After the Giants got their final first down last night, setting up first and goal, I tweeted the following:

Twenty years ago, neither team manages the clock correctly in this situation.

I was both right and wrong. The situation was the perfect moment to put the modern advance in sports strategy on display. There was just enough time left to almost run out the clock, given the two Patriots’ timeout remaining. The Giants were down exactly two points — down three and they’re trying to score a TD, down one and they’re arguably trying to score 8 to get a full touchdown lead. And the defense was being coached by a man who was almost certainly aware of the strategic implications. That it happened in the Super Bowl was almost too good to be true. If both teams had played 1st down perfectly, it would have become the poster-child for the advancement of strategic thinking in football.

As it turns out, the Patriots did play it (almost) perfectly — they opted to let the Giants score on second down, so they could get the ball back (they probably should have done that on first down, to preserve their other timeout). The Giants, on the other hand, arguably made two mistakes. One was Bradshaw not being able to stop himself on the 1-yard line. The other was the decision to run the ball at all; they could have just knelt on it three times at the seven at kicked a 24 yard field goal with very little time on the clock.

But let me be crystal clear here: with 1:09 left, 1st and goal, down two, opposition with 2 timeouts, it is absolutely correct strategy NOT to score a touchdown. Whether you try to get closer than the 7-yard line is debatable — it depends on the relative success rate of 24 yard field goals vs. 18 yard field goals, as well as the probability of fumbling in both scenarios — but you certainly don’t want to get in the endzone.  The theoretical math is very easy: if you kneel three times, you will be able to kick a field goal with, at most, about 20 seconds left on the clock (and probably less, since the kneel-downs take more time than you think, and can be prolonged). Even if you do run a real play, you absolutely stop on the 1 yard line and do the same thing. If you score the touchdown on first down — which you will if your opponents are correctly letting you score —  the opposition will be down either 4 or 5 with about a minute to go, with two timeouts. So the question is simple: which is more probable — missing what amounts to an extra point, or Tom Brady leading a touchdown drive in 1 minute with two timeouts?

It’s not even close. You kneel and kick. Or stop on the 1 yard line.  League wide, 99.4% of extra points were made this year. The Giants were 45 for 45. You think Brady has less than a 0.6% chance of leading a TD drive with a minute and two timeouts? Not a chance. According to the NFL win probability stat, the Pats had a 4% chance to win when they got the ball back. And they only had 1 timeout as it turned out. And win probability doesn’t take into account the individual team, or whether or not you have Tom Brady. Here’s the thing: football is a zero-sum game. If Belichek was correct to let the Giants score, then by definition the Giants were wrong to get into the end zone there. And vice-versa. By the above math, the Giants gave the Pats  roughly 24-1 odds to win, when they could have made it roughly a 199-1 chance. That’s right: by getting in the end zone, the Giants increased their chance of losing roughly eightfold. (This math doesn’t include what the Pats could do with 10-15 seconds and no timeouts, down 1, after your field goal and the ensuing kickoff. But that’s virtually negligible, especially without a timeout to get the kicker on. They are basically reduced to a hail mary from their own 20. If you want to give them a 1% chance of winning that way, go ahead, it doesn’t change the strategy).

After the game, Coughlin admitted he didn’t send in the order for Bradsahw to try to stop on the 1-yard line — that was Eli. Instead, Coughlin said he actually wanted the touchdown there, arguing that no kick is ever guaranteed. Bradsahw said basically the same thing. That’s almost the perfect expression of risk-averse coaching, which is a huge problem in the NFL. If you deviate from conventional wisdom — no matter how much it increases your probability of winning — and it doesn’t work out, you get killed by the media and popular opinion. Consequently, coaches have incentives not to maximize their chances of winning, if doing so has them implementing unconventional strategies that will be criticized (nad possibly get them fired) if they fail. If the Giants had somehow blown a field goal and lost the Super Bowl after Bradshaw knelt on the one, Coughlin would have been (incorrectly) buried by the media. But if they score the TD and then the Pats come back and win, that would have been (wrongly) seen as not quite so bad: we did everything we could, but they beat us.

It’s horrible logic, but it still holds in popular perception. Let me repeat: the Giants hurt their chances of winning last night by scoring that TD; the actual outcome doesn’t matter when evaluating the strategic decision. But perhaps the conventional wisdom about these things will not hold for much longer. Last night definitely exemplified how dangerous the traditional decision can be, and there’s actually a debate going on today in the popular press that leans toward kneeling and kicking.  Twenty years ago, that debate would not even have existed; no one would have dared even consider not getting the TD.

[I promise to get  back to the libertarian-blogging next week; I just got less writing time than I hope these past few days.]

I’m still quite stunned by the GOP primary contracts at Intrade.

As of this writing, you can buy Romney for 89 cents on the dollar. Now, let me be clear. I’m not saying that’s a solid value play. I’m saying that’s an incredible value opportunity, a potential 21% annualized return on any money you invest now (the contract expires at the convention, which is just under 7 months away).

It’s even scarier to see it expressed as a time series. Here’s a graph of Romney’s Intrade closing prices since December 28, when I made a public declaration that the race was, for all intents and purposes, over.

Systematic investment of $10 a day into this contract ($380) since then would have a current equity increase of 9.5% and a potential annualized return of over 40%. I’m not saying I did this. But I’m not saying I didn’t. What I am saying is that the South Carolina Gingrich surge has had an absurd effect. Is it really less likely that Romney wins the nomination now than it was just before the Charleston debate? Insane.

So what is going on here; why is Romney so seemingly undervalued.  I see a few things. First, two legitimate issues:

1. There’s some (small) chance he loses the primary. This isn’t a risk free investment — Romney could still be beaten, straight-up — but the odds of that are simply nowhere near 11%. Not a chance. But they are something. I don’t think they are greater than 1-2%. So let’s call it that, 2%.

2. Something could happen to Romney. People do die, and massive scandals do happen. Upon occasion. One way to estimate the marginal probability  is to look at President Obama’s Intrade number for winning the Democratic nomination, which may incorporate things like the probability of death or massive scandal, but certainly does not include any chance of losing the nomination in a competitive primary. The President’s number is 97.7%, which means that it’s probably safe to say that in the case of the GOP primary, those last 2.3% are systemic, not anything to do with Romney himself. I have the 97.7% line marked in red on the graph; that shaves another 2.3% off his chances.

And now, three irrational issues (i.e. money-making opportunities):

2. Market distortions, mostly longshot bias. That 2.3% from above isn’t all about something happening to Romney. It also contains at least one market distortion: longshot bias, which I wrote about last month.  This is a well known empirical finding of economics research into gambler behavior: gamblers like to bet on longshots rather than favorites, in part due to psychological utility of hoping for big paydays and in part due to cognitive misunderstanding of large numbers. The upshot is that it attenuates the odds whenever the odds are set by the market, be it at the Saratoga Race Course or on the Intrade political market. But, as I said, this is built into the 2.3% we’ve taken from Obama’s Intrade Odds. That’s why the red line on the graph is labeled “Act of God + longshot bias.”

Still, there are a few other market distortions worth noting here: for instance, the market might itself have an influence on the outcome of the race, and thus partisan backers of one candidate or another might have reasons to manipulate it. I don’t think a lot of people are looking to Intrade to see if the race is over, but would it really be that bad of an investment for the Gingrich or Santorum campaign to spend a few thousand dollars driving down the price of Romney? It’s not a huge-volume market. It couldn’t hurt. If there are voters or journalists out there who are using Intrade as a cue, then it might actually be a very smart strategy.

3. Actors incentives to continue to make it a race. As I’ve written before, virtually everyone — but particularly the media — has a strong incentive to portray the race as not over. That is probably playing a role here, even if its just putting a hint of doubt into people’s minds.

4. The polling. There was a long (and wonderful) nerdfight earlier this year on the internet over the relative importance of polling and, on the other hand, fundamentals like money, organization, and party actor endorsements in predicting the outcome of elections. My personal opinion is that in primaries, both are relevant, but fundamentals are more important. Others disagree. But anyone who puts more weight on polling is bound to see the race as still not in the bag. And that’s probably a sizable percentage of people, even in the chattering class. I mean, just look at that graph. It follows the media narrative and state-by-state polling to a ridiculous degree.

So, in sum, I think it’s something like this: Romney is at 88.7 right now. If he were a lock absent the act of god, he’d be around 97.7 or so, but that contains the longshot bias, so there’s some value in there. But call it 97.7  So we have to explain about 9% among other market distortions, actors actively trying to make a race where there isn’t one, people putting too much reliance on polling and not enough on fundamentals, and Romeny’s actual chance of losing the election in some way other than death. I’m of the mind that the vast majority of the 9% is illusory (as I said, I would estimate his true chance of losing at less than 2%). How you divide up the rest is probably a question of philosophy, or at least a better social scientist than I.

But make no mistake about it, this thing is over. And people who refuse to believe this are handing out cash right now on Intrade. Not, of course, at the 21% annualized return we discussed above, that would be if we knew Romney was 100% to win. But by the back of the envelope we’ve done here, it’s at least a 12% annualized return, plus (12/7) * whatever the longshot bias is. Needless to say, my recommendation is, as it has been, BUY.

There’s a long and well-known literature in political science that say Members of Congress have three goals: re-election, increasing their internal power within the legislature, and making good public policy for their constituents (For example, see Fenno). In general, the re-election goals takes primacy, because without it, the other two become unattainable. And contrary to what your cynical uncle says, that’s probably a good thing: if Members did not concern themselves with getting re-elected, both the theoretical and practical underpinnings of republican representation tend to fall apart. This is not the kind of political science that is much up for debate; at this point it’s more or less self-evident to everyone. But it does leave a whole bunch of black boxes, namely how do you achieve any of those three goals?

Sometimes — especially when the three goals align together — it’s easy. You think policy X is a great idea, your constituents love it, and your party leadership not only loves it too, but they want you to lead the political fight for it, and they will reward you down the road for your leadership on the issue. Couldn’t be any easier. When it becomes interesting, however, is is when the three goals come into conflict: when increasing your power in the chamber means casting votes that hurt your re-election chances; when making good public policy for your constituents goes against their own perception of their interests (and thus your re-election chances); and when increasing your power in the chamber necessitates accepting bad public policy. It’s even harder when you factor in the endogeneity — sacrificing your constituents’ wants for more internal power may ultimately benefit your constituents down the road.

How Members make decisions when these goals come into conflict is perhaps the most interesting aspect of congressional behavior. Still, this doesn’t tell us much about the actual fieldcraft of power accumulation in a legislature. Imagine you are a freshman backbencher in a legislature, doesn’t matter if it’s Congress or just the town council. How do you go about becoming powerful?

I think there are two general strategies and skills: adding value and extracting value. Both are consequences of the institutional context of a legislature, which I think has the following key features: power is distributed asymmetrically, Members have long-term repeated interactions, and very few people can make things happen without help from others. Consequently, Members — even powerful Members — need to bargain with others in order to achieve any of their goals. This results in what James McGregor Burns calls “transactional leadership,” the trading of something of value in return for something of value.

So when I say adding value, in the most basic sense this simply means your vote on the floor. And on the bare face of it, this is all the freshman backbencher has at his disposal to bargain with. Is there another Member who’s help you need? Almost assuredly there is. What can you give them? Well, you can be loyal to them with your vote. This is, as most people know, a very common relationship between the leaders of a legislature and their partisan freshmen. The freshmen provide loyal votes — even if it goes somewhat against their constituents or their own thoughts on good public policy — and in exchange the leadership provides all the usual resources that come from holding a position of power in the legislature: desired committee assignments, help moving district-related legislation or earmarks, opportunities to speak on the floor or sponsor high-visibility bills or amendments, and perhaps help raising campaign funds for the next election. And so on and so forth.

But, of course, votes are not the only way that a freshman can add value, they just happen to be the formal power that comes with the office. Outside of the formal power lies an endless list of resource externalities that can be translated into added value. This includes personal attributes of individual legislators: are they smart? hard working? politically savvy? natural leaders? All of these things can add value to someone else’s pursuit of a policy agenda, which can result in transactional benefits to the possessor of the qualities. If you are capable of working endless 20-hour days to help someone else achieve their goals there is little doubt that you will build up an enormous amount of chits from them for future use. Even more importantly, you will develop a reputation that brings future clients to your door looking to put your value-added to use for them, and willing to trade you some present or future chits for that value.

But freshmen backbenchers can also develop resources that can create value added. Two examples of this are fundraising prowess and policy expertise. Both of those are highly desirable types of added value, and both (within limits) can be developed without relying on others. If you can begin your legislative career by raising twice as much money as you need for your first campaign, you will have cold hard campaign cash to donate to other Members. If you can turn yourself into an absolute wonk within key policy areas, you will be helpful in developing legislation, and in selling it to other Members and the public. Both of those commodities are highly desired by other Members, and you will be rewarded handsomely.

In short, in order to accumulate power, you need to provide scarce resources to those who are in positions to help you in return. But that’s not good enough: providing resources in exchange can get you things, but to develop long-term power, you need to trade immediate resources for continuous power. Logrolls to get your preferred legislation are certainly nice, and certainly can help you get re-elected. Loyally voting for the leadership can do the same. But they do not help you accumulate internal legislative power (at least not beyond the power that flows from pure seniority). What you need to do to accumulate internal power is trade immediate added value for lasting power. Tireless work on a bill in return for strong consideration for a good committee assignment. Loyal votes even in the face of your constituent preferences in return for an entry-level role in the caucus. These are the types of things that can get your power snowballing — using your added value in exchange for things that can themselves generate value added. To use an economic analogy, it’s the difference between labor and capital. Wages are good, but owning the company is better.

And that brings us to extracting value. As a backbench freshman, you definitely have your vote. But what is your vote worth? What can you get in exchange for it? Those who can get a lot are good at extracting value; those who cannot get much, or who give it away free, are not. Seems like a simple principle, but it is sure as hell not easy to put into practice. Maximizing the value of your resources is incredibly tricky; it’s like being good at poker, you need to be able to play the game well, and you need to be an astute reader of people and possibilities. Some people are good at it, and get a lot in return for their added value; others are fantastic at it, and get a lot more in return for their added value.

Creating value where there seems to be none is even trickier. There are those, however, — former Rep. Rostenkowski comes to mind — who were masters at extracting value by creating it, whether it was from other legislators or external political players like lobbyist and party actors. Rosty had a simple maxim on how to extract value out of thin air: figure out what the hell you want to do on some issue, and then get someone to reward you for doing it. That’s where the value is, precisely because there’s no downside; you already made your decision because it was the best thing for you, period. Now go get someone to pay you off for doing exactly what you were going to do anyway. No fuss, no muss. Every time you make a decision, someone was hoping you would do what you did. Get them to pay for it. Even if it’s just a tiny favor. Plain and simple.

This is one reason why I have always believed that the effects of political lobbying are overrated. Legislators have every incentive to string lobbyists along even if they already agree with them. Lobbyists provide all sorts of resources to legislators: information about policies, talking points for speeches, entire bills that can be introduced, staff support that can be called upon in a pinch to augment existing human resources. And so legislators love being lobbied hard. By all sides of an issue. And the upshot is twofold: first, legislators have a strong incentive to be coy about their positions on various decisions. Indecision — at least the appearance of indecision — is the key to maximizing extracted value. Second, extracting maximum from thin air requires a credible threat to make an alternative decision. You can’t pretend you are on the fence about something if you are not. People with 100% pro-choice ratings aren’t great at extracting value from thin air on abortion issues.

Which creates a dual-track system for approaching decision making. If you are faced with a legislative choice, figure out what you want to do. If you have no credible commitment to do the opposite, then your only chance to add value is to marshal what resources you have (your vote + the external resources you possess) and work to maximize your future rewards based on your immediate help. If you do have a credible commitment to do the opposite, then you might be better off sitting on the fence and seeing what offers come your way for you to do what you were going to do all along. Obviously, the moderate Members of a legislature spend a lot more time doing the latter, simply because they are much more often in the position of having a credible commitment to go either way on an issue.

A while back, there was a movement afoot to require Members of Congress to certify that they had read a bill prior to it being voted upon, stemming from concern that Members sometimes did not know what was in legislation that they were passing. There are lots of reasons to think such a requirement would be silly, but from my perch, the one that comes to mind first is that legislation is often written in very technical and referential language. This is one of the reasons that bills in Congress are usually required to have committee reports attached to them — so that Members and the public can have a plain-language explanation of the contents of the legislation.

There’s is a good reason that the bills themselves iare not drafted in plain language: bills must be precise and consistent. Both the House and the Senate have Offices of the Legislative Counsel, which work with Members and Committees to draft legislation. Members or staff can come to Leg Counsel with plainly written ideas for laws, and Leg Counsel will work with them to translate their ideas into precise legislative language, or to help them determine which aspects of existing law need to be revised in order to accomplish with the bill what they intend.

At any rate, I thought it might be useful to read through a very short bill today, to illustrate how complicated it can be to understand a bill if all you have is the legislative text itself. Below is the full text of H.R. 3835, which was debated in the House this afternoon under suspension of the rules, and is expected to pass when voted upon (the record vote was postponed by the Chair under rule XX, clause 8). The bill would extend the current pay freeze for federal employees for an additional year, as well as extend the pay freeze for Members of Congress. Give the bill a read through, and then I’ll go through it with annotations below (I’ve removed the title, sponsor, session, and referral information from the bill).

*************************************

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. EXTENSION OF PAY LIMITATION.

(a) In General- Section 147 of the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011 (Public Law 111-242; 5 U.S.C. 5303 note), as added by section 1(a) of the Continuing Appropriations and Surface Transportation Extensions Act, 2011 (Public Law 111-322; 124 Stat. 3518), is amended–

(1) in subsection (b)(1), by striking `December 31, 2012′ and inserting `December 31, 2013′; and

(2) in subsection (c), by striking `December 31, 2012′ and inserting `December 31, 2013′.

(b) Application to Legislative Branch-

(1) MEMBERS OF CONGRESS- The extension of the pay limit for Federal employees through December 31, 2013, as established pursuant to the amendments made by subsection (a), shall apply to Members of Congress in accordance with section 601(a) of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 (2 U.S.C. 31).

(2) OTHER LEGISLATIVE BRANCH EMPLOYEES-

(A) LIMIT IN PAY- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no cost of living adjustment required by statute with respect to a legislative branch employee which (but for this subparagraph) would otherwise take effect during the period beginning on the date of enactment of this Act and ending on December 31, 2013, shall be made.

(B) DEFINITION- In this paragraph, the term `legislative branch employee’ means–

(i) an employee of the Federal Government whose pay is disbursed by the Secretary of the Senate or the Chief Administrative Officer of the House of Representatives; and

(ii) an employee of any office of the legislative branch who is not described in clause (i)

*************************************

Ok. That’s not so bad. The whole thing is just 245 words. Let’s go through it section by section. The first few line are the title and enacting clause:

 To extend the pay limitation for Members of Congress and Federal employees.

 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

This portion reports the title of the bill, and then adds the enacting clause, which is required by Title 1, section 101 of the U.S. Code. Neither are themselves part of the legislation or any resulting law. After the enacting clause, the text of the bill begins:

SECTION 1. EXTENSION OF PAY LIMITATION.

(a) In General- Section 147 of the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011 (Public Law 111-242; 5 U.S.C. 5303 note), as added by section 1(a) of the Continuing Appropriations and Surface Transportation Extensions Act, 2011 (Public Law 111-322; 124 Stat. 3518), is amended–

(1) in subsection (b)(1), by striking `December 31, 2012′ and inserting `December 31, 2013′; and

(2) in subsection (c), by striking `December 31, 2012′ and inserting `December 31, 2013′.

And here we have run into the first problem of legislative drafting: our bill is achieving its objectives by altering existing legislation, which itself has already been altered. The Continuing Appropriations and Surface Transportation Extensions Act, 2011 added a Section 147 to the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011, and we are now amending that added section. (As a side note, “Public Laws” are just sequential numbering of enacted legislation, so “Public Law 111-242” was the 242nd piece of legislation enacted by the 111th Congress; citations such as XXX Stat. XXX are references to the Statutes At Large, the official legal and permanent evidence of all the laws enacted during a session of Congress (see 1 U.S.C. 112); citations such as X U.S.C. XXX are references to the U.S. Code, which is a consolidation and codification of the general and permanent laws, organized by topic and updated to reflect amendments. Only some of the U.S. Code is “positive law,” however. More on that later).

And so we need to reference other law in order to understand the plain text of the bill. Here’s the referenced section 147 from P.L. 111-242, as added by P.L. 111-322:

Sec. 147. (a) For the purposes of this section–

(1) the term `employee’–

(A) means an employee as defined in section 2105 of title 5, United States Code; and

(B) includes an individual to whom subsection (b), (c), or (f) of such section 2105 pertains (whether or not such individual satisfies subparagraph (A));

(2) the term `senior executive’ means–

(A) a member of the Senior Executive Service under subchapter VIII of chapter 53 of title 5, United States Code;

(B) a member of the FBI-DEA Senior Executive Service under subchapter III of chapter 31 of title 5, United States Code;

(C) a member of the Senior Foreign Service under chapter 4 of title I of the Foreign Service Act of 1980 (22 U.S.C. 3961 and following); and

(D) a member of any similar senior executive service in an Executive agency;

(3) the term `senior-level employee’ means an employee who holds a position in an Executive agency and who is covered by section 5376 of title 5, United States Code, or any similar authority; and

(4) the term `Executive agency’ has the meaning given such term by section 105 of title 5, United States Code.

(b)(1) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, except as provided in subsection (e), no statutory pay adjustment which (but for this subsection) would otherwise take effect during the period beginning on January 1, 2011, and ending on December 31, 2012, shall be made.

(2) For purposes of this subsection, the term `statutory pay adjustment’ means–

(A) an adjustment required under section 5303, 5304, 5304a, 5318, or 5343(a) of title 5, United States Code; and

(B) any similar adjustment, required by statute, with respect to employees in an Executive agency.

(c) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, except as provided in subsection (e), during the period beginning on January 1, 2011, and ending on December 31, 2012, no senior executive or senior-level employee may receive an increase in his or her rate of basic pay absent a change of position that results in a substantial increase in responsibility, or a promotion.

(d) The President may issue guidance that Executive agencies shall apply in the implementation of this section.

(e) The Non-Foreign Area Retirement Equity Assurance Act of 2009 (5 U.S.C. 5304 note) shall be applied using the appropriate locality-based comparability payments established by the President as the applicable comparability payments in section 1914(2) and (3) of such Act.

And now you can probably see the rabbit hole into which we are descending. The referenced law is itself full of references to other laws! We won’t go any further down the unraveling; instead I’ll simply explain Sec. 147 to you: certain federal employees, as defined in various sections of the U.S. Code (5 USC 2105; subchapter VIII of chapter 53 of title 5;  subchapter III of chapter 31 of title 5; 22 U.S.C. 3961; and section 5376 of title 5) cannot receive an adjustment in pay during calendar year 2011 or 2012 under the standard annual adjustment system of Title 5 of the code, or any similar statutory adjustment in the Executive Branch agencies. Nor can senior-level employees receive an increase in their basic rate absent a promotion.

And so the bill we are currently working with — which specifies that the relevant end dates of the freeze will be changed from December 31, 2012 to December 31, 2013, simply extends the freeze for an additional calendar year. Ok, on to the next section:

(b) Application to Legislative Branch-

(1) MEMBERS OF CONGRESS- The extension of the pay limit for Federal employees through December 31, 2013, as established pursuant to the amendments made by subsection (a), shall apply to Members of Congress in accordance with section 601(a) of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 (2 U.S.C. 31).

On its face, this subsection seems to simply say that Members of Congress will also not get a pay increase in 2013. But what’s that reference to section 601(a) of the LRA of 1946 and 2 USC 31? It’s a pointer to the section of the Code that says, in reference to the formula for adjusting Member pay:

In no event shall the percentage adjustment taking effect under subparagraph (A) in any calendar year (before rounding), in any rate of pay, exceed the percentage adjustment taking effect in such calendar year under section 5303 of title 5 in the rates of pay under the General Schedule.

In other words, the current bill’s application of the pay freeze to Members is more or less a fig leaf; current law already requires that any increase in Member pay be less than the increase in pay for federal employees. Therefore, the extension of the freeze in subsection 1 automatically extends the freeze on Member pay, regardless of whether subsection B is included. There’s nothing wrong with restating the Member pay freeze, but it is not necessary. (For my previous writing on Member pay, see here.)

As a sidebar, here’s a good question? Why do bills and laws sometimes reference old laws, and sometimes reference the U.S. Code? The answer is that the old laws are legal proof of existing law, but the U.S. Code — which is a compilation and rearrangement of the laws to ease finding and allow for amendments — is not always legal proof of law. Starting in 1926, Congress began enacting whole titles of the Code as “positive law” and repealing the underlying statutes. But only some of the Code has been enacted into positive law. In those cases, bills can directly amend the Code; the Code is law. But for areas that the Code is not yet positive law (such as Title 2), bills must reference the actually Acts, and Code citations are merely for reference.

Alright, onto the next portion of subsection (b):

(2) OTHER LEGISLATIVE BRANCH EMPLOYEES-

(A) LIMIT IN PAY- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no cost of living adjustment required by statute with respect to a legislative branch employee which (but for this subparagraph) would otherwise take effect during the period beginning on the date of enactment of this Act and ending on December 31, 2013, shall be made.

(B) DEFINITION- In this paragraph, the term `legislative branch employee’ means–

(i) an employee of the Federal Government whose pay is disbursed by the Secretary of the Senate or the Chief Administrative Officer of the House of Representatives; and

(ii) an employee of any office of the legislative branch who is not described in clause (i)

This section is, presumably, trying to make sure that the pay freeze extends to the legislative branch. There are many provisions of the U.S Code that deal with the Executive Branch as distinct from the Legislative Branch. Whether the definition of employee under Title 5 falls into this category is debatable; this may be another fig leaf to reiterate that the proposed law is also being applied to congressional employees. But it also may be relevant; there may be employees in the legislative branch who are not covered by the definition of employee under Title 5 (although it doesn’t look that way to me).

Now, the current bill at hand came up today under suspension of the rules, so it was never reported out of committee, and therefore does not have a committee report. If it did have one, the explanation of the bill would likely say something like this:

“Section 1 of the bill would extend the current freeze on federal employee pay adjustments through 2013. The current freeze is set to expire at the end of 2012. It would also specifically apply the freeze to Members of Congress and employees of the Legislative Branch.”

And that is one of the reason why the House requires Committee reports to describe the provisions of reported bills, and more or less all you need to know as to why we don’t require Members to read the actual text of the bill (or certify that they have done so) prior to voting on legislation.