In his thirty-year career representing the citizens of New Mexico in the US Senate, Jeff Bingaman witnessed great things accomplished through the legislative process. He also had a front-row seat for the breakdown of governing norms and the radical increases in polarization and partisanship that now plague what was once called the world's greatest deliberative body. Breakdown: Lessons for a Congress in Crisis traces the development of congressional dysfunction over more than three decades and provides eight case studies that examine how the crisis affects our government's ability to meet major policy challenges. The case studies include catalyzing a robust economy, confronting climate change, improving health care, fixing education, preserving public lands, and avoiding unnecessary wars. Presenting insightful analysis of the causes and consequences of the dysfunction in Congress, Breakdown shows how Congress fails at the tasks Americans expect it to perform and, more importantly, how it might begin again to succeed.

The Broken Branch offers both a brilliant diagnosis of the cause of Congressional decline and a much-needed blueprint for change, from two experts who understand politics and revere our institutions, but believe that Congress has become deeply dysfunctional. Mann and Ornstein, two of the nation's most renowned and judicious scholars of government and politics, bring to light the historical roots of Congress's current maladies, examining 40 years of uninterrupted Democratic control of the House and the stunning midterm election victory of 1994 that propelled Republicans into the majority in both House and Senate. The byproduct of that long and grueling but ultimately successful Republican campaign, the authors reveal, was a weakened institution bitterly divided between the parties. They highlight the dramatic shift in Congress from a highly decentralized, committee-based institution into a much more regimented one in which party increasingly trumps committee. The resultant changes in the policy process-the demise of regular order, the decline of deliberation, and the weakening of our system of checks and balances-have all compromised the role of Congress in the American Constitutional system. From tax cuts to the war against Saddam Hussein to a Medicare prescription drug benefit, the Legislative process has been bent to serve immediate presidential interests and have often resulted in poorly crafted and stealthily passed laws. Strong majority leadership in Congress, the authors conclude, led not to a vigorous exertion of congressional authority but to a general passivity in the face of executive power.

The devastating and politically consequential defeat of President Clinton's comprehensive health plan in Congress has unleashed a torrent of speculation over " who or what killed reform." One class of explanation deals with the institutional arrangements by which policy is made in the United States and, more specifically, with the rules and organization of Congress. This volume weighs the importance of Congress in the failure to enact health reform by examining more broadly how Congress shapes health policy--on matters ranging from ambitious plans to achieve universal health insurance coverage to annual appropriations for public health agencies. Part One examines how Congress has organized and equipped itself to make health policy. Individual chapters consider how committee jurisdictions, budgeting procedures, information, and oversight influence health policymaking. Part Two uses recent health policy episodes--the 1988-89 adoption and repeal of Medicare catastrophic coverage and the 1993-94 failure to pass national health reform--to generalize about how process shapes policy. This book is a product of the Renewing Congress Project, a joint undertaking of the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute. The contributors include C. Lawrence Evans, College of William and Mary; Mark Nadel, General Accounting Office; Julie Rovner, freelance health policy writer; and Allen Schick and Joseph White, Brookings. Copublished with the American Enterprise Institute

"Vital Statistics on Congress" remains the quintessential source of authoritative information on America's legislature. This important series tracks the elements that define and describe Congress in the post?World War II era, and in this new edition, three of America's most esteemed political analysts extend their examination through the 109th Congress. They combine historical context with insightful analysis and copious data to produce a valuable and authoritative picture of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Norman Ornstein, Thomas Mann, and Michael Malbin track the changing makeup of Congress through history and across several dimensions, such as region, party, occupation, religion, committee assignments, staff size, and political stances. They document trends in critical areas such as voter turnout, ticket splitting, incumbency and turnover, and margin of victory. The authors, acknowledged experts in campaign finance, provide detailed information on candidate, party, and PAC spending. The material presented in l "Statistics on Congress 2008 rev r"eveals a fascinating and important picture of America's chosen representatives, as politicians and as people. It will be an important addition to the bookshelves of media, political professionals, scholars and their students, and political junkies everywhere.

In recent years Congress has been in a state of siege. The healthy skepticism that had long characterized public attitudes toward Congress degenerated into corrosive cynicism. The reservoir of support among political elites appears to have collapsed as well. Part of the explanation for this growing public hostility lies in objective conditions: stagnant wages, huge budget deficits, sustained divided government, scandals and deadlock on Capitol Hill. But another important factor may be how Congress is presented to and interpreted for the broader public. This book explores the connections between Congress, the press, and the public. Public opinion scholars analyze historical data to discern trends in and sources of public hostility toward Congress. Media specialists examine patterns of congressional coverage in national print and television news and attitudes toward Congress among producers, editors, and reporters. And students of Congress explore the tools and techniques leaders and rank-and-file members use in presenting themselves and their institution to the public. The book concludes by assessing the role the media plays in presenting Congress to the public and what the media and Congress might do to improve public understanding. The contributors are Herb Asher and Michael Barr, Ohio State University; Karlyn Bowman and Kimberly Coursen, the American Enterprise Institute; Ronald D. Elving, Congressional Quarterly; Stephen Hess, Brookings; Karl Kurtz, National Conference of State Legislatures; Everett Carll Ladd, The Roper Center; Robert Lichter, Center for Media and Public Policy; and Mark J. Rozell, Mary Washington College. This book is the third in a series by the Renewing CongressProject, a joint effort of the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution. The previous volumes are Renewing Congress: A First Report and Renewing Congress: A Second Report.

American democracy was never supposed to give the nation a president like Donald Trump. We have never had a president who gave rise to such widespread alarm about his lack of commitment to the institutions of self-government, to the norms democracy requires, and to the need for basic knowledge about how government works. We have never had a president who raises profound questions about his basic competence and his psychological capacity to take on the most challenging political office in the world. Yet if Trump is both a threat to our democracy and a product of its weaknesses, the citizen activism he has inspired is the antidote. The reaction to the crisis created by Trump's presidency can provide the foundation for an era of democratic renewal and vindicate our long experiment in self-rule. The award-winning authors of One Nation After Trump explain Trump's rise and the danger his administration poses to our free institutions. They also offer encouragement to the millions of Americans now experiencing a new sense of citizenship and engagement and argue that our nation needs a unifying alternative to Trump's dark and divisive brand of politics - an alternative rooted in a New Economy, a New Patriotism, a New Civil Society, and a New Democracy. One Nation After Trump is the essential book for our era, an unsparing assessment of the perils facing the United States and an inspiring roadmap for how we can reclaim the future.