by jpitney | Oct 2, 2021 | Congress, Deliberation, House of Representatives
Don Wolfensberger at The Hill: By attempting to short-circuit and compress committee and floor workloads, Congress is losing both its deliberative capacity and its ability to provide a proper check on the executive branch. The longer-term danger is that such truncated...
by jpitney | Sep 28, 2021 | Civility, Congress, House of Representatives
A 9/24 release from the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress Today, Chair Derek Kilmer (D-WA) and Vice Chair William Timmons (R-SC) of the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress (“Select Committee”) held a hearing on how to empower members of...
by jpitney | Sep 27, 2021 | Congress, Constitution, Polarization, Virtue
Robert Kagan at The Washington Post: In recent decades, however, party loyalty has superseded branch loyalty, and never more so than in the Trump era. As the two Trump impeachments showed, if members of Congress are willing to defend or ignore the president’s actions...
by jpitney | Sep 26, 2021 | Civility, Congress
Sarah D. Wire at LAT: A few months ago, Rep. Norma Torres (D-Pomona) received an anonymous video of someone following her car. The camera pans down to a 9-millimeter handgun on the seat as a male voice says: “I see you. I got something for you.” In June, police...
by jpitney | Sep 24, 2021 | Bipartisanship, Budget, Congress
Lara Brown at The Hill: Backlash is real. Democrats should not fool themselves into believing that passing a massive $3.5 trillion plan that provides Americans with government benefits from “cradle to grave” will be seen by the public as a good thing. Americans are...
by jpitney | Sep 23, 2021 | Congress, Constitution
A September 16 letter to Majority Leader Schumer, Minority Leader McConnell, Speaker Pelosi, and Minority Leader McCarthy: Following the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, we are writing to urge you, as leaders of Congress, to address the...
