The Senate Armed Services Committee and defense budget making: The role ofdeference, dollars, and ideology

This study focuses on the effects of the military industrial complex (MIC) versus member ideology in congressional defense policy making during the fi nal decades of the Cold War era. Specifically, we examine defense support i n the Senate Armed Services Committee from 1971 through 1989. The MIC is me asured by the impact of defense spending in the economy of individual state s Each senator is given a committee defense rating (CDR) score, derived fro m his level of support for additional defense spending. We find significant effects for party (Republicans scoring a higher CDR), presidential control (president's party members score higher, independent of party), and member ideology (conservatives scoring higher), but no effect for the level of de fense spending in a state. By using a new measure of defense support and fo cusing attention on a different locus of decision making, we are able to pr ovide strong support for previous findings that indicate a minimal impact o f the MIC.