Inside Congress

Inside Congress PDF Author: Trevor Corning
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815727348
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 69

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Book Description
Required reading for anyone who wants to understand how to work within Congress. The House and Senate have unique rules and procedures to determine how legislation moves from a policy idea to law. Evolved over the last 200 years, the rules of both chambers are designed to act as the engine for that process. Each legislative body has its own leadership positions to oversee this legislative process. To the novice, whether a newly elected representative, a lawmaker's staff on her first day at work, or a constituent visiting Washington, the entire process can seem incomprehensible. What is an open rule for a House Appropriations bill and how does it affect consideration? Why are unanimous consent agreements needed in the Senate? The authors of Inside Congress, all congressional veterans, have written the definitive guide to how Congress really works. It is the accessible and necessary resource to understanding and interpreting procedural tools, arcane precedents, and the role of party politics in the making of legislation in Congress.

Inside Congress

Inside Congress PDF Author: Trevor Corning
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815727348
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 69

Get Book

Book Description
Required reading for anyone who wants to understand how to work within Congress. The House and Senate have unique rules and procedures to determine how legislation moves from a policy idea to law. Evolved over the last 200 years, the rules of both chambers are designed to act as the engine for that process. Each legislative body has its own leadership positions to oversee this legislative process. To the novice, whether a newly elected representative, a lawmaker's staff on her first day at work, or a constituent visiting Washington, the entire process can seem incomprehensible. What is an open rule for a House Appropriations bill and how does it affect consideration? Why are unanimous consent agreements needed in the Senate? The authors of Inside Congress, all congressional veterans, have written the definitive guide to how Congress really works. It is the accessible and necessary resource to understanding and interpreting procedural tools, arcane precedents, and the role of party politics in the making of legislation in Congress.

Inside Congress

Inside Congress PDF Author: Ronald Kessler
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0671003860
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
MONEY, SEX, AND SELF-INTEREST TAKEN CONTROL OF CAPITOL HILL Now more than ever, Congress runs the country. But who is running Congress? New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist Ronald Kessler takes you behind the scenes, conducting unprecedented interviews with more than 350 insiders to reveal the shocking answer to that question. Here are the sex scandals, the dirty financial deals, the abuses of power -- the deepest, darkest secrets of Congress -- exposed for the first time, including: How congressional members -- including the entire House Republican leadership -- used taxpayer dollars to lavishly redecorate their offices with custom-made furniture, including $20,000 chairs. Eyewitness accounts of members engaging in adulterous affairs and wild orgies in the parking lots, back rooms, and hidden chambers of Capitol Hill. Evidence of special-interest money-laundering schemes that put millions into the pockets of our elected officials. Meticulously documented and chock-full of sizzling revelations, Inside Congress is making headlines across the country. Read it -- and find out what your senators and representatives don't want you to know.

Party Influence in Congress

Party Influence in Congress PDF Author: Steven S. Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139465252
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 17

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Book Description
Party Influence in Congress challenges current arguments and evidence about the influence of political parties in the US Congress. Steven S. Smith argues that theory must reflect policy, electoral, and collective party goals. These goals call for flexible party organizations and leadership strategies. They demand that majority party leaders control the flow of legislation; package legislation and time action to build winning majorities and attract public support; work closely with a president of their party; and influence the vote choices for legislators. Smith observes that the circumstantial evidence of party influence is strong, multiple collective goals remain active ingredients after parties are created, party size is an important factor in party strategy, both negative and positive forms of influence are important to congressional parties, and the needle-in-the-haystack search for direct influence continues to prove frustrating.

Act of Congress

Act of Congress PDF Author: Robert G. Kaiser
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307744515
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
A Washington Post Notable Book An eye-opening account of how Congress today really works—and how it doesn’t— Act of Congress focuses on two of the major players behind the sweeping financial reform bill enacted in response to the Great Crash of 2008: colorful, wisecracking congressman Barney Frank, and careful, insightful senator Christopher Dodd, both of whom met regularly with Robert G. Kaiser during the eighteen months they worked on the bill. In this compelling narrative, Kaiser shows how staffers play a critical role, drafting the legislation and often making the crucial deals. Kaiser’s rare insider access enabled him to illuminate the often-hidden intricacies of legislative enterprise and shows us the workings of Congress in all of its complexity, a clearer picture than any we have had of how Congress works best—or sometimes doesn’t work at all.

Surviving Inside Congress

Surviving Inside Congress PDF Author: Mark N. Strand
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780963305718
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description


LaGuardia in Congress

LaGuardia in Congress PDF Author: Howard Zinn
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 150173007X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Fiorello LaGuardia is known best as the tempestuous mayor of New York City in the days when Franklin Delano Roosevelt sat in the White House. There had been, however, an earlier time, which matched his mayoralty years in sheer drama and perhaps surpassed them in lasting achievement—LaGuardia's years in Congress. He served in the House of Representative almost continuously from 1917 to 1933, representing two ethnically diverse congressional districts: the Fourteenth (Greenwich Village), from 1917 to 1919, and the Twentieth (East Harlem), from 1923 to 1933. Although barred from important committee posts because of his political independence and thus denied from playing a direct role in lawmaking, he was a tireless and vocal champion of Progressive causes, from allowing more immigration and removing U.S. troops from Nicaragua to speaking up for the rights and livelihoods of striking miners, impoverished farmers, oppressed minorities, and struggling families. A goad to the era's plutocrats and their enablers in government, LaGuardia fought for progressive income taxes, greater government oversight of Wall Street, and national employment insurance for workers idled by the Great Depression. In this book, first published by Cornell University Press in 1959, Howard Zinn establishes LaGuardia's tenure in Congress as a vital link between the Progressive and New Deal eras, offering a lively and informative account of his many legislative battles, his political philosophy, and the distinctly urban (specifically, New York City) sensibilities he brought to the Progressive movement.

Fighting for Common Ground

Fighting for Common Ground PDF Author: Olympia Snowe
Publisher: Weinstein Books
ISBN: 1602862176
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
The first woman in American history to serve in both houses of a state legislature and both houses of Congress describes how to dissolve the polarization afflicting the current American government and unite both parties to work for the common good.

Congress from the Inside

Congress from the Inside PDF Author: Sherrod Brown
Publisher: Kent State University Press
ISBN: 9780873386760
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Four decades of Democratic control of Congress abruptly came to an end with the 1994 elections, which propelled the Republican party to an unfamiliar role as the majority party in both houses of Congress. Second-term congressman from Ohio Sherrod Brown was thrust into this frenetic first 100 days which were very partisan and often very nasty. Congress from the Inside takes freshman Congressman Brown through the halls of the Capitol as he learns his job; depicts the inner-working and deal-making of Congress; shows how legislation is crafted; and visits the offices of other members and small meetings where much of the work of Congress is done. Brown's third term, still as a member of the minority party, exposes the strengths and weaknesses of Congress as an institution, its successes and failures, its diversity and its elitism. This account of the transition from a political majority status to minority status discloses the trauma felt by one party and the exhilaration experienced by the other as one era ended and a new one began.

Congress Overwhelmed

Congress Overwhelmed PDF Author: Timothy M. LaPira
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022670257X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
Congress today is falling short. Fewer bills, worse oversight, and more dysfunction. But why? In a new volume of essays, the contributors investigate an underappreciated reason Congress is struggling: it doesn’t have the internal capacity to do what our constitutional system requires of it. Leading scholars chronicle the institutional decline of Congress and the decades-long neglect of its own internal investments in the knowledge and expertise necessary to perform as a first-rate legislature. Today’s legislators and congressional committees have fewer—and less expert and experienced—staff than the executive branch or K Street. This leaves them at the mercy of lobbyists and the administrative bureaucracy. The essays in Congress Overwhelmed assess Congress’s declining capacity and explore ways to upgrade it. Some provide broad historical scope. Others evaluate the current decay and investigate how Congress manages despite the obstacles. Collectively, they undertake the most comprehensive, sophisticated appraisal of congressional capacity to date, and they offer a new analytical frame for thinking about—and improving—our underperforming first branch of government.

Congressional Record

Congressional Record PDF Author: United States. Congress
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 1078

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Book Description