Political Party Division on Committees

    In my social policy class, I am currently working on a project where you create a bill for a social issue that needs reform. Once you have selected a topic and the action needed, you must find how to best get your bill passed: finding a congressperson who will sponsor your bill. In class, we discussed the best strategy for getting the bill in the hands of the person who will best champion it. The most difficult part of this is deciding who on the committee would be best to go to. We asked ourselves questions such as "Is their state one that this issue is particularly problematic for?" and "What is their party?". When choosing a member, we were taught that party matters as you might need to choose a representative whose party doesn't usually vote for your issue to ensure that their base backs it. This is due to the immense amount of political division currently.     Looking at committees and voting through an economic lens produces a different picture regarding political parties. Weingast and Marshall state that committees align the two different parties because of their interest in the specific topic. However, we learned that party did not matter as representatives would shoot down helpful legislation to please their base. This begs the question, although they are both interested in the same topic, are they both on the committee to ensure that the other side does not negatively affect the issue due to having opposing views on it (in their eyes)? While theoretically, Weingast and Marshall are correct in assuming that since all members have a common interest, they must align on their views, in practice, the parties generally have very different views on the same issue. As we have previously have studied, political representatives are self-interested actors who will act to be re-elected. Although unlike my social policy professor suggests they might instead be acting for special interest groups rather than their constituents. Is the only answer that representatives will trade votes to get legislation they want to be passed in the future?