Congressional Assertions of the Spending Power: Institutional Conflict and Regulatory Authority

Abstract

This study seeks to answer a crucial and unexplored question about American regulatory law and policy: How do majority coalitions in Congress use the spending power to circumvent intra-branch conflict and judicial constraints against regulating by finding alternate avenues to regulate states and private actors? This study provides the first large-scale empirical evidence of congressional use of the spending power to assert implementation authority in the face of constraints against more direct legislating. It is through this process of conditioning funds upon regulatory compliance that Congress works toward ideal policy outcomes without inciting institutional conflict with the other branches or from the opposing party. I base my conditional spending analysis on data on statutory specificity and congressional delegation from the 80th to the 110th Congresses provided by Farhang, and include additional measures of institutional conflict. The above argument is supported by the empirical analysis. (JEL K20, K23)