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Guest Post by Lieutenant Colonel Timothy Cabana For the national security community, the calendar year has dawned with an $858 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and an omnibus funding bill passed in late December. But what may have felt like a Christmas miracle to congressional staffers scurrying home belies
Why walk when you can fly? As the 117th Congress pushes into its lame duck session, party leaders consider an ambitious array of bills, and historically, it’s not unusual for such sessions to feature major legislative items. While lame ducks of the past decade or two have typically been marked
Every even-numbered year in the U.S., some politician or pundit will proclaim that “this is the most important election in our lifetimes!” This news is often met with yawns by the weary public, even among those who bother to vote. But when a respected appellate court judge declares that a
A bar graph haunts Washington. You know the one. Its jagged teeth notch losses for the President’s party in every post-WWII midterm House election, all except two. Those electoral projections have been a moving target this year, and in many respects we are living in unusual times. But the ultimate
On August 24th, President Biden announced a plan to provide student loan debt relief. The policy will include debt cancellation of up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients and up to $10,000 for non- Pell Grant debt, for anyone with an income less than $125,000 ($250,000 for married couples). In
By Professor Julia Azari, Marquette University Presidential power is a bit at odds with democracy. Presidency scholars have noted this for years, suggesting that “greatness” is often uncomfortably close to the kind of norm-busting, authoritarian action that our constitution is supposed to avoid. Presidents also face a dilemma about
Sometime in the last ten years the congressional budget process died. The precise moment is hard to pinpoint because it is not totally – just mostly — dead. But today, only a hollow version of the process still exists. Partisan majorities pass shell budgets to trigger reconciliation in the hopes
Defense officials are already busy making the obligatory annual rounds on Capitol Hill in support of the President’s preferred spending priorities. The current steady pace of congressional hearings might suggest that Congress is methodically working its way towards a timely passage of the defense budget. But this burst of activity
It’s time. Time to talk about the L word. As the cherry trees blossom in Washington and legislators’ minds turn towards reelection, the administration is taking stock of its legacy. In our hyper-polarized era, an administration’s first two years, especially if under unified governance, play an outsized role in the
Where are we with government funding? It’s déjà vu all over again, as Congress passes another Continuing Resolution (CR). The FY2022 congressional appropriations process—which will provide funding for the federal government from October 1, 2021 until September 30, 2022—is once again delaying final action. After its failure to enact full
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