Revise & Extend Blog
Revise and Extend is a blog dedicated to providing practical and academic perspectives on congressional policy, politics, and procedure. Managed by the faculty and staff at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University, and in line with our organization’s mission, we hope this blog is an important source of information for individuals wanting to know more about congressional operations, member behavior, and, more broadly, American politics.
GAI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, conducting courses on Capitol Hill since 1965. For thirty years, GAI was part of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. In 1995 GAI was privatized by the federal government, and in 1997 it became affiliated with Georgetown University and the McCourt School of Public Policy. GAI’s mission is to provide education and training about congressional processes, organization, and practices, and about selected legislative policy issues.
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Latest Posts
Does Evil Lurk within the “Shadow Docket”?
Susan Sullivan Lagon | November 2, 2021
Congress provides plenty of examples of procedures that were once rarely deployed but have since become routine: Filibusters instead of debate in the Senate, Continuing Resolutions (CRs) in place of regular annual appropriations, and playing chicken with the debt ceiling are among the most obvious. Fail-safes designed for exigent circumstances have become standard operating procedure.
Democrats and the Debt Ceiling
Josh Huder | October 7, 2021
Debt ceiling politics is front and center in Congress as the US is scheduled to default on its accrued debt October 18. (For a good explainer on the debt ceiling I recommend my colleague Laura Blessing’s piece.) So far, Senate Republicans have filibustered Democrats’ attempts to raise the debt ceiling. Instead, Minority
Democrats in disarray? The surprisingly normal politics of infrastructure negotiations
Matt Glassman | September 8, 2021
On August 24th, the House adopted S.Con.Res.14, the congressional budget resolution for Fiscal Year 2022 previously adopted by the Senate on August 11th, setting up consideration of a $3.5T package of spending under the reconciliation process. The budget resolution was adopted 220-212 in the House and 50-49 in the Senate, with every Democrat
The Importance of the Congressional Calendar
Katina Slavkova | July 7, 2021
Halfway through its first session, the 117th Congress finds itself in familiar territory, one that past Congresses know all too well. The crush of ambitious and unfinished legislative business is threatening to overwhelm Capitol Hill’s notoriously tricky and fickle schedule. Call it the tyranny of the congressional calendar. Here we’ll consider