Bill Construction in Legislative Committees: A Study of the U. S. House

This paper reports on a study of the construction of several House bills during recent congresses, using publicly available data. The analysis focuses on the role of bill entrepreneurs and formal leaders in influencing the bill construction process in committee. An empirical study of preferences included, excluded, and modified in six House bills reveals that, on the first version of the bill considered in committee, all of the entrepreneur's preferences and only some of other members' preferences are included; in the final committee bill, about half of the entrepreneurs' preferences but few of other members' preferences have been dropped or modified. Overall, however, entrepreneurs are more successful than other members in getting their preferences into the committee bill. We suggest that this pattern of preference inclusion reflects implicit logrolling on the entrepreneur's part. We also conclude that it is possible and useful to study bill construction at the preference level.