All the President's Senators: Presidential Copartisans and the Allocation of Federal Grants

Abstract

Previous scholarship argues that House members' partisan relationship to the president is among the most important determinants of the share of federal dollars they bring home to their constituents. Do presidential politics also shape distributive outcomes in the Senate? Analyzing the allocation of more than $8.5 trillion of federal grants across the states from 1984 to 2008, we show that presidential copartisan senators are more successful than opposition party members in securing federal dollars for their home states. Moreover, presidents appear to target grants ex post to states that gain presidential copartisans in recent elections.

Divide-the-Quarter: Testing Distributive Politics Theories in the States Using Federal Opportunity Zones

“…The literature splits on whether leaders direct resources to areas in which their supporters live or areas represented by their political allies (e.g. Cox and McCubbins 1986;Ansolabehere and Snyder 2006;Larcinese, Rizzo, and Testa 2006;Nicholson-Crotty 2015;Kriner and Reeves 2015;Berry, Burden, and Howell 2010;Christenson, Kriner, and Reeves 2017;Dynes and Huber 2015). Thus, we test whether governors target 1) their political supporters in the electorate using county level governor vote share, and 2) areas represented by their political allies using the partisan match between the governor and local representatives.…”

Decentralizing Pork: Congressional Roll‐Call Voting, Decentralized Administration, and Distributive Politics

“…Copartisanship with the president reduces the costs of employing formal oversight mechanisms when implementation is centralized. The president has both ex ante and ex post control over federal agency implementation choices, and party ties between the president and members provide clarity of credit assignment, which rewards the president (Berry, Burden, and Howell ; Christenson, Kriner, and Reeves ; Dynes and Huber ; Kriner and Reeves ). In his 2014 State of the Union Address, for instance, President Obama championed a very particularistic grant distribution to fund a manufacturing innovation center in Youngstown, Ohio, an important locus of swing voters (Kriner and Reeves , 21).…”

“…Some members enjoy copartisanship with both the president and home state governor, and we expect member voting in this situation to balance the benefits of each party tie. As noted, presidents have considerable influence both ex ante and ex post when funds distribution relies on centralized administration (Berry, Burden, and Howell ; Christenson, Kriner, and Reeves ; Hudak ; Kriner and Reeves ). While their interest in federal dollars is significant and they can influence the distribution of federal funds to their states (cf.…”

Essays on the Political Power of Bureaucrats

“…Kriner and Reeves (2015b) find that counties within swing states receive, on average, $17 million more in federal grant spending. Moreover, Christenson, Kriner, and Reeves (2016) find that states with more presidential co-partisan senators receive an additional $35 in per capita grant spending.…”

“…The geographic unit is constant over the complete time series and all states receive funding each year. However, given that each unit is multi-member, all of the relevant covariates are the number of senators in each category for each state (following Christenson, Kriner, and Reeves 2016). Thus, the relevant covariates are the number of senators who are presidential co-partisans, majority party members, on (or chair of) the relevant committee.…”