Podcast appearances and mentions of kevin kosar

It's the government on your doorstep — the only Executive Branch agency that visits every home in the country on a regular basis. So how does the USPS do it? And what happens when an agency this essential is in trouble? Our guests for this episode are Allison Marsh, history professor at the University of South Carolina and Kevin Kosar, a Vice President at R Street. Want our new "Civics is my cup of tea" mug? CLICK HERE TO DONATE AND GET YOURS!CLICK HERE: Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more! To see Civics 101 in book form, check out A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro.Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast, Outside/In - we think you'll love it!

American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Senior Fellow Dr. Kevin Kosar joins Bob to discuss press reports that President Trump plans to takeover the U.S. Postal Service by firing its Board of Governors, and folding its governance and operations into the Department of Commerce. Newly confirmed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has expressed interest in "privatizing" the USPS. Kevin is the AEI's resident expert on Congress, the administrative state, American politics and the Postal Service.

The U.S. Senate, once hailed as the "world's greatest deliberative body," has devolved into a chamber where robust debate and individual senator input have become rare commodities. Today's Senate operates under a system where party leaders wield immense power, often crafting legislation behind closed doors and limiting floor debate and amendments. As the Senate approaches new leadership elections, Kevin Kosar from the American Enterprise Institute shares how there's a unique opportunity for senators to reclaim their role as active lawmakers and restore the chamber's deliberative nature.

Join Boyd Matheson in delving into Tuesday's news! Alex Bolton comes on the show to discuss what preparations are being made as Hurricane Milton makes it's way to land. Listen to how senators can restore the Senate to its former glory with Kevin Kosar. Dr. Caitlin Rivers discusses how public health should take a page out of meterology's book and More!

Join Boyd Matheson in digging into Tuesday’s headlines! Former Ambassador Jeff Flake shares what is next in his career path. James Capretta delves into how different candidates’ budgets will affect America’s fiscality. Learn about the value of the Congressional Research Service and their new director with Kevin Kosar. Sarah Jane Weaver provides input on Hulu’s new show and misrepresentation in the media and More!

Karen Donfried will begin her new role as the director of the Congressional Research Service this month. She will inherit an agency that serves as a vital intellectual resource for lawmakers navigating complex policy landscapes. With a rich history of providing nonpartisan expertise, CRS stands at a crossroads, facing both technological challenges and increased competition in the information age. Kevin Kosar from American Enterprise Institute sheds light on how Donfried's leadership will be crucial in shaping the future of this indispensable institution, ensuring it remains a source of objective analysis in an era of polarized politics and information overload.

America's ballooning national debt presents a paradox: while most citizens express concern about federal deficits, elected officials consistently fail to address the issue. As the debt climbs to unprecedented levels, we must examine the underlying factors that perpetuate this fiscal irresponsibility. Kevin Kosar from the American Enterprise Institute dives into the complex interplay of voter behavior, political incentives, and systemic challenges that led to America's persistent deficit problem.

Edward C. Banfield (1916-99), the conservative political scientist who spent most of his career at Harvard University, was one of the most eminent and controversial scholars of the twentieth century. His best-known work, The Unheavenly City (1970), was a deeply informed but unsparing criticism of Great Society-era attempts to alleviate urban poverty. His New York Times obituary observed that Banfield “was a critic of almost every mainstream liberal idea in domestic policy,” who argued that “at best government programs would fail because they aimed at the wrong problems; at worst, they would make the problems worse.” In many respects, he was one of the first neoconservatives.Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, has studied Banfield's writings closely. (He is also married to one of Banfield's granddaughters.) He was the force behind the recent republication of Banfield's first book, Government Project (1951), which had been out of print for decades. Government Project is about a New Deal plan to help destitute agricultural workers during the Depression by resettling them on a newly constructed cooperative farm in Pinal County, Arizona. The Casa Grande Valley Farms, as the project was known, recruited some sixty families to live there and provided them with land and a government-created community complete with new homes, roads, and farm buildings. For a few years, the cooperative farm flourished, but ultimately it failed because the residents, unable to establish mutual trust, could not cooperate.In this podcast discussion, Kosar describes how Banfield's study of Casa Grande made him begin to doubt the efficacy of government planning, and eventually turned him from a committed New Dealer to a skeptic of government's ability to induce people to cooperate. This skepticism was strengthened by his subsequent study of village life in southern Italy — the basis for his 1958 classic The Moral Basis of a Backward Society — where he found that the inhabitants' distrust of anyone outside their immediate family made collective governance all but impossible. Kosar also describes Banfield's work on highly cooperative Mormon communities in southern Utah, Democratic machine politics in Chicago and other large American cities, and the shortcomings of urban programs such as the War on Poverty. Kosar concludes that Banfield came to believe that problems like crime or poverty ultimately were “the output of individual behaviors — and that means fixing those problems means changing the individual. And he was just very skeptical that a government program could change an individual.”

Welcome to Engineering Influence, a podcast from the American Council of Engineering Companies. In this episode, we delve into the complexities of the upcoming election year, featuring a discussion with Kevin Kosar, a senior researcher at the American Enterprise Institute. Kevin Kosar explores the structural aspects of government and elections, focusing on the dissatisfaction with the current two-party system and the challenges it poses. He highlights the impact of primaries, gerrymandering, and the extreme polarization of candidates. The conversation also touches on potential reforms, including ranked choice voting and open primaries, and the importance of voter education and election security. Join us as we navigate the intricate landscape of American elections, the incentives driving political behavior, and the prospects for meaningful reform in our electoral system.

Dig into Tuesday’s news with Boyd Matheson! Congress is setting itself up for a fiscal mess for next year and Caitlin Emma reports on it. Rediscover the value of civic virtue with Lisa Halverson. Join the discussion with Kevin Kosar that the government can be more effective if they do less. Delve into the grievance culture in American sports with Jerry Brewer and More!

Our vibrant democracy was designed to allow the voices of the people to influence their government's actions. Yet a problem has taken root - the gradual breakdown of bureaucracy from the relentless demands of special interests. As programs, regulations, and policies accumulate unchecked, they drain resources, stifle innovation, and erode public trust. Kevin Kosar digs into the issue that, if left unaddressed, will threaten to render the government overwhelmed and rigid, unable to nimbly confront the complex challenges facing our nation.

The topic of this episode is, "what is Congress' role in a contingent presidential election?"Two centuries ago, America had a contingent presidential election. No candidate got a majority of votes, and thus it fell to Congress to decide who got to be president. Might the United States have another contingent election? Certainly it is possible. Four of the past six presidential elections have been very close. In 2020, had 44,000 voters in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin picked Trump instead of Biden we would have had a tied election, with each candidate receiving 269 electoral votes.So what is Congress's role in a contingent election? How does that work? To answer these questions I have with me my colleague, Dr. John Fortier. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies Congress and elections, election administration, election demographics, voting, and more. John is the coauthor of the books After the People Vote: A Guide to the Electoral College (AEI Press, 2020) and Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises, and Perils (AEI Press, 2006). John also hosts The Voting Booth podcast.Kevin Kosar:Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution, and few Americans think well of it. But Congress is essential to our republic. It is a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be.And that is why we are here: to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I am your host, Kevin Kosar, and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington DC.John, welcome to the podcast.John Fortier:Thank you, Kevin. Pleasure to be here.Kevin Kosar:Let's start with a simple question. Why must a presidential candidate get 270 electoral votes in order to become the president?John Fortier:There's a short answer and a long answer. The short answer is that 270 is a majority of the electors that are possible to be cast.The longer answer is that there was a debate in the Constitutional Convention about how to elect the president, but it came sort of late in the process. And I would say the first thing that they needed to decide is what did Congress look like? And there were all sorts of debates and back and forth before a compromise was reached where essentially the House of Representatives was one that represented the people more broadly. The states would have a number of House representatives based on their population and the Senate would be equal in the states.Now when coming to the Electoral College—figuring out how to elect the president—there were two big principles. One, they had decided at this point that they wanted the president to be elected separately from the Congress. Not like a parliamentary system, not something coming out of the Congress. And secondly, that they were going to reflect that compromise in Congress.And so, the real number of 270, or the larger number of electors that are available, are basically all of the states have two electors for the senators that they

Tune in for an insightful discussion with Kevin Kosar, where we explore the ideas of Edward Banfield, the New Deal era, and contemporary public policy. Kevin, a seasoned expert in governance and public administration, shares perspectives on Banfield's research and its relevance today, particularly in understanding urban issues, poverty, and government intervention. Discover how Banfield's insights intersect with discussions around the New Deal and its lasting impact on American society.  Gain fresh insights into the complexities of public policy and social challenges in this engaging conversation.

Today, I am joined by Dr. Kevin Kosar, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and writer of the foreword to the latest edition of Edward Banfield's book, Government Project.  Kevin explains why government projects don't work and the following: Why does the federal government tax and spend so much? How are some government projects better than others? What should the future be of work? Please like this episode, subscribe to the channel, share it on social media, and rate and review it. I would appreciate it if you would subscribe to my Substack newsletter so you'll receive my episodes, show notes, and other valuable insights in your inbox twice weekly at vanceginn.substack.com. You can also find this information and more at vanceginn.com.

If you don't know what the Chevron Doctrine is, we don't blame you. But the legal standard set in a 1984 Supreme Court case has had a large effect on all of our lives. It's a legal test that refers many legal questions over regulation back to the federal agency to interpret their own rules. It has given regulatory agencies massive power in our policy making process for 40 years. And this current court could reverse this standard, but what happens after that? Kevin Kosar from AEI joins the show.

This topic of this special episode of the Understanding Congress podcast is a recent book by a former Hill staffer. It is titled Fire Alarm: The Investigation of the U.S. House Select Committee on Benghazi (Lexington Books, 2023)The author is Bradley F. Podliska is an Assistant Professor of Military and Security Studies at the U.S. Air Force Air Command and Staff College in Montgomery, Alabama. Brad is a retired U.S. Air Force Reserve intelligence officer with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was deployed to Iraq in 2008 and also worked as an intelligence analyst for the Department of Defense.Dr. Podliska is a former investigator for the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Benghazi. He is the author of two books, and that latter experience working on the Hill formed the basis for his book, Fire Alarm: The Investigation of the U.S. House Select Committee on Benghazi.Kevin Kosar:Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution, and few Americans think well of it. But Congress is essential to our republic. It is a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be.And that is why we are here: to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I am your host, Kevin Kosar, and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington DC.Professor Podliska, welcome to the podcast.Bradley Podliska:Thank you, Kevin, for having me. I appreciate being here.Kevin Kosar:You were an investigator for the House of Representatives. I introduced you as a professor, but you had on-the-ground experience inside Congress as an investigator for the House of Representatives. For audience members who have never heard of that position, what do House investigators do? And how did you get to that position?Bradley Podliska:Investigators are another term for subject matter experts, usually based on their executive branch experience. The role of an investigator is to interview witnesses, request documents, analyze those documents and then provide new information back to the members for the committee so they can conduct their investigation. Now with that said, the titles when it comes to the Benghazi Committee were completely and totally arbitrary. Attorneys had “counsel” in their title and if you were a non-attorney, you either had the title of investigator, professional staff member, or advisor, but we all did the same work. So we were all analyzing documents, we were all interviewing witnesses, and then we were reporting the results to the committee members.In my particular case, I spent 17 years in the intelligence community and the Defense Department, and I knew someone that had known the Republican staff director of the Benghazi committee for over two decades. So I submitted a resume and I was hired soon thereafter, and this is a point I actually make in my book Fire Alarm, which is that you're basically hired on perceived party loyalty. I refer to this as a non-compensatory dimension. In other words, merit is a secondary condition. You might be the best person for a job, but if you are not perceived as a partisan, you are not going to be hired in the first place. This is done is through those personal connections that I talked about. I am not aware of any staff member that was hired on the Benghazi committee that either did not have prior Capitol Hill experience or did not know somebody on the committee itself.Kevin Kosar:And that...

It is an eternal question. How much should government try to do? Now we present a view you may not hear all that often. An old book about a failed New Deal era agriculture project has been re-issued by the conservative American Enterprise Institute. First published in 1951, the book, "Government Project," detailed the Agriculture Department's attempt at establishing a cooperative farm from the ground up in Arizona. The author, Edward Banfield, was a Harvard urban studies professor and one-time federal information officer. He died in 1999. For more, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spoke with Kevin Kosar, who wrote the forward to the reprint and is a Senior Fellow with the American Enterprise Institute. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Kevin Kosar, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), joins Bob at the 2024 NAPS Legislative Training Seminar. The chat, which was recorded live before approximately 500 NAPS legislative advocates attending the Washington legislative conference, covered the importance of measuring postal performance, the necessity of constructive congressional oversight of the Postal Service, the Postal Service's transition to package delivery, and the new-reality of the Postal Service being "mostly" self-sustaining. Dr. Kosar, in addition to being a scholar at the AEI, was formerly the Congressional Research Service's resident expert on the Postal Service.

The topic of this episode is “Why is Congress struggling to manage the nation's finances?”My guest is Representative David Schweikert of Arizona. He was first elected to Congress in 2011. Prior to that, he was a businessman, served in Arizona's state legislature, and as Maricopa County Treasurer.He is a Republican and holds a seat on the Ways and Means Committee, which writes tax policy. David also is the Vice Chairman of the bicameral Joint Economic Committee (JEC) and co-chairs both the Blockchain and Telehealth caucuses. He is passionate about economics and finance, which makes him an excellent person to ask, “Why is Congress struggling to manage the nation's finances?”Kevin Kosar:Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution, and few Americans think well of it. But Congress is essential to our republic. It's a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be.And that is why we are here: to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I'm your host, Kevin Kosar, and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington DC.Dave, welcome to the podcast.David Schweikert:Kevin, thank you for having me.Kevin Kosar:What is the state of the federal budget? Do we even have one in 2024?David Schweikert:That is sort of the magic question. You have one, but it is not the one you want. In many ways, we are operating on the spending authorization from previous years, which has been renewed over and over. In other words, we are funding things that were supposed to have expired and not funding things that we are supposed to be getting ready to do.It is the absurdity of a dysfunctional Congress. Priorities that go back to when Nancy Pelosi was speaker are still being funded today.Kevin Kosar:Why is that?David Schweikert:I actually have an overarching theory, and then we can get into the nitty-gritty of some of the chaos. There is a general lack of understanding of the level of financial stress that the US Congress and the entire country are under.We play this bookkeeping game in the United States of, here is publicly borrowed money, and here is the money we are borrowing internally. On Friday (February 23, 2024), I believe we hit an all-time record of borrowing about $92,000 a second. Now you hit this sort of constant stress where every dime a member of Congress votes on now is on borrowed money: all defense and all non-defense discretionary.If my math is correct, we are going to borrow almost a trillion dollars of Medicare into mandatory this year. So now, you come back and you get a member who is all excited, saying he is going to cut spending on HHS (Department of Health and Human Services), some other agency, or some part of discretionary, and he is going to save $500 million.That is a lot of money. But when you are borrowing about $7.5 billion a day, many of the fights we are having are over a few hours'—if not just a couple days'—worth of borrowing. It is a way we can look like we are doing something because we are terrified of getting in front of a camera and telling the American public that 100% of borrowing for the next 30 years will be interest, healthcare costs,...

In today's show, Dan is joined by Kevin Kosar (American Enterprise Institute) to discuss the scenario where the Congress decides our next president.

The topic of this episode is, “What is legislative effectiveness?”We voters often say that we want our senators and members of Congress to do things, and preferably, the right things. We tend to dislike it when we see people on Capitol Hill who are all talk and no action. And in theory, we should vote out of office those lawmakers who are ineffective.Let me have a caveat here. To be sure, there are some legislators who have turned noise making into a profitable brand, and they do use it to get reelected again and again. But in my 20 years of watching Capitol Hill, it's my estimate that they comprise a small percentage of the total membership. Most people in Congress are, to varying degrees, trying to get things done. So how, then, are we voters supposed to tell which of these legislators are effective and which are not?To help me answer that question, I have with me Craig Volden. He is a professor of Public Policy and Politics at the University of Virginia. Dr. Volden is the author of many publications. Critically for this podcast's purpose, he is the founder and co-director of the Center for Effective Lawmaking, which produces scores of legislator effectiveness that you can find at: thelawmakers.org.Kevin Kosar:Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution, and few Americans think well of it. But Congress is essential to our republic. It's a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be. And that is why we are here: to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I'm your host, Kevin Kosar, and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington DC.Welcome to the program.Craig Volden:Thanks so much for having me. It is a delight to join you, Kevin. Kevin Kosar:So let's cut straight to the topic of the program. What is legislative effectiveness?Craig Volden:This is something that I have been thinking about for a long time working with Professor Alan Wiseman at Vanderbilt University. We wrote a book on the subject about a decade ago called Legislative Effectiveness in the United States Congress: The Lawmakers.In that book, we defined legislative effectiveness as, “the proven ability to advance a member's agenda items through the legislative process and into law.” So the key elements of “legislative effectiveness”—proven ability, the agenda items of the member, advancing into law—are in there. Kevin Kosar:So as the title of the book indicates, it really does focus on the lawmaking function of an elected official. Craig Volden:That's right.And here, Alan and I founded the Center for Effective Lawmaking. And we like to stay in our lane—it is not the “Center for Effective Oversight” or “Center for Effective Communication with Constituents.” The Center is about lawmaking: what it takes to move those bills into law in the Congress and increasingly now in the state legislatures. Kevin Kosar:So you mentioned there was a book about a decade ago. In my intro of you, I mentioned the website, thelawmakers.org.When did that launch, and what was the...

The topic of this episode is, What is the State of the Union Address, and Why Does Congress Host It?Once per year, the President of the United States comes to the U.S. Capitol to deliver a speech known as the State of the Union Address. Usually this happens in late January or early February, but it has occurred as late as March 1.Both members of the House of Representatives and Senators assemble for this speech, along with nearly all members of the president's cabinet. Justices of the Supreme Court also are there, as are some other individuals. In modern times it has become quite a spectacle—with television cameras beaming the event to millions of homes.To discuss this grand affair, I have with me Matt Glassman. He is a senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute, where he studies Congress. Prior to joining the Institute, Matt worked with me at the Congressional Research Service for ten years. There he wrote about congressional operations, separation of powers, appropriations, judicial administration, agency design, and congressional history.Kevin Kosar:Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our republic. It's a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be, and that is why we are here to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I'm your host, Kevin Kosar, and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington D.C.Matt, welcome to the podcast.Matt Glassman:Thanks for having me.Kevin Kosar:Let's start with the why. Why does Congress host a state of the union address? Does the U.S. Constitution require it?Matt Glassman:The Constitution doesn't require, per se, the State of the Union Address as we know it now, but Article 2, Section 3 does sort of contemplate the idea of a State of the Union message. It says the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”So this idea of the president reporting back to Congress on what's going on in the administration and what he would like to see happen in the legislature is contemplated in the Constitution. So, yes, it is there. It's not required to happen every year; it says from time to time. That's been interpreted as annually, but we don't have a State of the Union message every year.Sometimes presidents don't do it in their last year in office. Sometimes presidents don't do it right after they're inaugurated—they just deliver a different message to Congress. But the idea is rooted in the Constitution and in Anglo-American tradition. It was very traditional for the monarchy to go speak to Parliament as it opened in English history as well.Kevin Kosar:So it's discretionary, which means Congress could—if it chooses—refuse to hold a State of the Union address. One could imagine— in these high partisanship times—a House with a Democratic majority that might have refused to allow President Trump

The topic of this episode is, “What is congressional capacity, and why does it matter?”As regular listeners know, almost inevitably I have a guest on my show. But this episode, you get just me. The reason is simple: I have been working on congressional capacity for years, and I would like to share my thoughts and hear your feedback.Kevin Kosar:Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our republic. It's a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be, and that is why we are here to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I'm your host, Kevin Kosar, and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington D.C.It is probably not news to you that the American public is not pleased with Congress. According to Gallup, fewer than 8 in 10 Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. For sure, part of the dourness is not really about Congress. People are annoyed because what media they see on Congress focuses heavily on conflict and crazy behavior by legislators. The news rarely covers instances of Congress doing good things.That said, it is still fair to say that Congress is not doing well. Most obviously, it has failed to tackle some of the biggest problems facing the nation, like immigration, and often sits back and lets the executive branch and courts wade into these issues. Which is not how our system is supposed to work. So what is wrong with Congress?Many scholars, media, and members of the public diagnose the ills of Congress think in terms of the Three P's: People, parties, and polarization.It's Kevin McCarthy's fault; it's Chuck Schumer's fault. If we had better people, we would have a better Congress.Others point to the parties. The Democrats are out-of-touch liberals. The Republicans are proto-authoritarians. The Democrats and Republicans have sorted into ideologically conformist enterprises. Gone are the days when we had liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats.Still others emphasize polarization as the cause for Congress' failures. We are a nation of red and blue voters and states, so Congress itself is polarized. Gridlock and fighting is the result of Americans being grossly in disagreement with one another.There is some truth to all these contentions. But these explanations have their own shortcomings.Critically, the Three P's ignore an important unit of analysis: the institution itself.The U.S. Congress is an organization—a firm. Like any firm—a business firm, a school, or a music band, Congress' performance is greatly affected by its capacity. It can only do as much as it is capable of doing.In the congressional context, capacity can be defined as “the human and physical infrastructure Congress needs to resolve public problems through legislating, budgeting, holding hearings, and conducting oversight.” Some specific aspects of congressional capacity are its funding, its processes for executing tasks (e.g., how bills go to the floor), its technology for completing its work, how it internally organizes itself, its leadership structure, and its people. So that is the framework I and my coeditors and coauthors adopted. And this lens for looking at Congress has proven illuminating. What you see is an institution that has experienced escalating demands upon it...

In this episode, Andrew gets into the weeds of congressional reform with Kevin Kosar, an 11-year veteran of the Congressional Research Service and now a resident fellow at AEI. Andrew and Kevin talk about the Hastert rule, the best shape of table for getting work done, the collective action problem in Congress, and why Congress needs to hire more people instead of bragging about how little they spend on staff. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/4GRfX-F2jXU Congress Overwhelmed - https://amzn.to/47mc19r Follow Kevin Kosar: https://twitter.com/kevinrkosar | https://kevinrkosar.com Follow Andrew Yang: https://andrewyang.com | https://twitter.com/andrewyang To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The topic of this episode is, “Delegates to the House of Representatives: who are they and what do they do?”My guest is Elliot Mamet. He is a Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Previously, he served as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow. Elliot holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Duke University.Also important to note is that Dr. Mamet spent time working in the office of Washington, D.C. delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton. All of which makes him a great person to ask the question, "Delegates to the House of Representatives: who are they and what do they do?"Kevin Kosar:Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our republic. It's a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be, and that is why we are here to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I'm your host, Kevin Kosar, and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington D.C.Welcome to the podcast.Elliot Mamet:Thank you, Kevin. It's great to be here.Kevin Kosar:Let's start with a really simple question. Listeners are all too familiar with the fact that the House typically has 435 members. But they also have delegates. How many delegates are there to the House of Representatives?Elliot Mamet:Currently, there are five delegates to the House of Representatives. They serve from Washington, D.C., Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. There's also a Resident Commissioner—a non-voting member—from Puerto Rico. So there're six total non-voting members in the House. Kevin Kosar:Representatives in the House come from districts these days. Where and who do these delegates and non-voting members represent? And is represent even the correct term for what their role is?Elliot Mamet:The non-voting members of Congress represent Americans who live outside the several states. Throughout their entire history, they've represented people who don't live in states—whether that's in the federal enclave of the District of Columbia or in territories either on the path to statehood or not on the path to statehood. Today, they represent 4 million Americans. Of that group, 3.5 million live in the United States territories—those people are 98% racial and ethnic minorities—and the remainder are the residents of the District of Columbia who are majority black or Hispanic. So the delegates represent overwhelmingly non-white constituents, and they represent a group of Americans who lack the same citizen rights and lack political equality to those people living in the several states.Kevin Kosar:Now, on this program, there's been a number of episodes where I and a guest have talked about earlier Congresses—the Congresses at the founding, early 20th century, etc.—and non-voting representatives just didn't come up in the conversation. Are they a recent development, or have they always been with us?Elliot Mamet:Great question. The non-voting representative has been a feature since the earliest Congresses. The institution dates back at least to 1784 when a committee chaired by Thomas Jefferson suggested that territories prior to becoming a state would be able to send a delegate to Congress with the

The topic of this episode is, “How is Congress involved in foreign policy?”My guest is Jordan Tama, a Provost Associate Professor at American University's School of International Service. He is the author or editor of five books on foreign policy. They are:· Polarization and US Foreign Policy: When Politics Crosses the Water's Edge, co-edited with Gordon M. Friedrichs (Palgrave Macmillan, Forthcoming)· Bipartisanship and US Foreign Policy: Cooperation in a Polarized Age (Oxford University Press, 2024);· Rivals for Power: Presidential-Congressional Relations, sixth edition, co-edited with James A. Thurber (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018);· Terrorism and National Security Reform: How Commissions Can Drive Change During Crises (Cambridge University Press, 2011); and· A Creative Tension: The Foreign Policy Roles of the President and Congress, co-authored with Lee H. Hamilton (Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002).Jordan also has written many papers on foreign policy, so it seems to me he is a great person to have on the podcast to help us understand how Congress is involved in foreign policy.Kevin Kosar:Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our republic. It's a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be, and that is why we are here to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I'm your host, Kevin Kosar, and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington DC.Welcome to the podcast.Jordan Tama:Thanks so much for having me on, Kevin.Kevin Kosar:Some months ago, our listeners heard me chat with Alissa Ardito about the formal powers of Congress in foreign affairs. We talked about things like how the Senate has the authority to approve treaties and to consider nominees to fill high positions in the State Department, the military, and other agencies that are involved in foreign affairs. We also talked about the fact that Congress has the power to declare war and the discretion to fund and create agencies that deal with matters overseas, like the United States Agency for International Development. And we also pondered in a philosophical manner about how we're supposed to have a representative democracy influencing foreign affairs.But I wanted to bring you in because you're so well prepared, well-studied, and scholarly on the matter of where the rubber hits the road and how the wheels actually turn. So let me start by asking, where should the bewildered citizen first look when trying to understand how Congress is involved in foreign policy?Jordan Tama:Congress is involved in foreign policy in a lot of ways, more than most Americans realize. This includes both Congress exercising its formal powers and Congress exercising influence in more informal ways. I'll say a quick word about both of those areas, the formal and informal...

If Congress doesn't pass a budget by the end of the month then the government will shut down. 40 years ago, the idea of America's government shutting down didn't exist. It just didn't happen. But Kevin Kosar from the American Enterprise Institute says a divided Congress, lack of incentives, and a lack of skin in the game has led to less budgeting and more continuing resolutions and shutdowns. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The topic of this episode is, “Can Congress access classified information?”My guest is Daniel Schuman. He is the Policy Director at Demand Progress, a grassroots, nonpartisan organization that has worked to improve the legislative branch and to make government more transparent to the public. Daniel also is the editor of the First Branch Forecast, an extraordinarily informative newsletter that you can read and subscribe to at no cost at https://firstbranchforecast.com/.We last spoke with Daniel on episode 8 of this podcast, where he enlightened us on the process by which Congress funds itself. This time around, we will dig into the subject of Congress and classified information.Kevin Kosar:Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our republic. It's a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be, and that is why we are here to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I'm your host, Kevin Kosar, and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington DC.Daniel, welcome to the podcast.Daniel Schuman:Thanks so much for having me.Kevin Kosar:I suppose we should start by defining our subject matter: classified information. Pardon the vanity here, but I'm going to refer to a report I wrote some years ago for the Congressional Research Service, where I defined classified information as "information or material designated and clearly marked or clearly represented, pursuant to the provisions of a statute or Executive order (or a regulation or order issued pursuant to a statute or Executive order), as requiring a specific degree of protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national security (50 U.S.C. 426(1))." How's that for clarity?Now, let's make this a little more clear. Classified information, put really simply, is government information that only certain people in the executive branch can see. Is that roughly correct?Daniel Schuman:Yeah, it's roughly right. There are folks inside the legislative and judicial branches who have a right to have access as well. And as your excellent report actually indicated, there're two major ways in which you get classification. One is by statutory authority, which is what we did largely for atomic information. Then there's everything else, which was just sort of made up by the President through executive order. But as a general rule, 99.9%—or something pretty close to that—people with access to classified information are people inside the executive branch.Kevin Kosar:Okay, so a listener might be hearing this and saying, “Wait a minute, isn't this inherently problematic for representative government? We, the people, elect the people who are supposed to make the laws and the people who make the laws are supposed to oversee the executive branch, which executes the laws. But if stuff's classified and the public can't see it and people in Congress generally can't see it, do we lose accountability? What do you think?Daniel Schuman:We absolutely do. There're two concepts worth separating. One is whether you have the technical right to see certain information, and the other is whether you actually have the means to see it.Members of Congress and...

The topic of this episode is, “What does the U.S. Government Accountability Office do?”To answer that question we have Gene Dodaro. He is the eighth Comptroller General of the United States—that means he is the head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). He has held that position since December 2010. Prior to becoming the top dog at this government watchdog agency, Gene held other executive positions at GAO, including Chief Operating Officer. Remarkably, Gene has spent a half of a century at the agency. So, with all that experience I can think of nobody better to ask the question, “What does the Government Accountability Office do?”Kevin Kosar:Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our republic. It's a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be, and that is why we are here to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I'm your host, Kevin Kosar, and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington DC.Gene, welcome to the program.Gene Dodaro:It's a pleasure to be with you, Kevin.Kevin Kosar:Let's start at the very beginning. GAO was created a century ago. WhyGene Dodaro:GAO was created in 1921—right after World War I. The government had created a large debt during that time in order to promulgate the war, and there was concern about having a better, more disciplined way to handle the federal government's budget process. In the same legislation in which we were created, the Bureau of the Budget—which is now known as the Office of Management Budget (OMB) in the executive office of the President—was also created, and the very first requirement was put in place for the President to submit a budget annually to the Congress. Then GAO was placed in the legislative branch in order to provide a check and balance on the receipts and expenditures of federal funds and the proper application of those funds to meet the intent of the appropriation legislation for the Congress. So it was an arrangement put in place to provide more fiscal discipline to the federal government's budget process and execution.Kevin Kosar:At that time, GAO had a different name, which to some degree reflected its more limited mission at the time. What was it called back then?Gene Dodaro:It was the General Accounting Office. That's what it was when I first joined GAO in 1973. But at that time even, we were doing more than accounting, but that was our original name—the General Accounting Office.Kevin Kosar:It seems that...

Why do most Americans strongly disapprove of Congress? It's complicated. Addiction to power, fame, and money has always been part of Congress' ick factor and the brutal politics of our era create all sorts of perverse incentives for members to cosplay TV stars. But is there something deeper going on? Is Congress broken forever?Fernando hunts for an answer with Dr. Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute studying the US Congress. He previously worked at the Congressional Research Service focusing on public administration issues. Kosar has taught public policy at New York University and lectured on public administration at Metropolitan College of New York. He has authored several books, including "Congress Overwhelmed: The Decline in Congressional Capacity and Prospects for Reform."

The topic of this episode is, “What is the Congressional Research Service, and what does it do?”The guest of this show is me, Kevin Kosar. I spent a little over a decade at the Congressional Research Service (CRS) working as a non-partisan analyst and as an acting section research manager. Subsequent to my time at the agency, I was one of the individuals who advocated that Congress make CRS reports available to the public and not just legislators. I've also written about CRS and the other legislative branch support agencies, like CBO and GAO.But it would be weird for me to ask myself questions and then answer them, so I asked my AEI colleague, Jaehun Lee, to serve as my interlocutor.Kevin Kosar:Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our Republic. It's a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be. And that is why we are here to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation.I'm your host Kevin Kosar and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC.All right, Jaehun, take it away.Jaehun Lee:Let's start simple. What is the Congressional Research Service?Kevin Kosar:The Congressional Research Service is the rare government agency where its name actually accurately describes what it does. It is a research and reference service for Congress. Congress is its lone client. CRS is an agency in inside the Library of Congress. So it is a federal government agency—not some sort of private sector research outfit—and its job is to support Congress and to do so by providing nonpartisan research, analysis, legal opinions, and just about anything else that Congress may require.You think about Congress, it's comprised of regular Americans—anybody can run for Congress and anybody can become a congressional staffer. And when those people come to Washington DC, they're suddenly saddled with this immense responsibility of governing: they have to make laws, they have to oversee executive agencies, and they have to respond to lots of constituents. They have to receive interest groups who come through their doors, making demands of them related to policy and spending.Nobody who enters that position is fully equipped to handle it. We're all amateurs when it comes to governing, and CRS plays a critical role in helping those folks govern. So if you're a brand new legislator and you're trying to figure out, “How do I introduce my first bill? Where do I even get this thing drafted?” You can call up CRS and they'll say, “Okay, here are the steps. Here's how you should reach out to legislative counsel within the chamber who can actually put your ideas into a template and grind it through.” They can help you on these sort of things. They can teach you the basics of legislative procedure: what's a filibuster? How does a congressional budget process work?They also are a giant resource for facts and nonpartisan—and this is key, nonpartisan—analysis. Everybody in DC in the private sector to one degree or another has an angle, a perspective. Often, especially when you're talking about interest groups or lobbyists, they have specific policy goals and they are going to make arguments to persuade you to pick their policies or to support them. CRS...

The topic of this episode is, “Does the Senate still work?”To answer that question, we have Martin Gold, a partner with Capital Council, LLC, a government relations firm in Washington, DC. Marty spent many years in the US Senate working for individual senators, committees, and a majority leader. He also is the author of the book, Senate Procedure and Practice (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018), which explains how the Chamber operates.So, Marty has both an inside view of the Senate and he has a long view of it, which is why I wanted to have him on the program to answer the question, “Does the Senate still work?”Kevin Kosar:Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our Republic. It's a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be. And that is why we are here to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation.I'm your host Kevin Kosar and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC.Welcome to the program.Martin Gold:Thank you for having me, Kevin.Kevin Kosar:The subject of this episode is, “Does the Senate still work?” So it occurs to me that—to answer that question—it might be helpful if I first asked you, “What does a working Senate look like?”Martin Gold:A working Senate is a Senate that is mindful of its constitutional responsibilities, which it has many. Some powers are expressly stated in the Constitution and are unicameral powers, like the power over nominations, the power over treaties, or the power to run impeachment trials. And then a number of other powers that are obviously exercised on a bicameral basis.But I think if you go beyond the text of the Constitution itself and consider the constitutional purpose of the Senate, its purpose is to slow things down and be a more deliberate body. James Madison talked about, in the Federalist Papers, the Senate being a necessary fence against the passions of the House of Representatives. The rules and the precedents of the House and the mechanisms of the House allow it to move very quickly when the majority party wants to move quickly and the minority has very little, if anything, to say about it and it can push things through on a fairly instantaneous basis. It's a legislative juggernaut.The purpose of the Senate is to be the necessary fence against that, to slow things down, and to create a more deliberative process. And when you get beyond the stated powers of the Senate and the Constitution and look also to the purpose of why we have a bicameral legislature, I think the Senate, in fact, does serve that function quite well. It doesn't serve it in exactly the same way as it may have served it years ago. Senates do change, not only on the basis of the people who are serving in the body but also on the national mood of the country. When people talk about polarization in the Senate. It has to be remembered that the Senate is a political institution and that the polarization in the Senate reflects the polarization of the American people. If the Senate were really out of step with the American people, query how many of those senators would remain senators as the public thought that somehow or other they really weren't being appropriately represented in the place. So how the Senate...

The topic of this episode is, “Why is congressional oversight important, and how can it be done well?”To help us tackle this subject we have Elise Bean. She is the Director of the Washington Office of Wayne State University's Levin Center. Elise spent 30 years in Congress working as an investigator for Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) and for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Elise handled investigations, hearings, and legislation on matters involving money laundering, offshore tax abuse, corruption, shell companies, and corporate misconduct. She is also the author of the book, Financial Exposure: Carl Levin's Senate Investigations into Finance and Tax Abuse (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). So who better to have on the show to discuss the topic, “Why is congressional oversight important, and how can it be done well?” Kevin Kosar:Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our republic. It's a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be, and that is why we are here to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I'm your host, Kevin Kosar, and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C.Welcome to the program.Elise Bean:Thank you for inviting me, Kevin.Kevin Kosar:All right, let's begin with something very fundamental. What is Congressional oversight, and who in Congress can do it?Elise Bean:Well, Congressional oversight is when members of Congress, on a committee or individually, ask questions and try to find out: What are the facts? Is a program working? Is there really an abuse? If you want good government, you need good oversight because things change over time and what worked at one time doesn't work at another. That's what Congressional oversight is.Kevin Kosar:Yeah, we should dig into that a little bit. I think often Americans don't like to see politicians fighting amongst themselves, yet the legislative branch, last time I checked the Constitution, says that Congress makes the laws, Congress decides where the money is to be spent, but they're not the ones who actually do the execution of the law. They're not the ones actually spending the money. So does that seem to imply some sort of constitutional obligation to engage in oversight?Elise Bean:So the Supreme Court has said that that's exactly true, that if Congress can't do what it's supposed to do under the Constitution, unless it has some facts… I mean, wouldn't it make sense—if you're going to change your program or decide where money's going—that you have informed decision-making based on the facts? In fact, there's a 1946 law that requires all Congressional committees to do oversight within their areas of jurisdiction, and that's because they want you to find out what the facts are before you start to pass laws, give out money, and approve nominations.Kevin Kosar:Right. And as you hinted at earlier, when Congress says, "Hey, here's a new program we authorized and here's some new money for it, go out and do...

The topic of this episode is: “What are the job descriptions of representatives and Senators?”To answer that question, we have Dr. Casey Burgat. He's the director of the Legislative Affairs program at the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University. Dr. Burgat also has had stints at the Congressional Research Service, and he worked with me back when I was at the R Street Institute. Recently, he and Professor Charlie Hunt authored the book, Congress Explained: Representation and Lawmaking in the First Branch. Casey has been studying Congress and how it operates for years, which makes him a great person to ask the question, what are the job descriptions of representatives and Senators?Kevin Kosar:Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution, and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our republic. It's a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be, and that is why we are here to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I'm your host, Kevin Kosar, and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC.Dr. Casey Burgat, welcome to the program.Casey Burgat:Thanks for having me.Kevin Kosar:It's not unusual for Americans to grumble about Congress and to complain that these elected officials are not doing their jobs. But last I checked, there're no official job descriptions for the positions of representative and Senator. So in thinking about what these guys are supposed to be doing, I think we should probably start with the US Constitution. It certainly has some clues.Casey Burgat:Yes. Always, always start with the Constitution. It takes us back to the Founding. It sets the framework for how we're supposed to think about a lot of these institutional questions. This is one of them.The Constitution does provide at least some clues, but definitely not as many as we assume are in there—especially in regards to the actual duties of Senators and representatives. It does give eligibility requirements of who can serve: you have to be 25 years old to be in the House, 30 in the Senate, seven years a citizen, etc. But after that, it gets surprisingly and oftentimes frustratingly sparse in terms of what individuals are supposed to do once they're elected. We have to look more broadly and deduce our expectations of job descriptions.We can take some hints about what the individual members are supposed to do based on what the Constitution says that Congress as an institution—and the individual chambers—are tasked with. So Congress-wide, all legislative powers are granted to Congress. It's right there at the top—Article I, Section 1—no debate about it: Congress is the legislative branch. Then, they itemized what other powers Congress is supposed to have: to declare war, coin money, and—Kevin, I know this is for you—establish post offices, etc. We know that they're supposed to do that. Then each of the chambers has its separate roles: the

The topic of this episode is: "What is the congressional debt limit?"To answer that question we are once again speaking with Philip Wallach. He was the very first guest on this podcast, where we pondered why we need a Congress. Phil is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of the book, Why Congress, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2023. Phil also has written previously about the debt limit, which makes him the right person to ask: What is the congressional debt limit?Kevin Kosar:Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution, and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our republic. It's a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be, and that is why we are here to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I'm your host, Kevin Kosar, and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC.Phil, welcome back to the program.Phil Wallach:Thanks for having me back.Kevin Kosar:Let's start by getting clear on what we're talking about. There are deficits and there is debt. How do these two things differ?Phil Wallach:It's a stocks versus flow kind of thing. Each year, we have spending and revenue—in almost all years in recent memory, we have more spending than revenue. That creates a deficit. So the accumulation of all of the past deficits is the debt. So the debt is our total of all the spending we've done minus the revenue we've taken in, and it is now officially north of $30 trillion.Kevin Kosar:So when the Treasury needs to issue more debt, it's got to sell bonds—basically, these IOUs that say, "Please give us money that we can spend now, and we'll pay you back later." Is that essentially what's happening when we're taking on more debt?Phil Wallach:Yeah. A bond is a legally obligating instrument, and debt put out by the United States government is considered the lowest-risk kind of debt instrument in the world. So the government is not just saying, "If we feel in a good mood, we'll pay you back,” but, “we are legally obligated to pay you back with interest." That's very valuable to investors. And of course, United States bonds form the gold standard of collateral used not only in this country but around the world in the global financial system.Kevin Kosar:So this leads us to an important point, which is that an executive agency called the US Treasury that is issuing debt, but it doesn't do it simply at the behest of the President. The President can't say, "Well, let's just issue as much debt as we want on this day of the week or during this year." We have a law that limits the amount of debt; that is, our legislature has a role here.We keep finding ourselves—with some frequency—in a situation where Congress will run these yearly deficits where they're spending more than the revenue coming in, and the debt grows and grows. Then, when we hit this legally mandated limit, Congress has to vote to pass a new law so that the limit is set higher so that more debt can be issued.So let's just turn back the clock. This practice of setting a debt limit by law: why do we have it, and when did Congress first start doing it?Phil Wallach:Okay, so go back to the...

Dr. Kevin R. Kosar is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies the US Congress, the administrative state, American politics, election reform, and the US Postal Service.Dr. Kosar is joined by Benjamin Mays of Cedarville University to discuss the current state of play in Congress, the recent messy election of the House Speaker, potential reforms to improve Congress, and his book, Congress Overwhelmed: The Decline in Congressional Capacity and Prospects for Reform.To learn more about AEI's 2023 Summer Honors Program, click here. The deadline to apply is March 15, 2023.

Author Maya Kornberg looked at the functions of congressional committees and examined their strengths and weaknesses.  She was interviewed by American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Kevin Kosar. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President Biden and Speaker McCarthy are still negotiating the debt ceiling. But Kevin Kosar from the American Enterprise Institute says there's one thing the President could, should, and is required to have sent Congress to make negotiations easier: his budget proposal. Kevin explains why the President should include spending cuts in his budget proposal and talk through them with Congress.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The topic of this episode is, “What do congressional committees do?”My guest is Dr. Maya Kornberg. She is a political scientist in the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center. Dr. Kornberg leads the center's work related to information and disinformation in politics, Congress, and money in politics. Maya also is the author of Inside Congressional Committees: Function and Dysfunction in the Legislative Process (Columbia University Press, 2023.) All of that makes her the perfect person to answer the question, “What do congressional committees do?”Kevin Kosar:Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our republic. It's a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be, and that is why we are here to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I'm your host, Kevin Kosar, and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C.Dr. Kornberg, welcome to the podcast.Maya Kornberg:Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.Kevin Kosar:Since its earliest days—more than two centuries ago—each chamber of Congress has had committees and used them for lawmaking, oversight, etc. Why committees? Maya Kornberg:As you noted, committees have been essential institutions in Congress since its inception. One of the reasons for this is that Congress is a big organization with an enormous number of issues to handle. So committees act as sub-organizations that can help Congress perform specific duties. Congress delegates work through its committees, so they also serve as indicators of how Congress is apportioning responsibility and resources. And in terms of power within the chambers, committees help to decentralize power, and encourage and give space to more legislators from both parties to be active participants in the policymaking process. Kevin Kosar:You note in the book that committees have four core functions: deliberation, education, theater, and personal connection. What do you mean by these terms?Maya Kornberg:These are the core functions that legislative scholars have identified as key roles of committees in legislatures, generally.First and foremost, scholars identify committees as a deliberative forum within Congress. Woodrow Wilson once wrote that “The House both deliberates and legislates in small sections. It delegates its legislative and deliberative functions to stand in committees.” And what does deliberation mean? As you and your co-authors touch on in Congress Overwhelmed, deliberation is really about weighing the different aspects of a question and reasoning through the different causes and consequences. This is a crucial part of any policy formulation, and something that committees handle in Congress.Traditionally, committees are where research is brought in and technical learning takes place, and that's what I mean by education. Congress is a body in which many lawmakers have to legislate on specialized topics that they don't have any training in. Committees give them the space to learn—they are a place where lawmakers gather information and educate themselves about specific policy areas. Committees are also one of the major bipartisan institutions in an increasingly partisan Congress, so they form a space for members of Congress to...

During this week's episode of NAPS Chat, Dr. Kevin Kosar, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, joins Bob Levi to discuss the chaotic opening act of the 118th Congress, American confidence in the U.S. Postal Service and the agency's challenges. Dr. Kosar as been a periodic guest on NAPS Chat. During Kevin's tenure at the Congressional Research Service, he was its resident expert on the Postal Service.

Tom Riello shared 3 saints for Catholic Schools Week. Dan Burke continued his inner life series and talked about divine reading and spiritual discernment of spirits. Kevin Kosar talked about his article, "Congressional fight over house speakership was a good thing"

The topic of this episode is: “Partisan polarization: Is it crippling Congress?”My guest is Frances Lee. She is a professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University and a top scholar on Congress. She is the author and co-author of many articles and books on Congress, and has written for popular publications including the Atlantic magazine and the New York Times. Most recently she and James Curry published, The Limits of Party: Congress and Lawmaking in a Polarized Era (Chicago 2020), which analyzes and addresses the subject of this episode—polarization in our national legislature.Kevin Kosar:Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our republic. It's a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be, and that is why we are here to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I'm your host, Kevin Kosar, and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C.Professor Lee, welcome to the podcast.Frances E. Lee:Thank you, Kevin. It's great to be here.Kevin Kosar:Let's start by ensuring that we all are on the same page: you, I, and listeners alike. When we speak of Congress, what do we mean by the term partisan polarization?Frances E. Lee:Partisan polarization has multiple meanings and I think that's probably why you began with this question.A layman's or a dictionary definition of polarization means division into two sharply contrasting groups. Congress is clearly polarized in this sense. Congress sees much more partisan conflict. Conflict in Congress breaks down more reliably on partisan lines than it did throughout most of the 20th century. We routinely see votes that pit 90% or more Democrats against 90% or more Republicans, a partisan divide that's more deep and predictable than we used to see.However, by partisan polarization, political scientists often mean something more technical. In its most rigorous form, the concept of polarization is grounded in spatial theory. It rests on a theorized choice space in which policy preferences are ranged on an underlying continuum from left to right. In this sense, parties become more polarized as the preferences of members become more distinctly bimodal, and as the two parties' modes move farther apart from one another.It's far from clear that parties are polarized in this second sense. The problem is that the issues at stake in congressional politics are diverse. On some issues, the congressional parties have moved closer together and on some issues, they've moved farther apart. There's little doubt that the post-Trump parties in Congress are

Is Congress broken? It seems the majority of America thinks so. 1 in 5 Americans disapprove of the job lawmakers are doing. But Kevin Kosar from the American Enterprise Institute argues that Congress is NOT actually broken. It's getting a lot done, but lawmakers have a lot of work to do to transform Congress back into a true powerhouse. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are rumblings that the Speaker in waiting, Rep. Kevin McCarthy plans to give some power back to lawmakers and committees. The House Freedom Caucus is pressuring him to do so. Kevin Kosar from the American Enterprise Institute explains how the Speaker consolidated so much power, how it increases partisanship, and how McCarthy can maintain power while keeping the Freedom Caucus happy. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Join Sphere Education Initiatives in advance of the election for a professional development webinar on Election Reform and the Midterm Election. Held via Zoom on November 1st from 7:30 – 9:00 pm eastern, we'll hear from a panel of experts on the Electoral Count Act, a major legislative initiative in Congress that aims to modernize federal law around presidential elections, particularly in response to the events of January 6th.Joining Sphere will be Andy Craig, staff writer for the Cato Institute, Kevin Kosar, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and Genevieve Nadeau, counsel for Protect Democracy. These experts will consider some of the events of January 6th and the need for Congressional action, the proposed legislation, and some of the broader issues around election reform. In addition to our panel conversation, David Olson of Retro Report will offer a professional development workshop on their Midterm Elections Collection, a suite of videos and classroom resources for teaching about Midterm Elections in your classroom. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In today's podcast Byron is joined by Kevin Kosar to talk about the Electoral Count Act and why there is a need for it to be reformed. They get into the history of it and how it could effect our future of politics.

In today’s podcast Byron is joined by Kevin Kosar to talk about the Electoral Count Act and why there is a need for it to be reformed. They get into the history of it and how it could effect our future of politics.

Kevin Kosar joins The Chicks to talk about the electoral count act and why there is a need for it to be reformed. They also get into the Presidential Election Project role in it all. And make sure to stick around to the end to hear how you too can get involved and help out! Please visit our great sponsors: Acre Goldhttps://getacregold.com/chicksVisit GetAcreGold.com/CHICKS and start investing in physical Gold today!EdenPUREhttps://edenpuredeals.comUse code CHICKSBOGO for buy one get one pricing on every Thunderstorm you buy this week only!Genucelhttps://genucel.com/chicksGet 65% off Genucel's Most Popular Package. Use special code CHICKS for an extra discount at checkout. Healthycellhttps://healthycell.com/chicksUse code CHICKS to save 20% off your first order.My Patriot Supplyhttps://preparewiththechicks.comSave $150 on the 3-month food kit and get the peace your family deserves.My Pillowhttps://mypillow.com/chicksSave $90 in the MyPillow MySlipper Blowout Sale. Going on now!Presidential Election Projecthttps://presidentialelectionproject.comVisit to learn more about why reform of the Electoral Count Act is so important.

Kevin Kosar joins The Chicks to talk about the electoral count act and why there is a need for it to be reformed. They also get into the Presidential Election Project role in it all. And make sure to stick around to the end to hear how you too can get involved and help out! […]

Sara is back from reporting on the lawlessness in Portland, Oregon, and describes how that beautiful city is becoming a dystopian mess because crime and open drug use is rampant and the radical politicians there won't do anything to stop it.Sara also takes aim at President Biden's latest lies about what he's supposedly doing to alleviate record high gas prices. She shreds his endless excuses and blame shifting while explaining all the ways that Biden has strangled domestic energy production.Finally, Sara visits with American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Dr. Kevin Kosar about why he and the Presidential Election Project want to clarify what the Vice President can and cannot do when counting electoral votes every four years.Please visit our great sponsors:My Pillow https://www.mypillow.com/carterSave $90 in the MyPillow MySlipper Blowout Sale!The Association of Mature American Citizenshttps://amac.us/carterThe benefits of membership are great, but the cause is even greater.