Congressional Record
Author: United States. Congress
Publisher:
Published: 1968
Total Pages: 1324
ISBN-13:
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Congress Overwhelmed
Author: Timothy M. LaPira
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2020-12-07
Total Pages: 341
ISBN-13: 022670257X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCongress today is falling short. Fewer bills, worse oversight, and more dysfunction. But why? In a new volume of essays, the contributors investigate an underappreciated reason Congress is struggling: it doesn’t have the internal capacity to do what our constitutional system requires of it. Leading scholars chronicle the institutional decline of Congress and the decades-long neglect of its own internal investments in the knowledge and expertise necessary to perform as a first-rate legislature. Today’s legislators and congressional committees have fewer—and less expert and experienced—staff than the executive branch or K Street. This leaves them at the mercy of lobbyists and the administrative bureaucracy. The essays in Congress Overwhelmed assess Congress’s declining capacity and explore ways to upgrade it. Some provide broad historical scope. Others evaluate the current decay and investigate how Congress manages despite the obstacles. Collectively, they undertake the most comprehensive, sophisticated appraisal of congressional capacity to date, and they offer a new analytical frame for thinking about—and improving—our underperforming first branch of government.
Act of Congress
Author: Robert G. Kaiser
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2014-01-28
Total Pages: 466
ISBN-13: 0307744515
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA Washington Post Notable Book An eye-opening account of how Congress today really works—and how it doesn’t— Act of Congress focuses on two of the major players behind the sweeping financial reform bill enacted in response to the Great Crash of 2008: colorful, wisecracking congressman Barney Frank, and careful, insightful senator Christopher Dodd, both of whom met regularly with Robert G. Kaiser during the eighteen months they worked on the bill. In this compelling narrative, Kaiser shows how staffers play a critical role, drafting the legislation and often making the crucial deals. Kaiser’s rare insider access enabled him to illuminate the often-hidden intricacies of legislative enterprise and shows us the workings of Congress in all of its complexity, a clearer picture than any we have had of how Congress works best—or sometimes doesn’t work at all.
Committees and the Decline of Lawmaking in Congress
Author: Jonathan Lewallen
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 2020-08-14
Total Pages: 191
ISBN-13: 0472132067
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe public, journalists, and legislators themselves have often lamented a decline in congressional lawmaking in recent years, often blaming party politics for the lack of legislative output. In Committees and the Decline of Lawmaking in Congress, Jonathan Lewallen examines the decline in lawmaking from a new, committee-centered perspective. Lewallen tests his theory against other explanations such as partisanship and an increased demand for oversight with multiple empirical tests and traces shifts in policy activity by policy area using the Policy Agendas Project coding scheme. He finds that because party leaders have more control over the legislative agenda, committees have spent more of their time conducting oversight instead. Partisanship alone does not explain this trend; changes in institutional rules and practices that empowered party leaders have created more uncertainty for committees and contributed to a shift in their policy activities. The shift toward oversight at the committee level combined with party leader control over the voting agenda means that many members of Congress are effectively cut out of many of the institution’s policy decisions. At a time when many, including Congress itself, are considering changes to modernize the institution and keep up with a stronger executive branch, the findings here suggest that strengthening Congress will require more than running different candidates or providing additional resources.
Inside Congress
Author: Trevor Corning
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Published: 2017-07-25
Total Pages: 76
ISBN-13: 0815727348
DOWNLOAD EBOOKRequired reading for anyone who wants to understand how to work within Congress. The House and Senate have unique rules and procedures to determine how legislation moves from a policy idea to law. Evolved over the last 200 years, the rules of both chambers are designed to act as the engine for that process. Each legislative body has its own leadership positions to oversee this legislative process. To the novice, whether a newly elected representative, a lawmaker's staff on her first day at work, or a constituent visiting Washington, the entire process can seem incomprehensible. What is an open rule for a House Appropriations bill and how does it affect consideration? Why are unanimous consent agreements needed in the Senate? The authors of Inside Congress, all congressional veterans, have written the definitive guide to how Congress really works. It is the accessible and necessary resource to understanding and interpreting procedural tools, arcane precedents, and the role of party politics in the making of legislation in Congress.
Congress at War
Author: Fergus M. Bordewich
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2020
Total Pages: 493
ISBN-13: 045149444X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe story of how Congress helped win the Civil War-placing a dynamic House and Senate, rather than Lincoln, at the center of the conflict.
Congress
Author: David R. Mayhew
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2004-11-10
Total Pages: 220
ISBN-13: 9780300130010
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"Any short list of major analyses of Congress must of necessity include David Mayhew’s Congress: The Electoral Connection." —Fred Greenstein In this second edition to a book that has achieved canonical status, David R. Mayhew argues that the principal motivation of legislators is reelection and that the pursuit of this goal affects the way they behave and the way that they make public policy. In a new foreword for this edition, R. Douglas Arnold discusses why the book revolutionized the study of Congress and how it has stood the test of time.
Congress's Constitution
Author: Joshua Aaron Chafetz
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2017-01-01
Total Pages: 449
ISBN-13: 0300197101
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- PART ONE: SEPARATION-OF-POWERS MULTIPLICITY -- Prelude -- 1 Political Institutions in the Public Sphere -- 2 The Role of Congress -- PART TWO: CONGRESSIONAL HARD POWERS -- 3 The Power of the Purse -- 4 The Personnel Power -- 5 Contempt of Congress -- PART THREE: CONGRESSIONAL SOFT POWERS -- 6 The Freedom of Speech or Debate -- 7 Internal Discipline -- 8 Cameral Rules -- Conclusion: Toward a Normative Evaluation -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z
Legislative Effectiveness in the United States Congress
Author: Craig Volden
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2014-10-27
Total Pages: 261
ISBN-13: 0521761522
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book explores why some members of Congress are more effective than others at navigating the legislative process and what this means for how Congress is organized and what policies it produces. Craig Volden and Alan E. Wiseman develop a new metric of individual legislator effectiveness (the Legislative Effectiveness Score) that will be of interest to scholars, voters, and politicians alike. They use these scores to study party influence in Congress, the successes or failures of women and African Americans in Congress, policy gridlock, and the specific strategies that lawmakers employ to advance their agendas.
The Pig Book
Author: Citizens Against Government Waste
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2005-04-06
Total Pages: 212
ISBN-13: 9780312343576
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA compendium of the most ridiculous examples of Congress's pork-barrel spending.
