what's The u.s. congress class like? Listen in...
 

Menefee-Libey: ... Let’s talk first about the structure of the papers you’re writing. You need to give an overview of Sinclair’s general analysis about how these broad trends in Congress and society—the increasing polarization of political parties, reforms of congressional procedures, the creation of the budget process—have led to unorthodoxy, to the increasing likelihood that Congress is not going to follow the conventional textbook legislative process. Those trends trigger urgency for the majority to legislate, but you also learned in Davidson and Oleszek about multiple veto points and how the minority can kill legislation at any time—that no matter how urgent something is, it’s difficult to do if you follow the conventional process. What do you think Sinclair means when she talks about the specific triggers that cause unorthodox lawmaking?

Jessica: As far as high salience, budget and appropriations bills because they have to be passed.

M-L: The budget process is now mandated and you have to pass specific appropriations. Are you referring to something that was part of a standard appropriation or was thrown in just to get it on the train before it left the station?

Jessica: I looked at the Budget Act of 1995 and the Reconciliation Bill of 1997– there was a lot of pork thrown in. There were some pretty big issues. ...

M-L: ... The issues were urgent to the leadership of the majority party or specific members?

Jessica: The majority party.

M-L: That folds exactly into Sinclair’s stuff.

Elizabeth: Do you have to stick with only unorthodox things you find that Sinclair mentions?

M-L: Talk about that a little bit. You mentioned in an e-mail the other day that you found some examples of unorthodoxy that Sinclair doesn’t raise.

Elizabeth: There were some subtle changes, but most of it happened when the Bush administration started lobbying specific congressmen, and there were some underhanded deals that came out later. They also tried to force another bill through to get momentum.

M-L: And this was in ’04–05?

Elizabeth: CAFTA. ’05.

M-L: So we’re talking about the Central American Free Trade Agreement that passed by one or two votes in the House, just barely. They were throwing the kitchen sink in it at the end.

Elizabeth: It had a huge effect on the outcome.

M-L: But it’s not Sinclair’s stuff. I think you should throw it in. It might require a few sentences justifying why you would call these things unorthodox. You can certainly make that argument. The rest of you may find there are things in the spirit of what Sinclair is arguing that are not necessarily on her lists. Sinclair may revise the book soon, so if you can make the case that these other things follow the spirit of her idea of unorthodoxy, I can send it to her. I talked to her between the first and second editions and told her students were writing case-study papers about it and she thought that was kind of cool. ...

M-L: ... I want to talk about the last chapter of Sinclair’s book where she discusses the implications of unorthodoxy—the “so what?” question. She’s going back to some extent to what Mann and Ornstein were saying about bad legislative process leading to bad policy. Do you think that argument is right?

Scott: She seems a lot less critical. I think she says it arises from necessity more than Mann and Ornstein do. I don’t know that they see it happening from necessity as much as it is a lack of willingness to compromise. I don’t think she buys into that.

M-L: I think that’s fair.

Andrew: Sinclair spends a lot of time in the first chapters of her book explaining the origins not so much of unorthodox lawmaking but the triggers that caused it. In the Mann and Ornstein book, it’s about the history of how things got worse without really explaining why.

M-L: Do you end up where Scott does? Is she less negative?

Andrew: I think so. She says there’s been polarization but talks about a lot of things that, almost out of necessity, caused these things to happen. It’s almost logical. I don’t want to say that Mann and Ornstein are surprised by what happened, but they’re certainly more emotional.

M-L: They’re certainly offended. She’s less offended. Is hers a better book to close the semester with? If you close with Mann and Ornstein, people will be pretty pessimistic. Sinclair says, OK, so it’s a rough time, we’re going to be OK. ...

Joseph: ... She makes a point at the end that maybe there are some good things about this too; that maybe the party that is the most intense about issues is going to come out as the winner in the end. She also talks about the fact that passing fewer bills overall isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I think it’s a more balanced view.

M-L: What’s changed is that 15 years ago when you would read the conclusions of books like this, there was often this conversation about the tension between accountability and responsibility. On the one hand, members of Congress had to be accountable to their constituencies and had to be able to get themselves elected and reelected. On the other hand, they were responsible for governing and making law and, sometimes in order to do one thing, they had to ignore the other. The idea was that one of the most corrosive challenges to responsible, good policy-making was how all these people were running for reelection and how that was the most corrosive influence. There has been this shift in the last 10 or 12 years where the thinking is that the most corrosive influence is that they are so polarized that they are more interested in beating each other than they are in making good government policy. I think that, to some extent, Sinclair is still in this old school, where she is saying that if you give these people authority to make policy and do it responsibly, they’re going to be able to work out legislation that is acceptable in terms of quality. She certainly doesn’t like how ugly it’s become, but I don’t think she’s as terrified that it’s going to destroy the world. ...