Federal Spending and the Selection of Committee Assignments in the U.S. House of Representatives

It has long been assumed that, as a general rule, powerful members of Congress are able to distort federal spending patterns to the benefit of their own constituencies. As evidence of this belief, several studies have revealed correlations between the committee jurisdictions of representatives and the types and amounts of federal outlays spent in their districts. More recent analyses, however, have revealed that committee assignments are not the causal factors in this relationship. In this paper I attempt to reconcile these seemingly contradictory results by reversing the causal direction in the relationship. I propose that, to some extent, the geographic distribution of federal spending mandates the committee assignments of U.S. representatives. This iecruitmerzt hiypothesis explains the correlation between the two variables as well as scholars' inability to discover causation in the previously assumed direction. Data for the 92nd, 93rd, and 94th Congresses are analyzed and lend validity to the hypothesis.