ABOUT THIS BLOG

I shall post videos, graphs, news stories, and other material there. We shall use some of this material in class, and you may review the rest at your convenience. You will all receive invitations to post to the blog. (Please let me know if you do not get such an invitation.) I encourage you to use the blog in these ways:
To post questions or comments about the readings before we discuss them in class;
To follow up on class discussions with additional comments or questions.
To post relevant news items or videos.

There are only two major limitations: no coarse language, and no derogatory comments about people at the Claremont Colleges.


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Saturday, March 31, 2018

This is extremely dangerous to our democracy

Saw this compilation of Sinclair media news stations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI

Thought it was relevant to the course.

Reid

Thursday, March 29, 2018

Simulation: Day 4 and After

Good work!  Tonight's floor session starts promptly at 6:30 PM in Davidson Lecture Hall, on the first floor of Adams.  Because of family obligations, we need to finish absolutely no later than 9 PM (and a little earlier would be even better).

For Monday, please read Davidson, ch. 12.

Peer evaluation: On Monday, April 2 (the Monday after simulation) please bring in a short memo in which you identify three or four Gov 101 participants who did a particularly good job. Give a couple of sentences to each person you name, explaining why she or he stood out. Give special attention to those who did their work behind the scenes. Please take some care with these memos. In addition to using them for evaluating the assignment, I save them so that I may quote them in future letters of recommendation. Peer evaluations are anonymous: please bring in hardcopy and do not put your own name on the sheet.

Writeup: In analyzing your role in the simulation, please cover these points:
  • How well did your positions and goals match those of your real-life counterpart?
  • What methods did you use? In the circumstance that you dealt with, would your counterpart have done the same?
  • What obstacles did you face?
  • What did you achieve?
  • How did the simulation both resemble and differ from the real world?
  • Overall, what did you learn?
You may include relevant supporting materials, such as: memoranda, bill drafts, or strategy notes. (Better yet, just refer to material that is already online, and provide the URLs.) Please be selective here: do not include everything, just the key items.
  • Essays should be double-spaced, and between 5 and 6 pages long. I will not read past the 6th page. (Supporting materials do not count against the page limit.) 
  • Submit the writeups as Word documents, not pdfs.
  • Cite outside sources with Turabian endnotes.
  • Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you.
  • Return essays to the class Sakai dropbox by 11:59 PM, Friday April 13. Your grade for the simulation will drop one gradepoint for one day's lateness, a full grade after that.

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

The 2018 Simulation on Social Media!

Press coverage at THE CUBE @thecubeCMC ‏ AND http://theclaremontcube.blogspot.com/
Armed Services
Democrats
Republicans
Finance Committee

Democrats
Republicans
Judiciary Committee

Democrats

Simulation Day One

Monday, March 26, 2018

I hope everyone is preparing for their State of the Union aerobics tonight! Here is a link to a New York Times analysis of the applause during Trump's State of the Union earlier this year.


See Page 297 of Davidson and the 3/7 Blog Post

At The Washington Post, Aaron Blake reports that the Secretary of the Treasury does not know much about the item veto.
[I]n discussing the topic with Chris Wallace, Mnuchin appeared unfamiliar with even the basics of the line-item veto, which was struck down by the Supreme Court in the 1990s.
Here's the exchange:
MNUCHIN: As you heard him say, he's not planning on [signing an omnibus] again. I think they should give the president a line-item veto. These things should be looked at —
WALLACE: But that's been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, sir.
MNUCHIN: Well, again, Congress could pass a rule, okay, that allows them to do it. But —
WALLACE: No, no, sir, it would be a constitutional amendment.
MNUCHIN: Chris, we don't — we don't need to get into a debate in terms of — there's different ways of doing this. My comment is, it's clear what happened.
Two things.
First, Mnuchin's comment that Congress could simply pass a rule is wrong. Even if you consider proposing a constitutional amendment to be “passing a rule,” it would require two-thirds majorities of both chambers and ratification by 38 out of 50 states. In other words, Congress can't do this on its own.
The second thing is that Mnuchin seems to suggest there is a “debate” to be had about the “different ways of doing this.” But there isn't — not really.
“Mnuchin probably doesn’t know that there was a real-life experiment in the 1990s that answered this question,” said Robert Spitzer, an expert on presidential vetoes who has written about President Bill Clinton's failed effort to use a line-term veto. Spitzer said Clinton used the line-item veto on 10 bills and about 80 different provisions in 1997 before the Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional in the 1998 case Clinton v. City of New York.

Friday, March 23, 2018

Montana Governor Steve Bullock on Vlogbrothers and Trump Asks Congress to Restore Line-Item Veto


Steve Bullock appeared in an interview on the vlogbrothers Youtube channel. He emphasized his focus on practical politics, but also the numerous progressive policies he helped implement in a red state. Does pursuing this national platform specifically geared towards younger viewers indicate future plans for this term-limited governor?

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/23/596401989/trump-threatens-veto-of-spending-deal

The same day, President Trump asked Congress to restore the line-item veto, which we discussed in class and that the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in 1998.

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Congress and the Executive II

Nominations and Removals
Legislative Controls
Regulation





Congressional Review Act (Thurber, pp. 106-16)

Sim Stuff

Spring 2018 Simulation 


Schedule  

PLEASE USE ONLY THE RESERVED ROOMS.

Monday, March 26

6:30-7:00 State of the Union and Democratic Response   Roberts North 15
7:00-9:00  Committee meetings Kravis 166, 167, 168

Tuesday, March 27
6:30-9:00   Committee hearings Kravis 166, 167, 168

Wednesday,  March 28
 6:30-9:00   Committee markups Kravis 166, 167, 168

Thursday, March 29
6:30-9:00   Floor session  Adams Hall, Davidson Lecture


Roles

Armed Services Committee

Democrats
  • Jack Reed, RI, chair  Kai O'Neill
  • Kirsten Gillibrand, NY Sarah Malott
  • Tim Kaine, VA Talha Jilani
  • Elizabeth Warren, MA Ellie Wainstein
Republicans
  • John McCain, AZ, RMM Chloe Amarilla
  • Tom Cotton, AR Mickey McFall
  • Joni Ernst, IA Matthew May
Finance Committee

Democrats
  • Ron Wyden OR, chair Alec Lopata
  • Charles Schumer NY, majority leader* Julia McCarthy
  • Debbie Stabenow MI Skyler Addison [from the parties class]
  • Maria Cantwell WA Jacob Brady
  • Claire McCaskill MO Nick Sage
Republicans
  • Orrin Hatch UT, RMM Reid Dickerson
  • Mitch McConnell, KY, minority leader* Charlie Harris
  • John Cornyn, TX Mica Laber
  • Tim Scott, SC Kyleigh Mann
Judiciary Committee

Democrats
  • Dianne Feinstein, CA, chair Anna Green
  • Dick Durbin, IL Betzy Perez
  • Cory Booker, NJ McKenzie Deutsch
  • Kamala Harris, CA Becky Shane
Republicans
  • Chuck Grassley IA, RMM Jenna Lewinstein
  • Ted Cruz, TX Nicole Larson
  • Lindsey Graham, SC Gretta Richardson

Monday, March 19, 2018

I NAIL: Checking the Executive

I NAIL:  Impeachment, Nominations, Appropriations, Investigations, Legislation

Impeachment
Nominations 
Legislation:  Executive Branch Organization and Laws on Reporting 

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Democratic inter-Party conflict over Dodd-Frank roll back bill

Elizabeth Warren is leading the campaign against a bipartisan bill (S.2155 Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act) that will roll back key parts of the 2010 Dodd Frank financial regulation reforms. There is no evidence that mid to small sized banks have struggled to recover in recent years; when this bill was introduced community banks recorded a 9% increase in profits and larger banks recorded record-setting revenues in 2016. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that the financial sector spent a record-setting $2 billion on lobbying in the 2015-2016 election cycle. With several red-state Democrats facing election this fall (Heitkamp, Manchin, McCaskill, Tester, Donnelly, etc.), and a lull in the banking regulation issue cycle, the bill stands to challenge the Democratic Party's unification on economic policy in light of Trump-era economic populism.

This brings us to where we are today; this week Warren sent out a fundraising email decrying Democrats who support S.2155, followed by a caucus meeting where the Party's disagreements were laid bare. Senator Schumer, who publicly opposes the bill, but also received the most financial sector lobbying donations of any Congressman in the 2015-2016 cycle, has recently urged Warren to focus her attack on the bills policies rather than fellow Democratic senators. Schumer is facing the biggest rift in the Democratic caucus since his tenure as minority leader. His solution thus far has been to allow moderate Democratic backers to "do what they got to do." Critics are split over whether Schumer should have done more to shut down the inter-party conflict, while others question the Democratic message bend towards pro-corporations in the eyes of liberal activists.

The bill will likely pass the Senate (currently 16 Dem supporters). The Democrats will undoubtedly push the message that the bill is intended to help small to mid-sized banks in rural areas in spite of news exposing big corporation benefits such as expanding restrictions barring consumer lawsuits against companies like Equifax. Economic policy will be a big topic this midterm season, and especially come 2020, it will be interesting to see how the Democratic Party aligns progressive ideology with the need to appease big donors and incorporate an agenda to re-invigorate working class Trump voters. 

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Congress and the Executive II

More on Vetoes.  See Newt Gingrich, Lessons Learned the Hard Way (1998):
We had not only failed to take into account the ability of the Senate to delay us and obstruct us, but we had much too cavalierly underrated the power of the President, even a President who had lost his legislative majority and was in a certain amount of trouble for other reasons. I am speaking of the power of the veto. Even if you pass something through both the House and the Senate, there is that presidential pen. How could we have forgotten that? For me especially it was inexcusable, because when I was Republican whip during the Bush Administration one of my duties had been precisely to help sustain presidential vetoes.
1.  Item Veto (Davidson 297)




2.  Legislative veto and the Congressional Review Act (more after the break)

Unilateral Power:  Executive Actions





Forms of executive action
But what one administration does unilaterally, another administration can undo unilaterally

Courts can also undo actions.  The case of DAPA:US v. Texas\

They can also undo the  undoing: The case of DACA.


Signing statements



Monday, March 5, 2018

Congress and the Executive I

LBJ orders some pants.

The simulation manual

Make use of institutional memory:



Hamilton in Federalist 8: "It is of the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority."








Statements of Administration Policy
1— Strongly Support Passage
2— Support Passage
3— Do not Object to Passage
4— No Position on Passage
5— Oppose
6— Strongly Oppose
7— Secretary’s veto Threat (single and multiple agency)
8— Senior Advisor’s Veto Threat
9— Presidential Veto Threat
CQ on presidential success (see Thurber, pp. 14-15)


Of all Senate votes (117), 36 percent were taken with knowledge of where the president stood on the issue. For the Senate, that is the highest score for a president’s first year since Ronald Reagan’s 128 in 1981.

When nominations are weeded out, the Senate voted 23 times knowing Trump’s position (10 percent). But only 19.7 percent of Senate votes cast with the president’s stance known were not nomination votes, the second-lowest total in three decades.

Senate Republicans opened the floodgates for nominations, giving Trump 94 confirmation floor votes last year, compared to 44 for Obama in the last two years of his presidency while the chamber was under GOP control.


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