Committees
Mister Chairman: Reversing Trends for Women Chairing House Committees
Katina Slavkova | February 12, 2025
Last December, shortly before House Majority Leader Steve Scalise released the Republican Steering Committee’s recommendations for committee chairs in the incoming 119th Congress, former Republican representative from Virginia, Barbara Comstock, objected strongly to initial reporting that no women were being selected for these positions. Two days later when the majority leader’s office formally
GAI | December 12, 2024 Guest Post by Lorelei Kelly , Research Faculty Lead on Congressional Modernization at GeoDES, Georgetown Democracy, Education + Service, McCourt School of Public Policy Hidden beneath divisive campaign season headlines, Congress has a positive story to share. Prompted by an inefficient, outdated workflow and historically low public trust in government, Democrats and Republicans have worked Katina Slavkova | May 3, 2023 The partisan and intra-branch posturing on the debt ceiling, on display since January, has finally yielded actual legislative text. Last week Speaker Kevin McCarthy successfully shepherded his conference to pass a debt ceiling bill, accurately characterized as a “bare-minimum victory on a doomed bill.” This description of the House GOP’s initial bargaining offer perfectly Katina Slavkova | January 10, 2021 The 116th Congress wrapped up its final days in a dramatic fashion by delivering the first and only veto override of the Trump Administration on New Year’s Day. It was probably fitting and not terribly surprising that this strong bipartisan legislative rebuke – Katina Slavkova | July 1, 2020 At the end of season one of the popular HBO comedy series Veep, a panicked staffer from the Vice President’s office hurriedly solicits advice from a lawyer during a fundraising event. The staffer dreads being asked to testify before Congress because of his role in a series of hilariously incompetent crises. He urgently queries the Katina Slavkova | December 5, 2019 Women’s representation has made significant gains in politics. Women are major contenders for the Presidency and are increasingly winning office at the national, state, and local levels. Women comprising a quarter of Congress may be small in an absolute sense, but it is truly historic. Yet within the legislative branch, that influence is not felt GAI | May 8, 2019 Senior Fellow Mark Harkins discusses the current dust up between House Democrats and the President regarding subpoenas and oversight. Here is the entire article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. There’s a lot of talk about the broken processes in the House and Senate, particularly around the health care bill. Extraordinary secrecy has been employed to push the AHCA through the House and the BCRA through the Senate. In fact, there’s so much commentary about how “broken” the institution is that people are overlooking what Josh Huder | July 24, 2017 The House and Senate efforts to repeal and replace versions of the Affordable Care Act have relied on an amazingly convoluted, opaque, and covert process. It was, and is, a stunning display of haste and hubris, well outside the norms of the modern legislative process. Speaker Ryan dropped the American Health Care Act (AHCA) practically GAI | December 1, 2016 With the election over and cabinet hopefuls parading to Trump Tower, political prognosticators are looking towards 2017. What will the incoming presidential administration and unified Republican government mean for policy and politics? The congressional experts at GAI are weighing in with a series of deeper dives on different subject areas. Below are the contributions for
Modernization in Congress: Keeping the Momentum Going
The Debt Ceiling and the Appropriations Process
Outlook for the NDAA in the 117th Congress
Hearings Oversight in a Time of Covid
National Security Oversight: Still a Man’s World
GAI in the News
It’s more than just bad process. It’s harmful.
Secrecy in Lawmaking and What it Spells for the rest of the 115th
Looking Towards 2017: National Security in Focus