¹ This article is based on interviews conducted during 1964 with twenty of the twenty-five members of the Committee. The average interview ran 80 minutes. Questions were open-ended, no notes were taken during the interview, and all quotations are derived from notes made immediately after each interview. In addition, staff members, lobbyists, and executive department personnel were interviewed, some at great length. As a 1963–1964 Congressional Fellow I worked with Congressmen Thomas B. Curtis (R., Mo.) and Dante B. Fascell (D., Fla.), and was able to observe the Committee directly.

² Fenno, Richard F. Jr., “The House Appropriations Committee as a Political System: The Problem of Integration,” this Review, Vol. 56 (06, 1962), pp. 310–24Google Scholar. Fenno's approach has been applied to two other committees. See Jones, Charles O., “The Role of the Congressional Subcommittee,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, Vol. 6 (11, 1962), pp. 327–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Green, Harold P. and Rosenthal, Alan, Government of the Atom (New York, 1963), ch. 2Google Scholar. Other committee studies which may serve as a basis for comparisons include Jones, Charles O., “Representation in Congress: The Case of The House Agriculture Committee,” this Review, Vol. 55 (02, 1961), pp. 358–67Google Scholar; Peabody, Robert L., “The Enlarged Rules Committee,” in New Perspectives on the House of Representatives, Peabody, Robert L. and Polsby, Nelson W., eds., (Chicago, 1963), pp. 129–64Google Scholar; Robinson, James A., The House Rules Committee (Indianapolis, 1963)Google Scholar; Goodwin, George, “Subcommittees: The Miniature Legislatures of Congress,” this Review, Vol. 56 (09, 1962), pp. 596–604Google Scholar; Huitt, Ralph K., “The Congressional Committee: A Case Study” this Review, Vol. 48 (06, 1954), pp. 340–65Google Scholar. See also Fenno's forthcoming book on the House Appropriations Committee, and his study of the House Education and Labor Committee, in Munger, Frank J. and Fenno, Richard F. Jr., National Politics and Federal Aid to Education (Syracuse, 1962), ch. 5Google Scholar.

³ For the general theory behind this paper see Parsons, Talcott and Shils, Edward A., eds., Toward a General Theory of Action (New York, 1962), pp. 3–44, 190–233Google Scholar; Parsons, Talcott, “Some Highlights of the General Theory of Action,” in Young, Roland, ed., Approaches to the Study of Politics, (Evanston, 1958), pp. 282–301Google Scholar; and Levy, Marion J. Jr., The Structure of Society (rev. ed., Glencoe, 1957), pp. 19–84Google Scholar. For discussions of functionalism see Davis, Kingsley, “The Myth of Functional Analysis as a Special Method in Sociology and Anthropology,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 24 (12, 1959), pp. 757–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Horowitz, Irving Louis, “Sociology and Politics: The Myth of Functionalism Revisited,” Journal of Politics, Vol. 25 (05, 1963), pp. 248–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Don Martindale, , ed., Functionalism in the Social Sciences (Philadelphia, 1965)Google Scholar.

⁴ Parsons and Shils, op. cit., pp. 208–09. These problems are also dealt with in the literature on small groups. See Verba, Sidney, Small Groups and Political Behavior (Princeton, 1961), pp. 117–43Google Scholar; Klein, Josephine, The Study of Groups (London, 1956), pp. 115–33Google Scholar; Homans, George C., The Human Group (New York, 1950), pp. 319–20Google Scholar; Olmstead, Michael S., The Small Group (New York, 1959), chs. 4, 5, 6Google Scholar; Collins, Barry E. and Guetzkow, Harold, A Social Psychology of Group Processes for Decision-Making (New York, 1964), chs. 3, 10Google Scholar; Cartwright, Dorwin and Zander, Alvin, eds., Group Dynamics: Research and Theory (Evanston, 1953)Google Scholar; Hare, A. Paul, Borgatta, Edgar F., and Bales, Robert F., eds., Small Groups: Studies in Social Interaction (New York, 1955)Google Scholar.

⁵ Fenno, op. cit., p. 310.

⁶ Parsons and Shils, eds., op. cit., pp. 24–25.

⁷ Barnard, Chester I., The Functions of the Executive (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 139–60Google Scholar. Frank J. Sorauf has recently analyzed political parties from an inducement-contribution perspective; see his Political Parlies in the American System (Boston, 1964), pp. 81–97Google Scholar.

⁸ E.g., U. S. Congress, House, Committee on Ways and Means, 85th Cong., 2d sess., H. Rept. No. 1761, Trade Agreements Extension Act of 1958, pp. 55–87. Congressional Record, June 11, 1958, Vol. 104, pp. 10881–82Google Scholar. Committee on Ways and Means, 87th Cong., 2d sess., H. Rept. No. 1818, Trade Expansion Act of 1962, pp. 83–104. Congressional Record, 06 28, 1962, Vol. 108, pp. 12089–90Google Scholar. Committee on Ways and Means, 87th Cong., 2d sess., H. Rept. No. 1447, Revenue Act of 1962, pp. B1–B28Google Scholar. Congressional Record, March 29, 1962, Vol. 108, pp. 5431–32Google Scholar. Committee on Ways and Means, 88th Cong., 1st sess., H. Rept. No. 749, Revenue Act of 1963, pp. C1–C28. Congressional Record, September 25, 1963, Vol. 109, pp. 18118–19.

⁹ During the 87th Congress the Democratic members of the Committee averaged 81 percent on Congressional Quarterly's index of support for a larger federal role; the Republicans averaged 17 percent. A comparable disparity, 85 percent to 27 percent, shows up during the 88th Congress. Moreover, in both congresses the Democrats and Republicans on Ways and Means now appear to be more “liberal" and less “liberal,” respectively, than the rest of their party colleagues. Data com-piled from Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 12 28, 1962, pp. 2290–95Google Scholar; October 23, 1964, pp. 2549–53. This may not have been true in earlier years.

¹⁰ This was confirmed by the Committee's ranking Republican member, John Byrnes, in the debate over the 1964 Revenue Act: “We tried to come up with as good a bill as we could. And I say to the Speaker it was not done on a partisan basis —and that has been confirmed by the chairman. It was done on a bipartisan basis, up until the last few days. When they had almost all the drafting completed and perfected, then they said, ‘Now we don't need your help any more, boys; we will put the steamroller to work.’ But up until then it was on a bipartisan basis.” Congressional Record, 09 25, 1963, Vol. 109, p. 18113Google Scholar. Contrast this with Schattschneider's, E. E. account, Politics, Pressures and the Tariff (New York, 1935)Google Scholar, of the making of the Smoot-Hawley tariff in 1929–30.

¹¹ Protests about the Committee's procedure are quite rare, but see the minority views on a 1955 bill extending corporate and excise tax rates in which the Republicans complained about the way a tax credit was “rammed” through the Committee. Committee on Ways and Means, 84th Cong., 1st sess., H. Rept. No. 69, Revenue Act of 1955, pp. 36–38.

¹² For a discussion of recent party battles fought on the floor over Ways and Means bills see Ripley, Randall B., “The Party Whip Organizations in the United States House of Representatives,” this Review, Vol. 58 (09, 1964), pp. 570–74Google Scholar.

¹³ The subject matter of Ways and Means appears to be essentially different from that of the House Education and Labor Committee, at least during recent years. Education and Labor must resolve basic ideological issues whose emotional content has been higher than the issues coming before Ways and Means. For a discussion of the influence of jurisdiction on Education and Labor, see Munger and Fenno, op. cit., pp. 109–12.

¹⁴ From 1955–1965, forty-seven bills were debated under closed rules, nine under open or modified open rules, and the rest (over 350 bills) under unanimous consent or suspension of the rules. A typical statement was made by Representative Howard W. Smith in the 1955 fight over a closed rule for the Trade Act: “Mr. Speaker, I recognize the difficulty of many Members of the House on this bill; we all have our own problems in our own districts, but this is a question that affects the whole country. … It has been recognized ever since I have been on the Rules Committee that bills of this type should be considered, as a practical matter, under a closed rule. The original bill setting up this program, as I recall, and the extensions in 1953 and 1954 were considered under closed rules. Nobody seemed to object at that time; as a matter of fact, both the majority and minority members of the Ways and Means Committee came before the Rules Committee and joined in the usual request that that committee makes of the Rules Committee for a closed rule.” Congressional Record, 02 17, 1955, Vol. 101, p. 1676Google Scholar. On this occasion the closed rule was almost defeated; it was adopted by one vote only after Rayburn took the floor and told his colleagues that “the House on this last vote has done a most unusual and under the circumstances a very dangerous thing. … Only once in the history of the House in 42 years in my memory has a bill of this kind and character been considered except under a closed rule. How long it is going to take, how far afield you will go, I do not know. … So as an old friend to all of you, as a lover of the House of Representatives and its procedures, I ask you to vote down this amendment offered by the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Brown].” p. 1678.

¹⁵ Closed rules do not mean that the House has no influence over the substance of bills reported by Ways and Means. Chairman Mills has a reputation for keeping his ear close to the ground and for gauging House sentiment. House demands, if they are strong enough to attract wide support, are reflected in Ways and Means bills even though no floor amendments are allowed. In order to ease passage of the 1962 Revenue Act, for example, Mills reduced the amount of the controversial investment credit from 8 percent to 7 percent. Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 03 30, 1962, p. 492Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Compare this description of Mills with that of Graham Barden (D., N.C.), former chairman of Education and Labor, whose leadership tended to create rather than resolve internal conflicts. Munger and Fenno, op. cit., pp. 122–24.

¹⁷ During the hearings on the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, for example, Keogh (D., N. Y.) complained about the amount of time consumed by Curtis (R., Mo.). Mills replied that the Committee would sit until Curtis was through with his interrogation. Committee on Ways and Means, 87th Cong., 2d sess., Hearings on H.R. 9900, Trade Expansion Act of 1962, II, 740Google Scholar. On another occasion, Mills moderated an interchange between Representative Bruce Alger (R., Texas) and James B. Carey of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. over whether or not Carey had implied that Ways and Means, by failing to pass the King-Anderson health care bill, was responsible for the death or discomfort of the aged. Mills ruled that Carey did not have to answer Alger's question but he defended Alger's right to propound such a query. Alger took pride in Mills's defense of his rights. Committee on Ways and Means, 88th Cong., 2d sesB., Hearings on H.R. 8920, Medical Care for the Aged, IV, 1880–83Google Scholar.

¹⁸ The most dramatic recent example of how a committee's subject matter can affect its behavior and success in the House was the issue of federal aid to education. See Price, H. Douglas, “Schools, Scholarships, and Congressmen: The Kennedy Aid-to-Education Program,” The Centers of Power, ed. Westin, Alan F. (New York, 1964), pp. 53–105Google Scholar.

¹⁹ The first bill Mills lost was a temporary unemployment compensation measure. Congressional Record, 01 1, 1958, Vol. 104, pp. 7910–11Google Scholar. The second was a conference report to carry out the International Coffee Agreement, Congressional Record, 08 18, 1964 (daily edition), pp. 19501–07Google Scholar.

²⁰ See the votes reported in Brenner, Elizabeth J., The Trade Expansion Act of 1962, Congressional Quarterly Special Report, pp. 29–30Google Scholar; also the close votes on key sections of the Revenue Act of 1964, Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 08 23, 1963, pp. 1473–83Google Scholar.

²¹ Compare this definition with that of Gabriel Almond who says by political socialization “we mean that all political systems tend to perpetuate their cultures and structures through time, and that they do this mainly by means of the socializing influences of the primary and secondary structures through which the young of the society pass in the processs of maturation. … Political socialization is the process of induction into the political culture.” Almond, Gabriel A. and Coleman, James S., The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton, 1960), p. 27Google Scholar.

²² Barnard, op. cit.

²³ Cited in Galloway, George B., Congress at the Crossroads (New York, 1946), p. 90Google Scholar. For some critical comments on Eberhart's methodology see Robinson, James A., “Organizational and Constituency Backgrounds of the House Rules Committee,” The American Political Arena, ed. Fiszman, Joseph R. (Boston, 1962), p. 214Google Scholar.

²⁴ Warren E. Miller and Donald Stokes in a forthcoming volume on representation and Congress, to be published by Prentice-Hall in 1966.

²⁵ The Committee was reluctantly criticized by a Republican member in 1955 for rushing through H.R. 1, the extension of the Reciprocal Trade Act, without giving the members time to study it or propose amendments. Congressional Record, 02 18, 1955, Vol. 101, pp. 1743–44Google Scholar.

²⁶ March and Simon contend that the stronger the individual's identification with a group, the more likely his goals will conform to his perception of group norms. They identify five factors which affect group identification: (1) prestige; (2) perception of shared goals; (3) satisfaction of individual needs; (4) frequency of interaction; and (5) degree of competition between group and individual. In this paper I deal with the first three of these. March, James G. and Simon, Herbert A., Organizations (New York, 1958), pp. 65–66Google Scholar.

²⁷ The same man, a Democrat, explained his election to Ways and Means in these words: “No one wanted to go much farther north … for fear of running into a radical liberal, and no one wanted to go much further south for fear of running into an extreme conservative, so they picked me. They wanted a moderate liberal and a liberal moderate and I fit the bill.”

²⁸ Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 01 18, 1963, p. 46Google Scholar. Landrum's growing liberal tendencies are reflected in his scores on the federal role index: 86th Congress, 33 percent support for a larger role; 87th Congress, 61 percent; 88th Congress, 80 percent. Congressional Quarterly Almanac, XVI, 1960, p. 136Google Scholar; footnote 9, supra.

²⁹ On the Committee on Committees see Clapp, Charles L., The Congressman: His Work as He Sees It (Washington, 1963), pp. 183–212Google Scholar; also Masters, Nicholas A., “Committee Assignments in the House of Representatives,” this Review, Vol. 55 (June, 1961), pp. 345–57Google Scholar.

³⁰ A “latent function” of the Committee on Committees was evident on the 1963 tax bill, when Mills used the 15 members to help get the bill through the House. Ripley, op. cit., p. 570. Members sometimes take soundings for Mills and act as an informal whip system of their own. As one member remarked, “If I can support it in Committee and on the floor then they [members from his zone] can support it too.” When asked what he could do if they did not vote as he did on a Ways and Means bill he added, “Well, I suppose if it were [a senior member] I couldn't do very much, but if it were some new member who didn't have a prime committee yet I could do something.”

³¹ Joel Broyhill, appointed to the Committee in 1964, was thought to be running a grave risk in leaving the District of Columbia Committee and the Post Office and Civil Service Committee because many of his Virginia constituents are government employees who work in the District. Broyhill met the issue head-on by stressing the importance and prestige of Ways and Means and he was reelected, albeit with a somewhat smaller percentage of the vote than he received in 1962. Washington Post, 10 3, 1964, p. B2Google Scholar. He was reappointed to the District Committee in 1965 without having to yield his seat on Ways and Means, notwithstanding the general rule that membership on the latter is “exclusive.”

³² Rostenkowski, Dan, “Washington Report,” 07 20, 1964, p. 2Google Scholar. Congressman George M. Rhodes (D., Pa.), shortly after he was elected to Ways and Means, could take credit for two amendments to a social security bill which were of interest to his constituents. “A Report from Congressman George M. Rhodes,” July 16, 1964, p. 1.

³³ For an explanation of this provision see Committee on Ways and Means, 88th Cong., 1st sess., H. Rept. No. 749, Revenue Act of 1963, pp. 45-47. It allowed the exclusion from gross income of a limited amount of capital gain received from the sale or exchange of a personal residence by a person 65 years old or over.

³⁴ Typical members' bills alter the tariff on brooms made of broom corn, provide a credit or refund of self-employment taxes in certain cases, allow the free importation of spectrometers for universities, provide tax-exempt status for nonprofit nurses' professional registries, continue the suspension of duties for metal scrap, etc.

³⁵ Congressional Record, 04 30, 1964 (daily ed.), pp. 9397–9410Google Scholar. Mills also tried to get S. Con. Res. 19 which expressed the sense of Congress that bourbon whiskey is a distinctive product of the United States and that no imported whiskey should be labeled “bourbon” passed at this time, but John Lindsay (R., N.Y.) objected on behalf of two female constituents whose income came from a small distillery in Mexico. Sober heads prevailed and the resolution passed the House later.

³⁶ On December 18, 1963, the Committee similarly announced its intention to report 32 members' bills. Seven of them were introduced by non-members, 17 by Democratic members, and 8 by Republican members.

³⁷ For discussions of bargaining see Dahl, Robert A. and Lindblom, Charles E., Politics, Economics, and Welfare (New York, 1903), chs. 12, 13Google Scholar; Froman, Lewis A. Jr., People and Politics (Englewood Cliffs, 1962), pp. 53–58Google Scholar; Robert L. Peabody, “Organization Theory and Legislative Behavior: Bargaining, Hierarchy and Change in the U. S. House of Representatives,” a paper read at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York City, September 4–7, 1963.

³⁸ Parsons and Shils, eds., op. cit., p. 203; John C. Wahlke, Heinz Eulau, William Buchanan, and Ferguson, LeRoy C., The Legislative System (New York, 1962), pp. 7–28Google Scholar.

³⁹ Several people associated with the Committee stated that Mills and Byrnes played prominent leadership roles even before they formally became chairman and ranking minority member.

⁴⁰ See H.R. 12545 and 12546, 88th Cong., 2d sess., 1964. These bills concern the relative priority of federal tax liens over the interests of other creditors. In addition to their cooperation on members' bills see the debate on H.R. 11865, the 1964 Social Security Amendments, Congressional Record, 07 29, 1964 (daily ed.), p. 16680Google Scholar.

⁴¹ The role of apprentice on the Ways and Means Committee contrasts sharply with the Education and Labor Committee, where newcomers are expected to play a major part immediately. Munger and Fenno, op. cit., p. 119.

⁴² The importance of time and chairmen becomes clear when one compares the conflict-ridden way the Committee handled the excess profits tax in 1950 with its relatively pacific handling of both the 1962 and 1964 Revenue Acts. For the 1950 bill see Bailey, Stephen K. and Samuel, Howard D., Congress at Work (New York, 1952), pp. 350–52Google Scholar.