Deck 3: Congress

Question 1

Which statement best describes the role of party membership in the Congress?

A)Members may hold the leverage in negotiations with party leaders.
B)Members must vote along party lines.
C)Members must vote along party lines when asked by party leadership.
D)Members must vote together or new elections will be called.

Answer 1

Members may hold the leverage in negotiations with party leaders.

Question 2

The author lists three dimensions that are important to coalition building in Congress: party, cohesion, and ____.

A)structural coherence
B)donor support
C)charismatic leadership
D)absence of presidential opposition

Answer 2

structural coherence

Question 3

Presidents have three possible congressional strategies with respect to passage of health care reform: collaboration, co-optation, and ____.

A)combat
B)coordination
C)copartisanship
D)competition

Answer 3

combat

Question 4

Which structural organizational type is represented by the opportunity to filibuster during floor debates in the Senate?

A)fragmented
B)centralized
C)decentralized
D)coordinated

Question 5

Which statement best describes the current ideological status of the Congress?

A)Republicans and Democrats in both the House and Senate have become both more ideologically coherent within their respective ranks and increasingly separated from one another.
B)The ideological distance between the Republicans and Democrats is the smallest in about a century.
C)Roughly 30% of House members and 40% of Senators hold centrist views.
D)Republicans and Democrats in both the House and Senate are internally split ideologically and overlap to a significant degree in the ideological center.

Question 6

Which statement best describes the attention paid to health insurance coverage between 1939 and 1994?

A)The issue received attention from both parties but reform measures never came to a vote in the House or Senate.
B)The issue received moderate attention from Democrats only.
C)The issue received intensive attention from Republicans only.
D)The issue received attention from both parties but reform measures consistently failed to pass.

Question 7

Which attribute is associated with a "majoritarian" type of democratic constitutional design?

A)The executive and cabinet are members of the legislature.
B)There is fragmentation of power.
C)There is room for significant interest group involvement.
D)There are myriad policy makers located in multiple institutional settings.

Question 8

For the most part, major-party congressional candidates in general elections depend on the support of ____.

A)their own coalitions of voters
B)the president
C)celebrities and party luminaries
D)interest groups

Question 9

Which attribute is associated with a "consensus" type of democratic constitutional design?

A)There is a separation of powers among the executive, legislature, and judiciary.
B)Power is concentrated in the hands of the leadership of the political party that won the most recent election.
C)Majority party members in the legislature are expected to follow the lead of the executive and cabinet.
D)The constitution is interpreted by the legislature.

Question 10

The system of separation of powers likely works best with ____.

A)some moderate members of Congress who have credibility with both parties
B)single party control of the branches of government
C)ideologically distinct political parties with comparable control
D)highly polarized political parties

Question 11

Congressional deliberations regarding health care policy currently ____.

A)are the target of attempted influence by commercial interests and groups seeking social change
B)occur in a vacuum
C)are dominated by the American Medical Association
D)are dominated by groups representing consumers, women, and environmentalists

Question 12

Which statement represents one of the modifications of the "baseline" dynamic of the legislative process?

A)Elections have disrupted the underlying distributive dynamic of Congress.
B)Politically attractive policies tend to be distributive.
C)Members of Congress prefer policies that create identifiable benefits that can be traced back to the individual legislators.
D)When laws entail costs, they are imposed on those most able to bear them.

Question 13

Which statement best describes President Obama's approach to health care reform?

A)He set broad parameters and then left it to the Democratic leadership in Congress, working with committee chairs and members, to fill in the details and craft the actual legislation.
B)His task force crafted the president's version of health care reform while the Republicans prepared their own, with the expectation of a final compromise between the two.
C)He sought to build universal coverage on the existing system of employer-sponsored insurance.
D)He made no effort to engage stakeholder interests or skeptics in Congress.

Question 14

How did Republican Newt Gingrich's actions in 1995 assist the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010?

A)He engineered a more centralized House of Representatives.
B)He engineered a more fragmented House of Representatives.
C)He instituted the right of filibuster in the Senate.
D)He considerably weakened the right of filibuster in the Senate.

Question 15

Which interest group was strongly against passage of the Affordable Care Act?

A)National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB)
B)American Medical Association (AMA)
C)Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA)
D)Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturing Association (PhRMA)