State Congressional Delegations and the Distribution of Federal Funds

Date01 September 2021
AuthorJames M. Curry,Christopher P. Donnelly
DOI10.1177/1065912920940790
Published date01 September 2021
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912920940790
Political Research Quarterly
2021, Vol. 74(3) 756 –771
© 2020 University of Utah
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DOI: 10.1177/1065912920940790
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Article
Introduction
Most scholarship on U.S. distributive politics either focuses
on the abilities of individual representatives and senators to
bring home the bacon (Alvarez and Saving 1997; Bickers
and Stein 1996; Evans 2004) or highlights the role the presi-
dent plays in influencing funding decisions (Berry, Burden,
and Howell 2010; Dynes and Huber 2015; Kriner and
Reeves 2012). Little attention is paid to collective efforts in
Congress involved in securing grants-in-aid to states
(though, see, Lee 2000, 2003; Lee and Oppenheimer 1999).
While some federal aid is directed to specific congressional
districts (i.e., to individuals or organizations within them),
other federal dollars are distributed directly to state govern-
mental entities for use, including discretionary dollars for
transportation (including grants for highways, airports, and
mass transit), education (including funds to help low-
income children and special-needs students), low-income
housing, agriculture, health care, homeland security, and
more. State delegations of lawmakers in the House and
Senate, seeking to secure these forms of aid, need to work
collectively to accrue as much as they can for their states.
The collective nature of these efforts, largely unex-
plored in scholarship on distributive politics, prompt a
number of important questions. Here, we focus on the
characteristics of both House and Senate state congres-
sional delegations. We ask, Do the partisan dynamics of
state congressional delegations affect their abilities to
secure these grants-in-aid?
To investigate these questions, we compile Federal
Assistance Award Data System (FAADS) data on federal
non-formula grants-in-aid dollars distributed directly to
state governments or state governmental entities from fiscal
years 1984 to 2010. Rather than being distributed to entities
or localities in a specific part of a state, these federal dollars
are paid out to statewide agencies, and, thus, can have state-
wide impact. These are dollars that every member of a
House or Senate delegation has some interest in securing
for credit-claiming and other purposes (Cain, Ferejohn, and
Fiorina 1987; Grimmer, Westwood, and Messing 2015).
Thus, these data allow us to assess how the dynamics of
state congressional delegations affect the distribution of bil-
lions of federal dollars across a variety of issue areas includ-
ing health care, education, transportation, and agriculture.
We find that in both the House and Senate, state dele-
gations with more members in the same party, especially
the majority party, receive larger amounts of annual
grants-in-aid. Moreover, looking at changes in alloca-
tions over time, we find that the share of a delegation in
the majority party has become a more powerful predictor
940790PRQXXX10.1177/1065912920940790Political Research QuarterlyCurry and Donnelly
research-article2020
1The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA
2University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, VA, USA
Corresponding Author:
James M. Curry, Department of Political Science, The University of
Utah, Carolyn and Kem Gardner Commons, Suite 3345, 260 South
Central Campus Dr., Salt Lake City, UT, 84112 USA.
Email: james.curry@utah.edu
State Congressional Delegations and the
Distribution of Federal Funds
James M. Curry1 and Christopher P. Donnelly2
Abstract
Most scholarship on U.S. distributive politics either focuses on the abilities of individual representatives and senators
to bring home the bacon or highlights the role the president plays in influencing funding decisions. Little attention
is paid to collective efforts in Congress involved in securing grants-in-aid to states. In this paper, we assess how
characteristics of House and Senate state delegations affect the collective efforts of a state’s federal officeholders to
secure statewide funds. In both the House and Senate, we find that partisan cohesion in a state delegation predicts
more federal funds to states. In particular, states receive more funds when larger shares of their delegations are
members of a chamber’s majority party. Moreover, we find that the importance of majority party status is increasing
over time. These results have important implications for the U.S. federal system and distributive politics.
Keywords
distributive politics, congress, congressional delegations, majority parties, federal funds
Curry and Donnelly 757
since the 1980s, while the share of a delegation in the
president’s party has become a less powerful predictor.
In what follows, we lay out competing expectations
regarding how characteristics of state congressional del-
egations may influence the distribution of federal funds,
describe our approach to analyzing this phenomenon,
present the results of our analyses, and discuss and inter-
pret the findings. All told, our findings indicate that con-
stitutional decision to apportion members of Congress by
state alongside the federal system has lasting and mean-
ingful consequences for distributive politics, especially
as it interacts with the two-party system.
State Delegations and Distributive
Politics
Existing scholarship provides mixed expectations about
what kinds of delegation characteristics might translate
into more or fewer federal dollars. Different streams of
scholarship suggest we might find more dollars are
accrued by (1) more bipartisan delegations, (2) more par-
tisan delegations, (3) delegations with more majority
party members, (4) delegations with more members in the
president’s party, and (5) delegations with less two-party
competitive electoral environments.
Bipartisan Delegations
The most common explanation for why bipartisan (or,
split) delegations may be particularly effective in
Washington is that such delegations bring members of
both parties together to support funding for the state. This
is an oft-repeated reasoning among those in Washington.
For instance, Senator John Ensign (R-NV) described his
relationship with Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) in these
terms: “He works his side of the aisle and I work mine.
Because of that working relationship and trust, we are
able to get things done that frankly, members of the same
party in some states can’t get done.”1 Senator Pat Toomey
(R-PA) offered a similar analysis: “If Senator Casey
[D-PA] and I can agree on policy, and it’s good for
Pennsylvania, he can work that issue on his side in a way
that I can’t, and I can work it on my side in a way he
can’t.”2
Ensign and Toomey are far from the only politicians or
political observers to suggest such an advantage for
bipartisan delegations. Bipartisan senatorial pairs such as
Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Pete
Domenici (R-NM) and Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Joe
Biden (D-DE) and William Roth (R-DE), and Strom
Thurmond (R-SC) and Ernest Hollings (D-SC) have been
often viewed as exemplars of the abilities of split delega-
tion to work across the aisle. While all of these are sena-
torial examples, the logic should extend to the other side
of the Capitol. House delegations with members able to
work both sides of the aisle may be able to promote their
states’ interests in ways one-party delegations cannot.
The separation of powers and bicameral features of the
constitutional lawmaking process lend credence to these
expectations as well. The various veto points in the legis-
lative process ensure that most successful lawmaking
actions require bipartisan agreement (Curry and Lee
2019, 2020; Krehbiel 1998; Mayhew 2005). States repre-
sented by bipartisan delegations have representatives and
senators who can lobby party leaders and committee
chairs on their respective sides of the aisle. Moreover,
when both Democrats and Republicans represent a state,
leaders in both parties have a stake in seeing to it that the
state receives federal funds for their party members to
claim credit. After all, scholarship finds a link between
federal funds, the credit-claiming actions of lawmakers,
and reelection advantages (Bickers and Stein 1996;
Grimmer, Westwood, and Messing 2015; Lazarus 2009b;
Levitt and Snyder 1997; Stein and Bickers 1994).
Partisan Delegations
At the same time, there are reasons to suspect delegations
composed of all or mostly members of the same party
may have a leg up instead. One view of parties is that they
are established and function, in part, to help solve collec-
tive policymaking dilemmas (Aldrich 1995). Parties, by
forming long-term and stable coalitions, can help legisla-
tors work together to secure better outcomes for the group
than might otherwise be the case. There are also strong
political incentives for members of the same party to
work together, and these same incentives may stoke con-
flict among members of opposite parties. As Lee (2009)
finds, members of congressional parties have collective
electoral and power incentives to act as partisan teams to
bolster their party’s image and success. Doing so can
improve the party’s standing for the next election, help it
obtain or keep majority party status, or help it hold
together to shape public policy outcomes.
These partisan political incentives may not only make
it easier for co-partisans in a state congressional delega-
tion to work together, but may make it harder for delega-
tion members from opposite parties to collaborate.
Incentives for the parties to differentiate themselves may
limit or undermine opportunity for cross-party collabora-
tion, even within distributive politics, because coopera-
tion can take an issue off the table for the next election
(Gilmour 1995; Lee 2016). Especially in today’s hyper-
partisan Congress (Barber and McCarty 2015; Theriault
2008) with power centralized in party leaders (Curry
2015; Hanson 2014; Sinclair 2016), more partisan con-
gressional delegations may be advantaged relative to
more split delegations.

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