One Year Later: Is Congress Still the Broken Branch?

Transcript

TOM MANN:  I think that notion of getting something done, and yet getting no satisfaction of it, in many respects, characterizes the way in which many members of Congress, but certainly those looking on Congress have come to view the first session of Congress. I think part of the problem is the expectations were set extraordinarily high. This was natural given the drama of the election, the fact that Democrats reclaimed the Senate, as well as the House, the belief that the public had turned firmly against the war in Iraq and wanted out. All of these things certainly led to an expectation of great achievements, and yet, underlying that, as any serious observer of Congress knew, were the realities of narrow majorities in the House and the Senate, the routinization of the filibuster in the Senate, the ideological polarization of the parties in Congress and in the country, and a very resolute Republican president in the White House determined to go his way and not the way of the Democratic majority.

. . .On the notion of what did Congress actually accomplish, the sad thing is, Congress is probably best known for what it didn't accomplish, a disengagement from Iraq, immigration reform, a farm bill, the S Chip Program, a full reauthorization and expansion of its stem cell research funding, a permanent fix of the AMT, a timely completion of appropriations bills, the illumination of earmarks; all of that is part of the backdrop. But if you view it in a more realistic sense, say compare 2007 to 1995, you'll find that this Congress aimed lower and achieved more of its explicit legislative objectives than did the 1995 Republican Congress, which shot the moon on a very ambitious agenda, and in its first year, ended up very frustrated by Senate filibusters, presidential vetoes, and government shutdowns that cost them a lot politically. If you look at the indicators in the chart, this was not just a more active session of Congress, it was more productive in terms of the number and nature of serious pieces of legislation actually being signed into law.

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