Every once in a while, we’ll run what we call a “backgrounder” piece on the Congress. Rather than focus on particular legislators or pieces of legislation, we’ll write for just a bit about the procedures by which the Congress runs. Today: Cosponsorship, the too-often ignored poor cousin of the celebrity Vote.
Cosponsorship is the voluntary addition of a congressperson’s name to a bill before the Congress. Rule 12 of the House of Representatives dictates that any legislator may request that their name be added to a bill, starting with the time of a bill’s initial introduction to the Congress and ending with the time that the bill is passed from a committee onto the House floor. The effect of having one’s name added to a bill is to indicate support for it. Cosponsorship is a common act in the Congress. In the 105th Congress of 1997-1998, the number of cosponsors for any given bill varied from zero to well over two hundred. Cosponsorship is also common as an individual practice. Looking back again to the 105th Congress, individual congresspeople tended on average to cosponsor over a hundred bills, with again much variation: Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas cosponsored only three bills, while Rep. Martin Frost, also of Texas, cosponsored 804 bills, or one out of every six bills.
For the House, the reported date of cosponsorship’s beginning is 1967, with a liberalization of rules to allow unlimited cosponsorship in 1978 (Congressional Record 1967: 10708-10712; Congressional Record 1978: 34929-34931). While these dates mark the legalization of cosponsorship of a single bill, previous House sessions saw similar tactics that worked their way around legal prohibitions. “Multiple introduction,” the submission of identical bills with different resolution numbers and different principal sponsors, served as the functional equivalent of modern-day cosponsorship for some time before legalization (Congressional Record 1967: 10712). The willingness of legislators to wholly reintroduce legislation in order to register their support for it indicates that cosponsorship, or its equivalent, has long played an important role in the legislative process.
Look here later this week for two supplements to this backgrounder:
Do Political Players Believe Cosponsorship Matters?
and
Is Cosponsorship A Consequential Congressional Activity?
