Congressional Productivity

by | Dec 28, 2025 | Congress, House of Representatives, Senate

Paul Kane at WP: With fewer than 40 bills signed into law as of Monday, the House and Senate set a modern record for lowest legislative output in the first year of a new presidency, according to data maintained by C-SPAN and Purdue University. Despite that lack of...

Not Your Founders’ Senate

by | Oct 31, 2025 | Congress, Senate, Separation of Powers

Don Wolfensberger writes that there are four key things to consider in determining how much the Senate has deviated from its originally planned track. First, the Senate is not, as it might claim, the world’s greatest deliberative body. Deliberation has gone the way of...

Maggie Hassan

by | Oct 20, 2025 | Congress, Disabilities, Senate

Zachary Schermele at  USA TODAY: For New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan, it felt personal watching more than 120 jobs tied to special education disappear during the U.S. government shutdown.   President Donald Trump ordered massive layoffs across the federal...

Blue Slips

by | Aug 21, 2025 | Judiciary, Senate

Don Wolfensberger at The Hill: President Trump set two confirmation process records during the first 200 days of his second non-consecutive term. According to Chris Piper of Brookings, based on data compiled by his colleague Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, Trump submitted more...

Rule of Five, Rule of Seven

by | Aug 9, 2025 | Congress, House of Representatives, Senate

Don Wolfensberger at The Hill: For nearly three decades I labored in the congressional vineyards of rules, procedures, norms and reforms. And, in all that time, until last week, I had never heard of a law creating the Senate rule of five or the House rule of seven....