To what extent has Congress become a 'broken branch' (30)

Question 1

INTRO

Answer 1

Congress is broken branch. Point to Mann and Ornstein - no longer fulfilling it’s functions of representation, legislation and oversight. However, been weakly argued that gridlock and hurdles is what was intended. It is broken, but not beyond repair

Question 2

para 1 theme

Answer 2

representation

Question 3

para 2 theme

Answer 3

legislation

Question 4

para 3 theme

Answer 4

oversight

Question 5

para 1 - representation

Answer 5

Not descriptively representative. 27% of the House and 24% of the Senate are female, compared to 50.8% of society as a whole. 23% of the House and Senate are of an ethnic minority, compared to 38% nationally.
House elections are every 2 years, so Reps are solely concerned with re-election. Legislators spend as much as 50% of their time in office fundraising for re-election. Congress members are therefore overly concerned with pleasing rich donors rather their constituents e.g. Charles Schumer (Senate Majority Leader) has long been an advocate for the defence of wall street and it has helped him raise $62.2 million, 27% of which came from finance, insurance and real estate companies.
- Interest groups and their large memberships can also influence congress members. Despite over 90% of Americans supporting mandatory background checks on anyone buying a firearm, a bill to introduce the measure was defeated in the Senate by a Republican filibuster in 2013. This was due to extensive lobbying by the NRA. Obama said that senators were “worried that the gun lobby would spend a lot of money and paint them as anti-second amendment”.

Question 6

para 1 - however

Answer 6

• Minority groups representation is on rise. 145 women in the 117th Congress, whilst there were 17 in the 96th Congress (1979-81). 124 lawmakers are of an ethnic minority, compared to 63 in the 107th Congress of 2001.
  
  • US citizens are content in the way in which they are being represented. 2016 poll found that 46 of 100 senators had approval ratings of 50% of higher.
  • Gridlock over controversial issues like Obamacare could be argued as being Congress representing an ideologically split nation
    Congress members have been concerned with ‘bringing home the bacon’, securing projects which are seen as necessary by their constituents, such as Boston’s Big Dig in 2003.

Question 7

para 1 - rebuttal

Answer 7

• Congress Members simply not concerned with focusing time with their constituents.
  
  • Earmarking, although argued as being representative, simply “greases the wheels” and encourages elitism and wastefulness.
  • The importance of money simply outweighs the incentive to represent constituents
  • Gerrymandering and incumbency advantage provides no incentive for them to be representative. Longest serving House Rep (John Dingell, Democrat) served as Michigan House Rep for 59 years and 21 days.
    LOA - Broken Branch. However, general trends suggest that this is improving, which may suggest that it is not beyond repair.

Question 8

para 2 - legislation

Answer 8

• Legislation must be agreed upon by both houses, making legislation very difficult, E.g. There was a partisan divide over the implementation of the ‘Patient Protection and the Affordable Care Act’, which led to a 16 day shutdown during the Obama administration. This in fact gained zero votes from the Republicans
  
  • In the 113th Congress (2012-14), Representatives voted with their party party 92% of the time, while Democrats in the Senate reached a figure of 94%
  • Having a majority in Congress is crucial. When the Democrats lost the House in 2010 and Senate in 2014, legislation became practically impossible. In this period, Congress was one of the most unproductive of all time, passing 296 pieces of legislation. This is in comparison to the do-nothing Congress of 1948, which was criticised after passing 906 bills.
    The use of filibuster has meant that practically every vote needs a supermajority. This is because stopping a filibuster requires 60 senators to support a closure motion, which considering the 50/50 split in the current Senate would not practically happen. In fact, from 1917-1970, the closure procedure was only used 8 times. It was this exact method that was used by Republicans to block background checks on buying weapons. Many attempts have been made to remove the filibuster, including on November 21st 2013.

Question 9

para 2 - however

Answer 9

• Idea of ‘compromise, compromise, compromise’ (madison). Madison also argued that the existence of supermajorities was a “shield to some particular interests, and another obstacle generally to hasty and partial methods”. FF Alexander Hamilton mentioned how they were necessary as they “established a salutary check upon the legislative body”.
  
  • Filibusters ensure that the minority party is able to influence legislation, once again avoiding this tyranny of the majority.
  • Filibusters ensure that the governing party has to compromise or face gridlock. This is in comparison to alternative use of budget reconciliation bills, which can only debate for 20 hours and need only a simple ,majority, meaning that the majority party will easily dominate the party in the minority.
    Congress is still able to pass legislation. E.g. CRA was passed into law on July 2nd 1964, and prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin. Furthermore, legislation like the ACA (2010) and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009) have also passed despite an age of partisanship.

Question 10

para 2 - rebuttal

Answer 10

• The ‘barriers to passing legislation are substantial’ as theorist Loomis argues. Congress had a 2% bill success in 2012. The 116th Congress passed a measly 344 pieces of enacted legislation, compared to the 804 pieces in the 95th Congress (1977-Oct 1978).
  LOA - Congress is broken branch. However, the fact that attempts have been made to try and fix the dysfunctional nature of legislating may suggest that reform is viable.

Question 11

para 3 - oversight

Answer 11

• Oversight should involve the prevention of wasteful spending, the protection of liberties and rights, the insurance that there is compliance with the law, the gathering of information for laws and the evaluation of executive performance. Congress does not successfully fulfil these.
  
  • Oversight is dependant on the power of the President and whether or not they control Congress. For example, during the premiership of George W Bush, the Republicans would hold a majority in both houses until January 2007. As a result Congressional oversight became non-existent. Between 2003 and 2005, the senate armed services committee held no hearing on combat operations in Afghanistan and only 9 on Iraq, making up a minute 9% of their total overall hearings. This would be explained in Ornstein and Mann’s “when Congress checks out” (2006). There were 37 investigation hearings between 2003-04, a drastic drop-off from the 135 in 1993-94.
    Inefficiencies in the senate at oversight. They have ignored their duty of giving advice and consent on appointments. For example, after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in Feb 2016, the republicans hastily announced they would not even consider the nomination of Merrick Garland, despite him being an excellent choice and having previously received praise from Senate Republicans. This was totally ideologically driven. They would then fast track the conservative nomination of Amy Coney-Barratt. Between 1949-2013, 168 presidential nominees were filibustered, with a whopping 82 being used during the Obama administration.

Question 12

para 3 - however

Answer 12

• When Bush lost both houses in the 2006 mid terms, the number of hearing about combat operations increased dramatically. There were almost 100 hearings on the Iraq War in the first two months alone.
  
  • Select committees have also carried out many important hearings and investigations. The select committee on campaign practices would carry out the most infamous hearing into the Watergate scandal in 1973. The investigations were highly successful and led to. Several conviction and Nixon’s resignation. There were also successful hearings in October 2013 over helathcare.gov. (platform that wasted $300 million). Resulted in the resignation of Kathleen Sebelius.
    Committees can still be seen as crucial when it comes to oversight. Their use of subpoenas to call individuals to be witnesses and give evidence gives their investigations have been very successful.

Question 13

para 3 - rebuttal

Answer 13

• Investigations are simply ideological point scoring. For example, the ‘select committee on Benghazi’, established in 2014 in response to an attack on a US diplomatic compound, was heavily criticised by Democrats. They claimed it was not oversight and there had been nine different House and Senate committee investigations, 17 hearings and 6 reports on Benghazi, none of which had upheld the claim that the Obama administration had misled the public over the cause and nature of the attack.
  LOA - Congress is broken branch. However, effective oversight is not an alien concept therefore suggesting that reform is still viable