raised in the civil rights era, for example, like a John Lewis or somebody like<\/p>\n

that, or MAXINE Waters, for example. So those are a couple of books that I would,<\/p>\n

if you want to look at where the Black Caucus or black lawmakers are now. I would definitely<\/p>\n

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

next week with an interview to be announced. I appreciate it, guys.<\/p>\n"},"episode_featured_image":false,"episode_player_image":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/thepolicyagenda\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2018\/12\/The-Policy-Agenda-Logo3-e1545063000555.png","download_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/thepolicyagenda\/podcast-download\/18\/episode-3-the-congressional-black-caucus-with-periloux-peay.mp3","player_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/thepolicyagenda\/podcast-player\/18\/episode-3-the-congressional-black-caucus-with-periloux-peay.mp3","audio_player":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/thepolicyagenda\/podcast-player\/18\/episode-3-the-congressional-black-caucus-with-periloux-peay.mp3<\/a><\/audio>","episode_data":{"playerMode":"dark","subscribeUrls":[],"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/thepolicyagenda\/feed\/podcast\/the-policy-agenda","embedCode":"

Episode 3: The Congressional Black Caucus with Periloux Peay<\/a><\/blockquote>