High Hopes for Congress

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The Brookings Institution presented a study of the accomplishments of the 110th Congress last Thursday, part of a project called “Mending the Broken Branch.” The study includes expectations for the 111th Congress, which began its first session last week.

Participants in the project emphasized that Congress and the public are hopeful about opportunities leaders of the 111th Congress will have to work across the aisle, crack down on corrupt and inappropriate practices, and begin to fix the problems of the “broken branch.” They also emphasize, however, that the repairs necessary to fix the Congress will not come easily, and will probably not come soon.

“Moving from broken to unbroken is not an easy thing to do,” said Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and contributor to Mending the Broken Branch. He continued, “When you have a larger dynamic set in the last 20 years with culture, political trends, and changes inside the institution and outside, you can’t simply wave a magic wand or change a majority and expect that suddenly we are going to move to a very, very different environment.”

Along the same lines, Thomas Mann, a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution said, “We have plenty of crises to create the opportunity for action but the question is, ‘is Congress able to rise to the occasion?’”

Mann went on to point out that the trend has been for Congress to begin its sessions in good faith, abounding in promises to work together and change the way things are done. However, excessive partisanship always steps in to reduce the participation of the minority.

The study of the accomplishments of the 110th Congress, with special attention paid to its handling of the financial crisis, is available at the Brookings Institution’s website. The report is called “Assessing the 110th Congress, Anticipating the 111th.”

One important topic of discussion for the authors of the report is earmark reform. As he discussed what we might expect to see in the first few months of the 111th Congress during a panel discussion on Thursday, Ornstein pointed out that Congress is going to “see a major test obviously coming forward with trillions of dollars in stimulus packages and other vehicles. We see some commendable beginnings in the 111th Congress with both sides saying they’re going to try to limit the earmarks in this venue.”

Ornstein also gave credit to requests from Congressional leadership that representatives who will be joining the Obama administration keep their distance, mentioning Vice President-elect Joe Biden and Obama’s pick for chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. According to Ornstein, this is Congress’s way of sending signals which say, “We are an independent branch. We want to play a role in the legislative process.” He continued, “But the real proof will come in whether we get rigorous and aggressive oversight, whether we see a majority party that works with the President and doesn’t fall apart.”

“There are some positive signals out there of change for the future.”

With the Democrat-controlled Congress coming out of 2008 with an average approval rating of 19 percent, it is hard not to be a skeptic. There is a noticeable lack of faith, at least among investors, in Congress’s capacity to solve problems. Sarah Binder, one of the authors of “Assessing the 110th Congress, Anticipating the 111th,” and a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, remembered a moment that highlighted this lack of confidence. She recalls watching the news which showed a split-screen of the House on one side, deliberating over the first bailout bill, even as the Dow Jones continued to tumble and lose points in its largest single-day loss ever on the other side of the screen.

But she also offered a hopeful prediction for the 111th Congress. “I think the state of the economy will make it possible for Democrats actually to assemble bipartisan support for a very large, multifaceted stimulus package.” She concluded that Congress will certainly have its work cut out for them, as “there are lots of problems and questions that won’t be solved by the stimulus.” That is certainly true, though perhaps an understatement.

Daniel Allen is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.