With congressional partisanship at record highs and congressional approval ratings at record lows, the First Branch should consider reform. Two recent white papers (one analyzing the House, the other the Senate) cast light on the nature of the problem. Together they suggest that much power has shifted to the chambers’ leaders, and the legislature has […]
Is the 114th Congress Getting Things Don...
Congress’ Tendency to Cannibalize Itself
Why is Congress loath to increase its staff, and sometimes eager to cut it? Anthony J. Madonna and Ian Ostrander take up this question in a recent conference paper, sardonically titled “A Congress of Cannibals: The Evolution of Professional Staff in Congress.” The authors analyze history and data in an attempt to determine why, despite a one-third growth in […]
Is the House of Representatives Deinstit...
Jeffery A. Jenkins’ and Charles Stewart III’s recently presented an important paper, “The Deinstitutionalization (?) of the House of Representatives.” It re-evaluates Nelson Polsby’s classic analysis that concluded the U.S. House of Representatives was becoming more “institutionalized.” Jenkins (University of Virginia) and Stewart (MIT) argue that some of the trends that Polsby observed have since […]
House Spending Data Show Where the Staff...
As DemandProgress’ Daniel Schuman reports, the House just began publishing its spending reports online as data. The House’s “Statements of Disbursement,” which show who how much money Congress spends on its operations, have been online in PDF format since 2009. Now the statements are available as CSV files, which one can open with Excel or […]
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