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Put the people back in the People’s Hous

Put the people back in the People’s House

The Social Security Administration’s latest report confirms that retirement benefits will have to be cut in 12 years. Far more money is going out of Social Security than is coming in. Over the next three decades, benefits will outstrip revenues by $21 trillion. Congress needs to do something or retirees will face a 23% cut […]

The congressional fight over the House S...

The congressional fight over the House Speakership was a good thing

Now that a couple of weeks have passed and the noise has begun to subside, we can take a broader view of what McCarthy’s election suggests about Congress and the state of American politics. The media had it wrong: to equate Mr. McCarthy’s struggles to win the Speakership with political dysfunction is to grossly misunderstand […]

Can we put to rest the myth that Congres...

Can we put to rest the myth that Congress is broken and gridlocked?

Last week, I attended a closed-door event that featured a speech by someone who works in state politics. He held forth quite thoughtfully and exuded an energetic mix of angst and hope for the future of our constitutional republic. The audience was rapt, most likely because we shared his concern about the health of our representative […]

Can the House Freedom Caucus revive the ...

Can the House Freedom Caucus revive the ‘People’s House’?

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the Speaker in waiting, reportedly has promised to shift some power over policymaking back to committees. This is good to hear. The history of the House of Representatives over the past 50 years is a story of power flowing upward to the Speaker.  As Don Wolfensberger recently pointed out in this publication, for much of the […]

Democrats are fooling themselves about t...

Democrats are fooling themselves about the midterms

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)