Information and Party Influence in the U.S. Congress

I examine the role of committee information about legislation and its link to legislative outcomes. Members of Congress, operating within a fast-paced, partisan environment, rely on cues and information to guide their voting decisions. Theories of legislative organization have placed committees at the center of information transmission about legislation under consideration in Congress. As the legislative unit tasked with considering all bills under their jurisdiction, committees convey information not only in the content of the legislation they report but also in how they frame, justify, and explain legislation. In this article, I outline and provide descriptive analysis motivating how information about legislation, controlled by committee chairs and party leaders, is linked to party influence over legislative outcomes. I introduce a dataset on committee reports that conceptualizes information on legislation. I demonstrate how committee information in these reports, as the interpretations and explanations of bills, fluctuate based on party decisions on what information to convey and how this information predicts floor voting outcomes.