Agency policy preferences, congressional letter-marking and the allocation of distributive policy benefits

Abstract

When allocating distributive benefits, bureaucrats must balance their own policy preferences with requests from members of Congress. The elimination of earmarking may provide agency personnel with greater discretion in the allocation of distributive benefits. Using a novel data set of congressional letters written in support of their community’s air traffic control towers, we estimate a model that explores the Federal Aviation Administration’s decision to issue national interest exemptions to continue operations at towers slated for closure as a result of budget sequestration. Our analysis suggests that members of Congress do not enjoy the influence they possessed under earmarking when using a new method, letter-marking, to influence how agencies distribute benefits.

Descriptive and Substantive Representation in Congress: Evidence from 80,000 Congressional Inquiries

“…Though these projects provide clear and targeted benefits within a given district, they were still approved by majority coalitions. Since the ban, legislators have been forced to lobby bureaucratic agencies to achieve targeted benefits (Mills, Kalaf-Hughes, and MacDonald 2016). Thus, the outcome is mediated by the executive branch-which many have found allocates funds strategically (e.g., Kriner and Reeves 2015).…”

“…We argue this provides a more direct measurement of substantive representation than has been previously available for observational research-limiting the number of alternative explanations for uncovered relationships. Contact data come from correspondence logs maintained by 15 agencies (Lowande 2018(Lowande , 2019Mills, Kalaf-Hughes, and MacDonald 2016;Ritchie 2018;Ritchie and You, 2019). 9 These logs were collected via Freedom of Information Act requests.…”

Who Polices the Administrative State?

“…Others are not broad criticisms of programs-but instead, specific concerns about the details of implementation left to the discretion of agencies. This includes requesting federal funds be spent a particular way-a practice known as "letter-marking" (Mills, Kalaf-Hughes, and MacDonald 2015).…”

Congressional lettermarks, ideology, and member receipt of stimulus awards from the US Department of Labor

“…For much as the effect of lettermarks appears to be conditioned by the preferences of the granting agency (Mills and KalafHughes, 2015;Mills, Kalaf-Hughes, and MacDonald, 2016), we expect the political leanings of a bureaucratic agency's principal-the president-to affect their willingness to bend to pressure from legislators. Since the legislative agendas of Democratic presidents typically fare better among more liberal members of Congress-Democrat and Republican alike-we expect that the bureaucracy is more likely to grant requests for funding from more liberal representatives.…”

“…Far from being a "cattle prod to agency heads" (quoted in Dawson and Kleiner, 2015: 202), what empirical work exists on the subject suggests that lettermarks from members of Congress alone are not effective in securing particularistic outcomes for individual legislators (Mills and Kalaf-Hughes, 2015;Mills, Kalaf-Hughes, and MacDonald, 2016). But existing evidence on this point is drawn from one federal agency, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and employs one, particularly visible, measure of congressional success: the issuance of a national interest exemption for control towers that were marked for closure (Mills and Kalaf-Hughes, 2015;Mills, Kalaf-Hughes, and MacDonald, 2016). While consistent with a lettermarks "do no harm" or "don't matter" conclusion, the nature of these requests means that they are likely very visible to organized interests, affected constituents, and ultimately, voters.…”