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This piece was co-written with Mark Harkins, a Senior Fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University. He worked on Capitol Hill for over 17 years in various positions including Chief of Staff in a personal office. The Fix at the Washington Post has an interesting piece on the
For federal departments and agencies, the most important issue in the First Session of the 114th Congress will be the shape of the FY16 congressional budget resolution, which will set the discretionary spending levels for the Appropriations Committees. New House Budget Committee Chair Tom Price of Georgia recently told a
For the past week, Majority Leader McConnell experimented with an open amendment process in the Senate. Members offered amendments on everything from climate change, to federally protected land, to limiting the President’s ability to initiate and sign bilateral agreements with foreign countries. The broader question is can McConnell take a
Can decades of dysfunction reverse course in a single Congress? No. But despite the general pessimism surrounding Congress there are several reason to expect the 114th to be more productive than its recent predecessors, which were historically bad on several fronts. Now that divided congressional control is over a sense
The 113th Congress may very well go down in history as the least democratic in our nation’s history. Except it probably not in the way you are thinking. This has nothing to do with how much money was spent in campaigns, gerrymandering, voter suppression laws, or other things that distort
A lot is being said about the historic nature of Republicans flipping 8-9 Senate seats and beating four incumbent Democrats (and possibly as many as five by December) during the election of 2014. However, that’s not terribly unusual in the Senate. Of the current Members of the Senate, 48 won
New House Republican Conference rules prevent members seeking higher office to hold committee and subcommittee chairs. Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) said, the “idea is not to have major committees, appropriations or subcommittees chaired by people who are running for the Senate. If you’re shuttling back and forth, that’s just a
There’s an old adage in American politics that campaigns boil down to a choice between one of two simple messages: “It’s time for a change,” or “Stay the course.” Democrats can blame President Obama’s unpopularity, their party’s boom-and-bust turnout, an extraordinarily challenging map of seats to defend in the Senate,
Democrats are searching for explanations to Tuesday’s thorough defeat. Aside from obvious considerations – low turnout, 6th year election, etc. – there are several arguments that the economy was a big reason Democrats lost so thoroughly. It was polled, once again, as the most important issue concerning voters this election.
With Republicans likely winning a Senate majority in today’s elections, it’s worth examining whether there are parallels to what happened in 2006 when Democrats reclaimed the majority in the House following 12 years of Republican rule. As you may recall, 2006 was, like 2014, a “six-year itch” cycle. That is,
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