Pollsess pulls poorly poorly and this trend is bipartisan. Democrats and republicans, most assignment a failing grade. Over the past decade, congress has not once approved in Approval Rating over 30 . Congresss 990s, Approval Ratings were in the 40s and the 50s. Today, they are in the teens and 20s. Once thought to be the great repository of americas republican principles, it is now a broken branch. Why has Congress Come to this point . Martha causes . Has anything changed since trumps election and the democratic takeover of the house . Can this state of affairs be changed . To answer this question, we have assembled a distinguished panel of experts on congress with a variety of perspectives and i will introduce them quickly in alphabetical order. I will introduce them all so we can launch into their remarks. Our first speaker is catherine pearson, associate professor of Political Science at the university of minnesota. She worked for several years as an assistant to several members of congress. Party the author of discipline in the house of representatives, published by the university of michigan press. It is a very good book. Next, molly reynolds, a senior fellow at the brookings institution. Her research focuses on congressional role in policy dr. Reynolds will be followed by matthew spalding, Vice President of washington operations and professor of constitutional governance. Dean of the panhandle graduate school. He is the editor of heritage guide to the constitution and the author of several books. Least will be james wallner, senior fellow in governance at the r street institute, where he writes on the senate and on legislative procedure and separation of powers. He is the author of two books on congress. Most recently, on paul or mentor he wore. Policy conflict and procedural change in the u. S. Senate. ,e will hear initial remarks then exchange from the panel, followed by your questions. First up is catherine. Much and thankry you to the Claremont Institute. I am happy to be on this panel. We could talk all day about what is wrong with congress but we will limit our remarks. It is important to note that much of what is wrong with congress did not start in the 115th or 116th congress, but there have been trends building for a long time. It is likely that most of us will talk about the increase in partisanship and everything that has come along with it. We have heightened partisanship, partisan polarization and intense Party Competition in the congress and that has made it more difficult for members to work across the aisle. There is some real policy disagreement. Liberals and conservatives differ on key issues and key values, but there is much more to it than that. There is little ideological overlap between the parties and they differ on issues not related to conservative or liberal values. Areuse of the way voters less likely to split tickets and the incumbency has dropped to nearly zero despite comments being routinely reelected, numbers of congress do not have many incentives to work with members across the aisle. In 2018, House Democrats voted together on average 89 of the time, House Republicans on average, 91 of the time. And senatecrats, 87 republicans, 92 . These were not even the high watermarks. We are looking at a very partisan house and senate. The rise of Party Competition is another dynamic. In a narrowly divided country, with fewer voters splitting their ticket, 95 voted for their partys congressional candidates in the 2018 midterm. There are only 31 house districts that were won by ocrats in 20 not only are we narrowly divided, but members do not have incentive to work with the other party in this trend of partisanship has been building since the 1970s. Fewer members today are institutionalists than in previous years and that goes for both parties. My book on Party Discipline in the house of representatives shows the ways in which Party Leaders reward members for Party Loyalty. Not even necessarily for having good ideas, although that can help, but Party Leaders are more like me to give those that vote with their party, use partisan rhetoric on the house floor, support their party in efforts when it comes to committee transfers, when it comes to getting legislation on the house floor. We know that Party Loyalty is very important. Most members have incentives that are constituent based to be loyal. This has been combined with a decline of Committee Power and expertise and the rise of intraparty factions. We all know the story of the reforms of the 1970s, which increased the power of Party Leaders in the Democratic Caucus and the rank and file members at the expense of committee chairs. Inse trends were magnified 1995, when republicans took over congress, but today we are at an interesting part. Political scientists talk about power as pendulum. Committee chairs were powerful during the textbook era. Leaders became powerful in the 1970s, intensifying in the 1990s. With, as we have seen speaker ryan and to some extent, leader pelosi, leaders are struggling with their own intraparty factions. Committees do not have what they need, but leaders have a hard time, because many of the incentives have changed. More members of congress are interested in tweeting out symbolic policy positions than being institutionalists. Declineying this is a in regular order. Members have fewer opportunities to take part in the legislative office with many more closed rules, where they are not participating in committees and it is easy to see how members are incentivized to communicate rather than legislate. Isther problem with congress its lack of responsiveness to Public Opinion and major problems. That is not to say that the 115th congress did not pass some important provisions. The extended antiterrorism surveillance authorities, rollback dodd frank relations, passed a law fighting opioid abuse and criminal justice rehabilitation. If you look at the most recent pew survey on the problems facing america that people care about, no matter what their position is, it is clear that congress is not responding to these issues. Immigration, health care, climate change, guns. Another thing i want to focus on briefly, which is not a new problem and congress is doing better on, but is still a problem is that congress is not representative of the u. S. Population when it comes to gender, race and ethnicity and class. We know from Political Science research that this representation is linked to representation. Women who areies, represented by members of Congress Share characteristics with them are more likely to be engaged in the process. The 116th congress is the high watermark in terms of representation, but still falls well short of the population, with the house comprised of 20 republican women are dramatically underrepresented. Latinx members of congress. Underrepresentation of every group except for highly educated older white men. Capacity,mes to staff it is more difficult to maintain quality of staff. Along with others on the panel a this room, i am part of task force on congressional reform. One of the things the task force has been looking at his staff retention and diversity. We know that there is more turnover than there used to be and Staff Members are leaving to do things that are more lucrative, including lobbying and Interest Groups. These trends have been brewing, so we cant say that they all changed with the election of president trump. In many ways, they have been on display and the weakness of congress as an institution has been on display. Membersdont just have of congress communicating via twitter, the president and members of congress are communicating via twitter. It is unusual to have a president who is so unengaged in policymaking, particularly under unified Party Control in the last congress, we saw how that hurt republican efforts to get a policy priorities connected with key exceptions. Sawhe 114th congress, we Party Members struggle with intraparty factions. Many expected if Speaker Pelosi became speaker again that she would enjoy some of the high party unity she did in the 110th and 111th congress. While it is true that democrats routinely vote with another, she was struggling with intraparty factions to a much greater degree than the last time she was a speaker. Orion niscent of the of the orion ryan era. There is a Task Force Working on this issue, but i think it is clear that one of the Things Congress needs to do is increase its own capacity. That involves opening up staff, paying more, training them better. ,iving power back to committees ,estoring, within reason regular order some more members can be involved in the legislative process, at least in the house of representatives, and increase staff transparency, diversity, and training. There is no clear reform that will necessarily decrease or give incentives with regards to the other party, thinking about the next election. It is the case that there are many partisans who formerly served in congress on both sides of the aisle who were institutionalists, who deeply cared about the institution, valued its tradition. Reformink some of the should be to cultivate a sense of loyalty to the institution in addition to party. Also through additional training or more sessions with former members of congress to share their own experiences, particularly those who were institutionalists and active and involved policymakers. Thank you, and thanks to the claremont folks for having me. I share many of catherines diagnoses of what is wrong with congress. I wont dwell as much on some of them. Catherine has talked about the of theences for congress particular combination we are currently living with of high polarization and also high macrolevel Party Competition. The idea that both parties can frequently look at the next election and say and reasonably expect that their party, if they are in the minority now, might find themselves the majority after the next election. This profoundly affects the incentives that members have to work across the aisle. That there is a greater incentive among the members of the Majority Party in congress to put bills on the floor that they know will fail, toply to be able to say members of their own party and the electorate, to Interest Group allies, that these are the kinds of things that our party would do if we had more power, and the ability to legislate after the next election. This is especially true under divided government, like we have now. Undert can also be true unified party government. When you think about things like, why did republicans before 2017 spend a lot of time in the house taking votes to repeal the Affordable Care act when they knew that was not going to be a productive legislative endeavor at that moment . Becauseit is in part the incentive of this combination of polarized parties and highlevel level, macrolevel Party Competition incentivized doing that kind of spending floor time on things they know will not pass. On increasing nationalization of our politics. This has profound consequences for the electoral experience of individual members. There electoral fates become much more attached to National Political forces than it once was. Catherine pointed out that voters split their tickets at far lower rates than they once did. One of my favorite pieces of data on this point is that in 2016, it was the First Time Since the advent of the popular election of senators in the 20th century where every state in which there was a Senate Election in 2016, the party that one that election was also the party that won the states electoral votes in the electoral college. There were no estates in which that result flipped in 2016. Because voters are splitting their tickets at much lower rates, that gives individual members less of an incentive to cultivate what we might consider an independent branch, to work across the aisle and attract voters who identify with both parties. The nationalization of politics has also meant that our system is increasingly presidency centered. As catherine pointed out, many of these trends are not new to the current occupant of the white house, despite the fact that, particular for those of us in washington, it does feel like the president is at the epicenter of every media cycle. I think here in particular, going back to the early 1970s, when we saw a number of highprofile pieces of legislation, like the congressional budget act, some reforms to oversight of the intelligence committee, that sort of thing, we passed large bipartisan majorities, because congress all reason to work together. Become ansident has increasingly central and polarizing figure, it can be more difficult to build support for something on institutional grounds. This frome example of recent years comes from 2016, in a slightly different era of trade politics than the one we are living in now. In 2015, when president obama was lobbying congress on trade promotion authority, seeking the ability to negotiate what would ttp, someone on paul ryans staff called the white house to ask that obama stop asking congress to give him trade promotion authority. Ryan did not want republicans to think they were granting obama something special, even at that point republicans also wanted the trade agreement. This idea of merely identifying the issue with the president was making it harder to build a legislative coalition. Catherine talked about the decline in congressional capacity, particularly the drop off in staff levels on house committees and support agencies, starting after the republican takeover after the 1994 election. There were various incentives presented to staff to increasingly pursue opportunities off the hill and then met and that makes it more difficult for congress to have the staffing needs in house to do the work well. That increases the power of special interests and lobbyists. A couple things that have changed since trumps election and democrats have taken over the house, the lesson i would take from our first two plus years of the Trump Administration and the first eight months of the democratic majority, particularly this year, we have seen the challenges presented in doing congressional oversight when going to work is an increasing part of the strategy. One thing we expected to see and have seen is heavy reliance by the house on legal avenues, things like subpoenas, contempt citations are part of the approach. We knew going in that this was not a particularly expeditious approach to oversight. That has been wornout. With thehis has to do budget, some with the administrations ability to stonewall requests from congress. Havenk that democrats also reasons why pursuing a legally focused strategy beyond the fact that the administration has pushed them into that corner. Catherine talks about intraparty division. When your party is divided on some of those questions. I think particularly about impeachment. There is an advantage to taking some of that fight outside of the congressional arena so it is but your members not being forced to go on record i think other changes in the process made it harder to get other tools to try to reign in with the executive branch is doing. Im thinking about changes in the appropriations process. Another trend from the Current Congress is, particularly in this time of unified public , theol in 2017 and 2018 increasing importance of items that cannot be filibustered in the senate. I am thinking about things like , which all need majority support, but also things like use of the Congressional Review Act and the use of reconciliation in 2017 and the increasing importance of legislative vehicles in unified government. We also saw Minority Party senators, either on their own, such as in the case of a Congressional Review Act resolution on shortterm Health Insurance or cooperation with jority parties long,e been on a continued path in which congress has delegated substantial power to the executive branch, often because it is easier to give the president the responsibility to do something man for congress to do the hard work of retaining the power for itself. I am thing about the war powers act, the statute giving the president the power to declare a National Emergency and subsequent review to allow congress to review arm sales. Provisionsse review weekend in the mid80s when the Supreme Court ruled that the veto was unconstitutional, and exercise congress to powers in the form of a joint than aion rather concurrent resolution. We are also learning in recent years that congress is not necessarily wellequipped to use these tools. Both because of the need to get to a two thirds vote to override a veto when they dont want to use them and because the procedures have become an attractive way to force issues. I am thinking about Something Like the votes that the senate took this year. I agree wholeheartedly that the changes we would want to make the institution work better require big changes in the underlying political system or the incentives that members of congress face. I agree that these reforms are one, perhaps more feasible avenue, and i also think we should think about potential procedural changes that encourage the off the floor processes in congress that ar