Recent Democratic rhetoric and the longer history of Congress and midterm elections remind us that parties on their way to losing congressional majorities often talk the following way about their legislative agendas: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York declared last week that the party-line passage of the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act… (Read more)
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What is Final Four Voting?
Does the House need so many rules?
The other week I found myself testifying before the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress. Someone on the committee had seen my column grousing about the crazy process used to pass a half billion debt increase last autumn. I was asked to show up and discuss why I thought the People’s House was drowning in a surfeit of […]
How did James Madison think about congre...
The significance of James Madison’s contributions to creating our representative democracy cannot be overstated. He saw the troubles of the first union as a member of the Congress of the Confederation. He was a major player at the Constitutional Convention, and wrote the Federalist Papers to get the new federal charter ratified. Subsequently, Madison helped […]
Kosar testimony on the Excessively Compl...
How does a bill become a law? These days, it rarely is the “regular order” style described by School House Rock. On July 28, 2022, I testified on the prolixity of House rules for legislating and on the peculiar fact that they so often are waved.
Kosar discussion with Postmaster General...
On July 27, 2022, Louis DeJoy, the 75th Postmaster General of the United States, visited AEI to give a speech, and to sit for a question and answer session with me.