Multiple Referral and U.S. House Legislative Success in the 1990s

We examine the impact of multiple referral on legislative processing in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1991-98. Previous literature leaves off with the 1980s, but party control of the House changed in the 1990s and with it, came a new approach to multiple referral. Did this change alter the impact of multiple referral status on bill progression? In the main, our analysis confirms certain previous findings, while adding some interesting new twists. While multiple referral hurts a bill’s chances of success in some stages of statute-making (committee passage, floor passage), a finding consistent with the literature, we find that it provides a boost to chances of receiving committee attention in the first place. Moreover, we find that the hit that multiply referred bills take in committee and on the floor is much greater than suggested previously. Separate analyses conducted before and after the Republican reforms of 1995 reveal distinct differences. For example, in the Re-publican-controlled environment from 1995-1998, multiple referral bills were slightly more likely to see the House floor, whereas they were less likely to make it in the Democratic House from 1991-94.