Congressional dysfunction is often treated as a technical problem in search of the right procedural fix. James Wallner argues that this diagnosis gets the problem backward. Congress works when lawmakers confront disagreement through debate, amendments, bargaining, and compromise—not when reforms try to engineer politics out of the legislative process.
Read MoreCongress cannot produce meaningful compromise by suppressing political conflict. James Wallner argues that open debate, amendments, and genuine legislative fights reveal where compromise is possible and give the resulting decisions legitimacy. To make Congress work again, lawmakers must restore the deliberative process that allows disagreement to play out.
Read MoreCongress’s dysfunction is not caused by too much factional conflict, but by too little of it. James Wallner and Soren Dayton argue that stronger factions can give rank-and-file lawmakers the leverage to challenge centralized leadership, force real debate, and make Congress work as a legislature again.
Read MoreCongress has little time to avoid a government shutdown. The House and Senate have passed competing CRs - and now must resolve their differences before September 30.
Read MoreSenate Republicans could allow President Trump to use recess appointments to fill vacancies and free up scarce floor time. The procedure is available. Republicans control both chambers. The question is why they prefer not to use it.
Read MoreThe Senate’s marathon session before the August recess demonstrated that senators can overcome obstruction when they decide unfinished business must be completed. Republicans could have approached the SAVE America Act the same way.
Read MoreLindsey Graham’s death leaves vacancies on four major Senate committees, including Budget. The choices Republicans make to fill them could shape reconciliation this year and control of the Judiciary Committee next Congress.
Read MoreMike Lee isn’t asking John Thune to do something extraordinary. He’s asking Senate Republicans to use the chamber’s rules as senators used them for most of its history: bring up the bill, keep it on the floor, make opponents sustain their obstruction, and vote when debate ends.
Read MoreAmerican self-government wasn't born on July 4, 1776. It was born over the eleven contentious years before it, in the colonial assemblies and town meetings where Americans first learned to govern themselves, and in the dispute-by-dispute fight with Parliament over who had the right to decide their laws and taxes.
Read MoreTrump’s success—like Cleveland’s—is a sobering wake-up call for America’s political and pundit class to rethink many of their own biases.
Read More
