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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.
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.
"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.
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
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.
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