Companion Bills and Cross-Chamber Collaboration in the U.S. Congress

• Author: Justin H. Kirkland,Mary A. Kroeger
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X17727094
• Published date: 01 July 2018
• Date: 01 July 2018
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X17727094

American Politics Research

2018, Vol. 46(4) 629 –670

© The Author(s) 2017

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X17727094

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Article

Companion Bills

and Cross-Chamber

Collaboration in the

U.S. Congress

Justin H. Kirkland1 and Mary A. Kroeger2

Abstract

The U.S. House and Senate were designed to have an adversarial relationship.

Yet, House members and senators often collaborate on the introduction of

“companion” bills. We develop a theory of these cross-chamber collaborations,

which asserts that companion bill introductions are driven by legislators’

desire to increase the probability of bill passage and the relational difficulties in

developing companion bill partnerships. To test the expectations emerging from

our theory, we develop a novel data set of every companion bill introduction in

the 111th and 112th U.S. Congress. Then, using social networking techniques, we

develop an empirical model of partner selection in companion bill introduction.

Our results are supportive of our expectations, and suggest that companion bills

are more likely to survive chamber deliberation and are typically introduced by

senior members with secure electoral margins.

Keywords

legislative politics, companion bills, social networks

A freshmen House member arrives on Capitol Hill and in a meeting with

copartisans refers to a member of the other party as the “enemy.” A more

1University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA

2University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA

Corresponding Author:

Justin H. Kirkland, University of Houston, 447 Phillip Guthrie Hoffman Hall, Houston,

TX 77008, USA.

Email: jhkirkland@uh.edu

727094APRXXX10.1177/1532673X17727094American Politics ResearchKirkland and Kroeger

research-article2017

630 American Politics Research 46(4)

senior colleague interrupts the freshmen legislator to say, “No, he is just a

part of the opposition. The Senate is the enemy.”1 This anecdote has stuck

around as part of Washington lore for many years (Ornstein, 2008). Indeed,

the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate are in many ways intentionally designed

to be adversarial. Despite this occasionally hostile chamber-to-chamber rela-

tionship, individual senators and House members often work together on leg-

islation, even across party lines. In 2014, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)

and Rob Portman (R-OH) introduced the Smart Savings Act to the U.S.

Senate, while Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Elijah Cummings

(D-MD) introduced identical legislation in the House. These companion bills

came about through the intentional cross-chamber, cross-party collaboration

of their sponsors, and would dramatically alter the retirement enrollments of

federal employees.2 Just a short time later, Issa along with fellow House

member Gerry Connolly (D-VA) and Senators Mark Warren (D-VA) and

Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) introduced companion versions of the Government

Reports Elimination Act of 2014 to their respective chambers, again provid-

ing evidence of individual House members and Senators working together

across chamber lines.3

The introduction of companion bills is something of an unusual legisla-

tive tactic. The rules of the U.S. Congress do not just require that both

chambers pass the same legislation, but require that both chambers pass

the exact same legislative vehicle. When senators and House members

introduce companion versions of legislation in their respective chambers,

only one of the two bills can survive the legislative process. Thus, the

introduction of companion bills can send a signal of broad cross-chamber

support for a piece of legislation, but may also cost a member of a compan-

ion bill partnership the opportunity to claim credit for the legislation’s

ultimate success.4 The appearance of broad support across the chambers of

Congress can play a pivotal role in ensuring an agenda item’s ultimate suc-

cess (Larocca, 2011).

As the two chambers have a historically discordant relationship, develop-

ing cross-chamber collaborative relationships is likely to be more cumber-

some than fostering intrachamber relationships. This suggests that there are

likely to be very real costs associated with the development of a companion

bill. Given the difficulty in working across chamber lines and the opportunity

costs associated with developing companion bills, we offer a set of hypothe-

ses that suggest that legislators who are secure in their re-election chances,

long-tenured, and ideologically moderate are the most likely legislators to

introduce companion bills. We also hypothesize that companion bill partner

selection is largely driven by homophilous patterns that reduce the costs of

seeking out partners.

Kirkland and Kroeger 631

To test our hypotheses regarding cross-chamber congressional collabora-

tion, we gather data on every instance of companion bill introduction in the

111th and 112th U.S. Congress. We then construct a social network of cross-

chamber collaborative partnerships based on the sponsorship of companion

bills. Using social network modeling techniques, we find support for our

theoretical perspective. We find that longer tenured members of each cham-

ber and legislators with larger vote shares in their prior elections are more

likely to introduce companion bills, and that ideological extremists are less

likely to introduce companion bills. We also find that legislators with a vari-

ety of ideological similarities are more likely to develop companion bill rela-

tionships. Finally, we provide strong evidence that the introduction of a

Senate companion to a House bill increases the odds that a House bill will

receive support in the House.

Interactions between legislators within one chamber are generally thought

of as important determinants of legislative outcomes and proceedings, and

seem to respond quite strongly to external stimuli such as public opinion

(Kirkland & Gross, 2014; Ramirez, 2009). Much of the research on legisla-

tive interactions uses cosponsorship patterns as a measure of collaborative

relationships between legislators, and consistently finds that legislators’ posi-

tions within the collaborative network of their peers alter their own levels of

success (Fowler, 2006a, 2006b). Beyond the simple relational advantages

provided by cooperation, scholars have also examined the use of cosponsor-

ship for signaling purposes. Some argue that displays of cooperation serve as

signals to constituents (Wilson & Young, 1997) and/or fellow congressional

members (Balla & Nemacheck, 2000; Bernhard & Sulkin, 2013). Specifically,

cosponsorship decisions signal to pivotal voters in their own chamber the

robustness of support for a particular piece of legislation, and thus, improve

the measure’s probability of passage (Kessler & Krehbiel, 1996; Wawro,

2001). Wawro (2001) includes signaling the prospects of the bill in the other

chamber in a list of activities that a legislative entrepreneur can engage in to

indicate the bill’s prospects. Scholars often cite debate, gridlock, and the

appearance of Congress as quarrelsome, unproductive, and controversial as

reasons behind the dismal view of the institution (Durr, Gilmour, & Wolbrecht,

1997). Instances of communication and cooperation stand in contrast to this

acrimonious view of Congress and may be used by legislators to indicate

interest and effort in an area important to constituents. The strategic nature of

intracameral cooperation may also extend to intercameral cooperation.

Most of the work on legislative cooperation and collaboration exclusively

concentrates on within-chamber relationships (for an exception, see Kirkland

& Williams, 2014). Cross-chamber relationships are both (a) more difficult to

form and (b) less clearly related to legislative outcomes. There are difficulties