Shaping Appropriations: Legislative Ability and Budgetary Success

In recent years, scholars have grown increasingly attentive to the uneven impacts that individual legislators exert on policy outcomes. These differences may reflect both lawmakers’ intrinsic abilities and the institutional levers at their disposal (e.g., chamber or party positions). Yet disentangling these forces empirically is challenging. We isolate the effects of legislative ability by focusing on members of the Appropriations Committee and its subcommittees. We develop and test hypotheses on how the abilities of subcommittee chairs and other members affect discretionary spending decisions within their jurisdictions. Our findings indicate that higher-ability subcommittee chairs drive larger deviations from the President’s budget, and that minority-party ranking members likewise shape spending outcomes in meaningful ways. By contrast, the abilities of rank-and-file members—whether in the majority or minority party—do not appear to condition budgetary outcomes. Hence, abilities matter, but only in conducive contexts. The results illustrate how ability and position jointly constrain presidential control over policy outcomes.