Fighting the Culture Wars in the U.S. Congress: Cultural Battles on the Floor of the House and the Senate

In September of 2004, just three weeks before Congress adjourned and with less than two months to go in a contentious election campaign for control of the House, the Senate, and the White House, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist announced that their respective chambers would hold votes on a series of cultural issues before the end of the session. The plan included a vote on constitutional amendments banning flag desecration and same-sex marriage and on a bill to protect the phrase “under God ” in the Pledge of Allegiance against legal challenges by curtailing the jurisdiction of federal courts. Republican lawmakers knew the controversial legislation, some of which had been defeated in the past, was not likely to pass. Yet, they pushed for the votes, a move Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer decried as an attempt to “give issues they think will score them political points at the polls first-class tickets to nowhere ” at the expense of important issues like homeland security and health care and DeLay defended as “part of the process to get members on record ” (quoted in Stone 2004). The move by Republican leaders in the 108th Congress to set the floor agenda with an eye to upcoming elections is not a new phenomenon. In the late-1800s, the House approved a special rule that allowed legislation to be brought to the floor regardless of the order in which it had been placed on the calendar, thus giving majority party leaders a prominent role in the agenda-setting process (Sinclair 2000). Since the 1970s, a series of congressional reforms that weakened the committee system and allowed party leaders to make committee assignments and increasing party polarizatio