Republican gains in the committee system

This article from Politico talks about how Republican freshmen senators are set to gain a lot of “plum,” or powerful committee positions in the next congress. According to Weingast and Marshall’s model, the seniority system and high incumbency in the Senate leads to a certain level of stability in the committee system, which is in the interests of the senators. The article states that incoming senators are “usually shunted to the end of the committee dais and the back row of the chamber” but that this year “Republican rookies are poised to play an outsized role on some of the most powerful Senate panels.” This is because of the high turnover from democrats to republicans as well as some retirements of senators who hold powerful committee seats, such as the five retirements on the appropriations committee, which politico claims is a rare opportunity for incoming senators to grab influential seats. The article claims that this outsized committee advantage will give republicans greater ability to kill democratic bills on some of the most pressing issues for our country. The size of the committee advantage depend on how well Weingast and Marshall’s model applies to the Senate, if, as we discussed in class, individual senators can bring bills to the floor without going through the committee system than the size of this advantage for the republicans may be less than Politico suggests.

Another interesting point from the article is that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell must decide whether or not to grant incoming Senator Dan Coats the 10 years seniority he earned when he was an Indiana senator in the 1990’s. This goes against assumption we discussed in class, that when a representative exits congress they loose all their seniority, even if they are reelected at a later point.