To delegate or not to delegate: Committee staff, congressional capacity, and executive authority
Image source: POGO By Austin Bussing From repeated, thinly-veiled threats to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller to drastic tariff hikes on steel and aluminum, the administration of president Donald J. Read More
A discretionary spending tale of two parties: James Madison rears his head
Image source here By John Haskell A close examination of federal discretionary spending totals over the last 25 years reveals an unmistakable trend: under Democratic presidents discretionary spending increases were… Read More
Democratic decay, legislative diplomacy, and the House Democracy Partnership
Image source: HDP By Ryan Dukeman Until very recently, “democratic backsliding” was a term consigned mostly to the annals of academic theory, concerned chiefly with perceived “democracy deficits”… Read More
When Congress won the American people’s respect: Watergate
Those of us who make our livings trying to improve the state of American politics must constantly strike a balance between realism and hopefulness. There are a lot of… Read More
Can Member Characteristics Predict Committee Oversight Activity?
Image source By Brian D. Feinstein Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before Congress last week drove home the gulf in outlook between Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. Companies like… Read More
Agencies’ responsibilities to inform Congress: Clashing views
Source: The Hill . By Kevin R. Kosar “Notice and Comment,” the heady Yale Journal on Regulation blog, posted this short piece by Brian D. Feinstein, a University… Read More
Why enacting H.R. 4010, the Congressional Subpoena Compliance and Enforcement Act of 2017, is a big mistake
Source: Issa.house.gov By Morton Rosenberg Summary The House of Representatives’ recent passage of the Congressional Subpoena Compliance and Enforcement Act of 2017 (H.R. 4010), whatever its intention, effectively signals… Read More
A new development involving the Congressional Review Act
P.L. 104-121, sec. 801-808 , the Congressional Review Act by Jarrett Dieterle Over the past year, a debate has broken out in the regulatory reform community over how to properly… Read More
Congress uses the Congressional Review Act to abolish another regulation
During the early months of the Trump administration, Congress and the president made unprecedented use of the Congressional Review Act to repeal regulations. The CRA, which was enacted in… Read More
New Resource: Oversight.gov
“Oversight.gov is a publicly accessible, searchable website containing the latest public reports from Federal Inspectors General who are members of the Council of the Inspectors General on… Read More