Reform and Congressional Capacity

 Jonathan Bydlak at R Street:

Dear Majority Leader Schumer, Minority Leader McConnell, Chairwoman Klobuchar, and Ranking Member Blunt:

The COVID-19 pandemic, growing economic hardship for many American families, a national reckoning over racial injustice, and the January 6 siege of the Capitol have strained our democracy, underscoring the need for a strong, well-prepared Congress. While democratic norms and long-standing Senate traditions provide a firm grounding, the times require a dynamic Senate, one capable of evolving to meet these 21st century challenges. We, the undersigned, urge the bipartisan Senate leadership to take critical steps to ensure Congress has the capacity to meet this foundational moment, providing the kind of leadership the American people need and deserve. We strongly urge you to task a group of senators with evaluating institutional capacity and advancing recommendations to strengthen the Senate’s internal rules, norms, and operations. Such a body—whether created as a task force outside of the committee structure, a special subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Rules & Administration, or a hybrid approach—should have bipartisan representation and be sufficiently funded and staffed to thoroughly examine the complex issues facing the Senate. Failure to take action of this kind will leave the Senate insufficiently prepared to address the serious challenges of today and tomorrow.

 

Congressional Culture

The challenges facing the country require civility and cross-partisan collaboration. Unfortunately, the incentives that drive political tribalism in Congress are stronger than ever. The unchecked rise of social media has invited disinformation and created political echo chambers, while partisan redistricting and record spending in campaigns are alienating many voters. The Senate must be intentional about the rules and norms it has formed, and how these structures either build up or break down partisan divides. For example, introductory training and leadership development programs for incoming members and staff present the opportunity to establish a culture of bipartisanship at the outset. Committee structures and deliberative processes should be reviewed with an eye toward changes that could maximize collaboration across party lines. Creating a healthy congressional culture also requires institutional support for ethical and transparent conduct. This means embracing practices that allow stakeholders to participate in and readily follow the legislative process, strengthening ethics training for senators and staff, and examining the ethics rules governing senators. This suite of policies is vital to help build public trust in Congress as a representative body.

 

Article One: Rebuilding Congressional Capacity

There are a number of procedural mechanisms that the Senate should examine to reclaim its powers and responsibilities, as established by Article One of the U.S. Constitution. A Senate body with this charge could look to reform the budgeting and appropriations process to maximize efficiency, examine steps the institution can take to ensure robust oversight of the executive branch, and evaluate whether the committee process is working to the satisfaction of both senators and external stakeholders. Separately, the Senate must ensure that it is employing the strongest tools available to meet 21st century challenges. This means continuing to bring the technological infrastructure of the Senate up to date and ensuring that both senators and staff have the training necessary to fully utilize these resources.

 

Staff Compensation and Retention

Congressional staff, both on Capitol Hill and in district offices, are crucial to the daily operations of the institution—crafting policy, advancing legislation, and interacting daily with constituents. Despite the responsibilities and wide range of challenges facing these public servants, congressional staff receive lower pay compared to executive branch and private sector employees. Staff compensation has declined across communications, legislative, and administrative staff, prompting 65 percent of staffers to say that they plan to leave Congress within five years. Many enter the Congress-to-K Street pipeline, a dynamic that causes Congress to turn to lobbyists for expertise and undermines voters’ faith in their elected representatives. These challenges are heightened when it comes to recruiting and retaining staff of color. According to a recent report by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, “People of color make up 40% of the U.S. population, but only 11% of all Senate personal office top staff.” In order to ensure that Congress is representing all constituents, the institution must work to foster diversity in the staff recruitment process and create an inclusive work environment by instituting internal diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.

 

Conclusion

A functional representative legislature is the hallmark of a functional democratic republic. Unfortunately, congressional productivity has broken down, resulting in unacceptably low public trust in the institution and impeding our nation’s ability to address the real issues that afflict American communities. In order for the Senate to fulfill its constitutional duties and confront these challenges, Senate leadership should establish and prioritize a body dedicated to making the Senate more transparent, representative, efficient, and effective.

As organizations and individuals committed to seeing a strong legislative branch, we would welcome the opportunity to support and amplify the efforts of this body. We would also be happy to discuss this matter further if you have any questions. Please contact Meredith McGehee, Executive Director, Issue One at meredith@issueone.org or Jamie Neikrie, Coordinator, Fix Congress Cohort at jneikrie@issueone.org.

Sincerely,

• Advocacy Blueprints
• Bipartisan Policy Center
• College to Congress
• Congressional Management Foundation
• Demand Progress
• Democracy Fund Voice
• Issue One
• Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
• Kevin M. Esterling, University of California, Riverside*
• Kevin R. Kosar, American Enterprise Institute*
• Lincoln Network
• Lorelei Kelly, Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown*
• Marci Harris, POPVOX Inc.*
• R Street Institute
• Rick Shapiro, Strategic Assets Consulting*
• Unite America

* Affiliations listed for identification purposes only. Cc: Senator Dick Durbin, Senate Majority Whip Senator John Thune, Senate Minority Whip

 

Legislative Process II

For next time: Straus 4, 10, 11, 12.  

For Wed: ch. 9, 15.

 Madison (Federalist 58) anticipated that the House would be more centralized than the Senate: " [In] all legislative assemblies the greater the number composing them may be, the fewer will be the men who will in fact direct their proceedings."

• The committee system
• Organizing resolution
• Appointments and dealmaking in a 50-50 Senate
• Celebrity Witnesses
• A committee report
• Rules Committee
• The suspension calendar

Even post office renamings can get controversial in these polarized times:

GOING POSTAL: Weeks of friction between the two parties boiled over in the House on Tuesday night, and at the center of it was a post office in Tupelo, Mississippi. Here’s the backstory from Sarah and Heather:

Over the weekend, Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) grew furious that the House planned to take up a suspension bill from Rep. Trent Kelly — a Republican who met with a group on Jan. 6 that later stormed the Capitol and who also voted against certifying Biden’s election win after the deadly assault.

Some of Casten’s fellow Democrats warned him against trying to block the measure, fearing it could be the end of suspension bills — a process that’s critical to keeping the trains running in the House. But he went ahead with it, surprising his colleagues and forcing Dem leadership into a last-minute scramble to save the bill. In a note to members, Casten’s chief said the “willingness to collaborate can only extend so far” and that Kelly’s vote to overturn the election results on Jan. 6 “was a bridge too far.”

In the end, just 15 Democrats voted “no,” including the House’s most progressive members. Dem leaders saved the bill, quickly distributing a whip notice to urge members to support it, and even calling on House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) to help turn out the votes.

The issue is far from resolved within the caucus, many members and senior aides tell us.

• The end of open rules in the House
• Motion to proceed 

Congress on Video

 Celebrity Testimony

A Testy Markup in the House

Why Mitch Hates Ted

Tentative List of Sim Roles

 In our simulation, Republicans have a majority.

Judiciary Republicans

• Grassley, chair
• Graham
• Cruz
• Sasse
• McConnell (added for sim purposes)

Judiciary Democrats

• Durbin, RMM
• Feinstein
• Klobuchar
• Schumer (added for sim purposes)

Foreign Relations Republicans

• Risch, chair
• Rubio
• Romney
• Portman
• Paul

Foreign Relations Democrats

• Menendez, RMM
• Shaheen
• Booker
• Schatz

An Anti-Trump 3rd Party? Doubt.

 62% of Americans say that a third party is needed, up from September's 57%. There's recently been chatter of a third party, first a "MAGA" / "Patriot" party comprised of disillusioned pro-Trump voters, and then more recently a center-right anti-Trump party. The former is looking increasingly nonviable due to Trump's iron grip on the Republican Party. Indeed, why form your own party from scratch when you've inherited a ready-made one waiting for commands?

The latter option, a center-right anti-Trump (and presumably pro-Democratic norms) party, is unlikely for 2 reasons. First, ballot access laws in all 50 states make a viable third party incredibly difficult. The parties that have achieved ballot access (such as the Libertarian Party or Green Party) have done so sporadically and only after sustained struggle to achieve the necessary signatures and other prerequisites. Starting a party and getting on the ballot consistently also costs a ton of money. Second, it's unclear whether there is a place for this center-right party. The Democrats are too far to the left to absorb these former GOP establishment figures, and the GOP is firmly in the hands of Trump-aligned populists. Is there a grassroots movement rivaling the MAGA movement in strength that calls for a pro-Democracy GOP? Unclear. The conversations of a center-right third party are happening among strategists, former officials, and other thought leaders. They have yet to prove that conservative voters are clamoring in great numbers for a less bombastic conservative party.

Those advocating for a center-right party have also floated the idea of creating a faction within the GOP, something akin to a moderate version of the Tea Party from the 2010s. This is challenging as well: while Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski are aligned in their distaste for Trump and their support for democratic institutions, they occupy different ideological lanes within the GOP. It would be difficult for them to both be a part of a unified faction within a conservative party.

Legislative Process I

 LEGISLATION REALLY CAN PASS 

Also see 2019 public lands bill.  

Congress.gov record of the bill

In two weeks, we shall read Jill Lawrence's account of a similar bill from a few years ago.

 \  Bill Drafting (Straus, ch. 2; Davidson,  225-227)

• How an idea becomes a bill
• Types of measures
• Drafting guide
• An example of legislative language: "Keep Our PACT Act"
• Senate Legislative Counsel
• House Legislative Counsel

The Name Game

• The EARN IT Act
• The STOP STUPIDITY Act
• The EL CHAPO Act
• The OMAR Act

Rules

• House Rules
• Senate Rules

Do They Read The Bills? No.  

The fiscal cliff -- search for "algae"

The committee system

• How members end up on committees
• Removing the Notorious MTG
• House and Senate jurisdictions are not quite the same

Legislation: Video

 

Florida 2022 Senate Race Begins

Florida's Sen. Marco Rubio (R) is up for his third reelection this coming congressional election cycle, and he has begun framing his record as one of bipartisanship and legislative accomplishments. In the weeks before this article was released there had been much discussion as to whether Ivanka Trump would primary Rubio, but several days ago word got out that she had told him that no primary challenge was coming.

Florida Democrats, looking to retake one of the state's Senate seats following a poor showing this November, are eyeing several potential challengers to Rubio. Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL-7), the chair of the centrist Blue Dog Coalition, recently changed her website domain name which some observers have taken as a sign she is readying a statewide campaign. 

Regardless of who Democrats can recruit to challenge Rubio, however, there is a feeling among many that he would be hard to take down. From the link, - "For a variety of reasons, Rubio will be tough to beat — whether because it is an off-year election, his Miami roots or his profile — that’s hardly a surprise to anyone and I believe that is why there is an absence of big names lining up early,” said Steve Vancore, a veteran Democratic pollster and strategist."

Parties and Leadership II

For Monday, Davidson, ch. 7-8, Straus ch.2

Speakership Elections -- and more from Matt Glassman

Note:  even majorities of the president's party may split with the administration agenda.  See Democrats on trade in 1993 and 2014.

The Johnson Network

• The Favor Bank

The Johnson Intelligence System

• One week after becoming president, LBJ mentions his long relationship with J. Edgar Hoover (ab at 19:00).

The Johnson Procedure

• Unanimous consent agreement -- functional equivalent of a House rule

The Johnson Treatment

• Caro on LBJ, the House, and the Senate

LBJ in Frank Underwood's office

 

The inside game and the outside game:  in LBJ's time in the Senate, the outside game scarcely counted.  During the early 1990s -- just before the Web dominated political communication -- Rush Limbaugh was central to the GOP outside game.

Newt v. O'Neill 1984 (start clip at 9:30)

Limbaugh was central to the GOP outside game in the early 1990s, before the Web came to dominate political communication

Women in Congress
Pew data

Pelosi as a leader:

• Years later, John Spratt, a South Carolina congressman who voted against her at the time, sheepishly told me, “I couldn’t quite see her as whip, because you need to be kind of tough to be whip, and I estimated her differently. I just didn’t put two and two together.”
• Pelosi’s reign was successful because she understood the will of her caucus rather than bending it to hers.

Approval rating:  compare Pelosi and McConnell

Pelosi and AOC

Two sides of Pelosi and religion:

LBJ and Pelosi

Two sides of Pelosi and religion:




The Mom Look

The Rip

The Ex Is Unhappy with Mitch

 Trump's statement today:

“The Republican Party can never again be respected or strong with political “leaders” like Sen. Mitch McConnell at its helm. McConnell’s dedication to business as usual, status quo policies, together with his lack of political insight, wisdom, skill, and personality, has rapidly driven him from Majority Leader to Minority Leader, and it will only get worse. The Democrats and Chuck Schumer play McConnell like a fiddle—they’ve never had it so good—and they want to keep it that way! We know our America First agenda is a winner, not McConnell’s Beltway First agenda or Biden’s America Last.

In 2020, I received the most votes of any sitting President in history, almost 75,000,000. Every incumbent House Republican won for the first time in decades, and we flipped 15 seats, almost costing Nancy Pelosi her job. Republicans won majorities in at least 59 of the 98 partisan legislative chambers, and the Democrats failed to flip a single legislative chamber from red to blue. And in “Mitch’s Senate,” over the last two election cycles, I single-handedly saved at least 12 Senate seats, more than eight in the 2020 cycle alone—and then came the Georgia disaster, where we should have won both U.S. Senate seats, but McConnell matched the Democrat offer of $2,000 stimulus checks with $600. How does that work? It became the Democrats’ principal advertisement, and a big winner for them it was. McConnell then put himself, one of the most unpopular politicians in the United States, into the advertisements. Many Republicans in Georgia voted Democrat, or just didn’t vote, because of their anguish at their inept Governor, Brian Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and the Republican Party, for not doing its job on Election Integrity during the 2020 Presidential race.

It was a complete election disaster in Georgia, and certain other swing states. McConnell did nothing, and will never do what needs to be done in order to secure a fair and just electoral system into the future. He doesn’t have what it takes, never did, and never will.

My only regret is that McConnell “begged” for my strong support and endorsement before the great people of Kentucky in the 2020 election, and I gave it to him. He went from one point down to 20 points up, and won. How quickly he forgets. Without my endorsement, McConnell would have lost, and lost badly. Now, his numbers are lower than ever before, he is destroying the Republican side of the Senate, and in so doing, seriously hurting our Country.

Likewise, McConnell has no credibility on China because of his family’s substantial Chinese business holdings. He does nothing on this tremendous economic and military threat.

Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again. He will never do what needs to be done, or what is right for our Country. Where necessary and appropriate, I will back primary rivals who espouse Making America Great Again and our policy of America First. We want brilliant, strong, thoughtful, and compassionate leadership.

Prior to the pandemic, we produced the greatest economy and jobs numbers in the history of our Country, and likewise, our economic recovery after Covid was the best in the world. We cut taxes and regulations, rebuilt our military, took care of our Vets, became energy independent, built the wall and stopped the massive inflow of illegals into our Country, and so much more. And now, illegals are pouring in, pipelines are being stopped, taxes will be going up, and we will no longer be energy independent.


This is a big moment for our country, and we cannot let it pass by using third rate “leaders” to dictate our future!”

Second Assignment, Spring 2021

 1. Pick any bill from the 116th (2019-2020) Congress. Explain its fate. Instead of giving a mere chronology, tell why the measure moved or stalled. What happened to previous versions? Which groups or blocs backed and fought it?  Did the administration take a position? Which strategies and tactics did its friends and foes use? Even if it failed or stalled, did it prompt the passage of a similar measure in a different form? Look at parliamentary strategies, major amendments, and roll calls. Again, you should explain the outcome, not just describe the process.  Some possible topics:

• HR 6395 (defense authorization)
• HR  5430 (NAFTA update)
• HR 8 (background checks)
• HR 1 (political reform)
• HR 4 (elections)
• HJ Res 77 (Syria)
• HJ Res 76 (student loans)
• S.J. Res 7 (Yemen)
• SJ Res 36 (Saudi arms sales)
• SJ Res 68 (Iran war powers)

2. Analyze a proposed reform of congressional procedure. Carefully explain arguments for and against the reform. Would it achieve its goal? Would it improve the operation of Congress? (The two questions are not necessarily the same.)  The Congressional Institute lists some ideas.  So does APSA, with contributions from Prof. Kathryn Pearson, an alum of this course.

3. Pick pending legislation that has not yet passed either house. Write a memo to its prime sponsor detailing a plausible strategy for securing its passage at least in one chamber. In your answer, consider all phases of the legislative process and take account of the influence of interest groups and the administration.

Get background from a source such as CQ Magazine where you may find the partisan breakdown of roll-call votes. .

Other possible sources include:

• Statements of Administration Policy -- indications of whether POTUS will sign or veto.
• Congress.gov (http://www.congress.gov/) -- official site for bill summary and status
• GovTrack (http://www.govtrack.us/) – unofficial site for congressional information
• ProQuest Congressional (http://congressional.proquest.com/profiles/gis/search/basic/basicsearch ). -- many congressional documents including searchable Congressional Record. If your computer will not accept this URL, go through the library web page (http://library.claremont.edu). Click “databases,” then the letter “P,” then “ProQuest Congressional.”)
• Committee web pages, which usually contain testimony and text of reports. See http://www.house.gov/committees/ or https://www.senate.gov/committees/index.htm
• ProPublica tools and websites at https://projects.propublica.org/represent/ 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• Essays should be typed, double-spaced, and no more than five pages long. I will not read past the fifth page. 
• Cite your sources with endnotes in standard Turabian format. Endnote pages do not count against the page limit.
• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you. Return essays (as Word documents, not pdfs) to the Sakai dropbox by 11:59 PM, Friday, March 5. I reserve the right to dock papers will one gradepoint for one day’s lateness, a full letter grade after that.

Earmarks Making a Possible Comeback

 Politico article out today quoting House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) as privately telling Democrats "that earmarks will be revived this Congress and that he can 'guarantee' the effort 'will be bipartisan,' according to two people on the call."

The article also mentions concerns that swing-seat Democrats have about earmarks' return being used in GOP attack ads. One Dem aide states, "We’re not going to have a majority if we bring back earmarks."

This analysis piece by Chris Cillizza at CNN also discusses some of the recent history behind earmarks, and concludes that they are necessary for a functioning Congress - "If you want bipartisanship and bills to actually pass Congress, you want earmarks to come back. It's Congress' secret sauce."

Parties and Leadership I

 Committees and the Simulation

Hill leadership

• House
• Senate

Edmund Burke:

 In all bodies, those who will lead, must also, in a considerable degree, follow. They must conform their propositions to the taste, talent, and disposition, of those whom they wish to conduct: therefore, if an assembly is viciously or feebly composed in a very great part of it, nothing but such a supreme degree of virtue as very rarely appears in the world, and for that reason cannot enter into calculation, will prevent the men of talent disseminated through it from becoming only the expert instruments of absurd projects!

• Is party unity the same as party discipline? (See Staus, ch. 3) 
• The Cheney vote
• The role of state parties and local politics

Speakership Elections

Member Organizations

• Congressional Black Caucus
• Links to Off-Hill organizations;  the CBC Foundation

Informal Groups

• House Freedom Caucus
• The Squad
• The Force
• Role of women (Staus ch. 13)

Note:  even majorities of the president's party may split with the administration agenda.  See Democrats on trade in 1993 and 2014.

\

Generations and Immigration

  Sara Atske at Pew:

Immigrants and the children of immigrants account for a small but growing share of lawmakers on Capitol Hill. At least 76 (14%) of the voting members of the 117th Congress are foreign born or have at least one parent born in another country, a slight uptick from the prior two Congresses.

Overall, there are 18 foreign-born members of the 117th Congress – 17 representatives and one senator, Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, who was born in Japan. At least 58 other members, including 42 in the House and 16 in the Senate, were born in the United States or its territories to at least one immigrant parent, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of biographical information from the Congressional Research Service, news stories and members’ official websites and genealogical records through Feb. 8.

 

Carrie Elizabeth Blazina and Drew DeSilver at Pew:

The number of Millennials and Generation Xers in the U.S. House of Representatives rose slightly with the new 117th Congress, though less so than with the 116th. And even as these generations gain representation in both chambers, older generations still make up the majority of senators and representatives.

Followups to Yesterday's Discussion of Elections

About Indivisible.

Article on the impact of "defund" attacks and the lack of in-person campaigning.

Ron Brownstein on how gerrymandering could influence House elections in the next decade:

Democrats face a daunting future of severe Republican gerrymandering that could flip control of the House in 2022 and suppress diverse younger generations’ political influence for years to come, according to a new study released today. Those findings underscore the stakes in Democrats’ efforts to pass national legislation combatting such electoral manipulation.
The four big states to watch are Texas, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina, where the GOP enjoys complete control over the redistricting process, says Michael Li, a senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice and the author of the new report on how congressional redistricting could unfold following the 2020 census. “Those four states, which are seat-rich and where Republicans control the process, could decide who controls the next Congress,” he told me.

Over the longer term, Republican states could impose gerrymanders that prevent the nation’s growing nonwhite population from building political power commensurate with its numbers—even though voters of color accounted for about four in five newly eligible voters in the past decade, the study found.

The report, which was provided exclusively to The Atlantic, comes as Democrats prepare to advance two bills to guarantee voting rights and reshape the rules regarding federal elections: a new Voting Rights Act and the omnibus legislation called H.R. 1. Both bills, which the Democratic-controlled House approved in the previous session, are likely to pass the chamber again this year—with H.R. 1 potentially winning approval as soon as early next month, House aides say. But both are virtually certain to be blocked in the Senate by a Republican filibuster—unless Democrats change the upper chamber’s rules to allow them to pass with a simple-majority vote.

Home Style and Hill Style

 

In Home Style, members try to convey

• Qualification
• Identification
• Empathy

FOUR WAYS OF BEING A MEMBER:

• DISTRICT (OR STATE) SERVANTS
• COMMITTEE SPECIALISTS
• PARTY LEADERS
• NATIONAL POLITICAL FIGURES

Home Style

 John McCain in 1993 showed that a fierce maverick can become very deferential when facing little old ladies:

 

During non-pandemic times, different kinds of encounters take place at town halls:

 

Congressional Elections I

LAT article on home style and impeachment.

Competition

Incumbents Usually Win -- 2020

House and Senate margins  

Recruitment

• Notwithstanding 2018, GOP "bench" in 2020 was stronger than in the past

Control

Midterms Are Bad for the President's Party

The House

Gerrymandering: cracking, packing, merging, isolating

Unintentional gerrymandering -- NYT article

The dramatic decline in districts with split results

GOP Advantage in Non-Minority Districts

Democrats have surged in suburbs

The Senate

Senate classes (last year was a "class 2" election)

The vanishing of split delegations

Strategery!

• Party identification, party brand

Campaign Finance

"Hard money" contribution limits

Outside spending

Commercials!

Doyle McManus of LAT on 2020 ads:

• Best Senate ad, Republican: “We Can Do Better,” John James, Michigan. A GOP challenger admits that 2020 has been “terrible” and promises to bring change. [James narrowly lost.]
• Best Senate ad, Democratic: “Drain the Swamp,” Amy McGrath, Kentucky. A roughhewn Trump voter denounces Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s votes for trade deals as “crap, in my book,” and says he’s voting against McConnell because “36 years is long enough.” [She lost, bigly.]
• Best House of Representatives ad, either party: “Texas Reloaded,” Dan Crenshaw, Texas. A mock action movie joins six Republicans for “Mission Impossible.”  [See results here https://www.270towin.com/2020-house-election/states/texas ]

From 2018, maybe the meanest ad ever.  (The target of the ad won anyway.)

 The 2018 Funny Ad:

The 2016 military ad (Kander lost):

 

AND THE 2022 CYCLE IS ALREADY UNDER WAY!

Swearing on the Bible

Video resurfaces of Marjorie Taylor Greene, in 2019 wanting Muslim congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib to retake their oaths on a Bible.

 

 In 2017, former judge Roy Moore ran in a special Senate election in Alabama.  His spokesperson appeared with Jake Tapper.  Hilarity ensued.

 

 As I explained in class, the official swearing-in does not involve a Bible or any other book:

Members may choose a ceremonial photo where they re-enact the oath with any book of their choice.

In the Senate, agonostic  Kyrsten Sinema used a law book;

Congressional History and Impeachment

 For Next Monday, Davidson, ch. 3-4.

Wed. Davidson ch. 5 (Note revision of syllabus).

HAVE QUESTIONS FOR CANDACE VALENZUELA.

Congress and the Civil War

The congressional oath of office dates from this era.

Andrew Johnson Impeachment -- see esp. Article Ten

Impeachment v. Bill of Attainder

Persons subject to impeachment 

A separate process for disciplining members of Congress.

• Notorious MTG

The list

The House

• "Due process" does not apply.  
• The Fifth Amendment says no person shall "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Impeachment merely removes a person from office.
  

The Senate

• The majority makes the rules
• The role of the Chief Justice

The Grounds

• Treason
• Bribery
• High Crimes and Misdemeanors
• Gerald R. Ford 1970: "An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.” 

The Special Case of the President

• The "take care" clause
• At Harvard Law Review, Andrew Kent.Ethan J. Leib, and Jed Handelsman Shugerman have an article titled "Faithful Execution and Article II." From the abstract:
  Article II of the U.S. Constitution twice imposes a duty of “faithful execution” on the President, who must “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” and take an oath or affirmation to “faithfully execute the Office of President.

Nixon

• Yes, there was a partisan dimension.
• A key staffer remembers...

Clinton

Lindsey Graham 1999: “What’s a high crime? ... Doesn’t even have to be a crime. It’s just when you start using your office and you’re acting in a way that hurts people, you’ve committed a high crime.” https://t.co/fYgIHpaHfE

— Jack Pitney (@jpitney) February 2, 2021

Trump Impeachment I

Writing Tips

For more detail -- along with links to model papers-- click here: https://www1.cmc.edu/pages/faculty/JPitney/writing.htm

• Revise and rewrite. (See the "paramedic method.")
• Never use a long Latinate word when a short Anglo-Saxon one will do. As William Zinsser says: "The English language is derived from two main sources. One is Latin, the florid language of ancient Rome. The other is Anglo-Saxon, the plain languages of England and northern Europe. The words derived from Latin are the enemy—they will strangle and suffocate everything you write. The Anglo-Saxon words will set you free."
• Cut needless words 
• Mindless introductory phrases (“It is important to keep in mind the fact that”);
• Redundancies ("This is a tough hurricane. One of the wettest we've ever seen from the standpoint of water." -- Donald J. Trump, September 18, 2018)
• Write with nouns and verbs, not adjectives and adverbs.
• Shun the passive voice and forms of the verb to be. Use active verbs.
• Vary the length of your sentences and paragraphs.
• Do not shift from one verb tense to another if the time frame is the same.
• Make your point at the start. Use the rest of the essay to support it.
• Do not conclude with a mere summary.
• Never use contractions in academic writing.
• Proofread. The computer will not catch all your mistakes.
• Avoid "dropped quotations."
• For endnotes, use Arabic numerals, not lower-case Romans. (Click here to see how to change formats.) Follow these steps if you need to convert footnotes to endnotes.
• When referring to the legislative branch, capitalize Congress. When referring to political parties, capitalize Republican and Democratic.
• Choose your words carefully. Never use feel for think, verbal for oral, incredibly for very, or novel for a work of non-fiction.
• Stay off tangents. Cut anything that fails to advance your argument. In academic essays, avoid sermonettes. (“However, I feel that Franklin Pierce was an incredibly lousy president under who, the national polity was lead into it's crucial crisis ...”)

        

Congressional History, Fields of Blood

"All of American history comes from the Civil War. It is the most important event in our history. Everything before it led up to it, everything since, everything, is a consequence of it." -- Ken Burns

From Article I, section 2

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

Akhil Amar on the Three-Fifths Clause:

The radical vice of Article I as drafted and ratified was that it gave slaveholding regions extra clout in every election as far as the eye could see - a political gift that kept giving. And growing. Unconstrained by any explicit intrastate equality norm in Article I, and emboldened by the federal [3/5] ratio, many slave states in the antebellum era skewed their congressional-district maps in favor of slaveholding regions within the state. Thus the House not only leaned south, but also within coastal slave states bent east, toward tidewater plantations that grabbed more than their fair share of seats. ... The very foundation of the Constitution’s first branch was tilted and rotten.

And not just the first branch. The Article II electoral college sat atop the Article I base: The electors who picked the president would be apportioned according to the number of seats a state had in the House and Senate. In turn, presidents would nominate cabinet heads, Supreme Court justices, and other Article III judges.

Consequences of the Three-Fifths Clause.  From William Lee Miller, Arguing About Slavery:

Five of the first seven presidents were slaveholders [Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson], for thirty-two of the nation’s first thirty-six years forty of its first forty-eight, fifty of its first sixty four, the nation’s president was a slaveholder. The powerful office of Speaker of the House was held by a slaveholder for twenty-eight of the nation’s first thirty-five years. The president pro tem of the Senate was virtually always a slaveholder. The majority of the cabinet members and — very important — of justices of the Supreme Court were slaveholders. The slaveholding Chief Justice Roger Taney, appointed by slaveholding President Andrew Jackson to succeed the slaveholding John Marshall, would serve all the way through the decades before the war into the years of the Civil War itself; it would be a radical change of the kind slaveholders feared when in 1863, President Lincoln would appoint the anti-slavery politician Salmon P. Chase of Ohio to succeed Taney.

The size of Congress (Davidson 28-29) 

Statehood -- Matt Glassman reflects:

The relevant constitutional provision is Article 4, section 3:

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress

That’s right. All it takes to create a new state is the passage of a federal law. Right now, assuming they were willing to use the nuclear option to abolish the filibuster for state admissions, any unified government could make Puerto Rico or DC a state, or (with the consent of the state leg) divide Texas (or Wyoming) into any number of states. WIth just a law. Irreversibly. And the constitution puts no population or land size constraints on the process either.

These three features of the statehood process—irreversibility, a low threshold for creation, and no population/size constraints on the creation of a state—made the statehood process incredibly destabilzing in the 19th century. Any majority, at any time, could rearrange the balance of power in the legislature and the electoral college. And it unambiguoulsy exacerbated the slave crisis: so manty of the major flashpoints over slavery between 1820 and 1860 involved the flawed statehood process: the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the LeCompton Constitution fight, even the Dred Scot decision.

Congressional Tenure (Davidson p. 35):

The book on violence in the antebellum Congress:




The title comes from this line, which provides the book's epigraph: In a letter to Senator Charles Sumner (MA) Rev. John Turner Sargent wrote that "blood would flow—somebody’s blood, either yours or Wilson’s, or Hale’s, or Giddings’— before the expiration of your present session on that field of blood, the floor of Congress.” 

Sargent was alluding to the burial place of Judas: "And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day" (Matthew 27:6-8 KJV).

It was literally an atmosphere conducive to violence:

All this in a room that was hot, stuffy, and smelly. At the end of a typical day, with the galleries full and hours of body heat trapped in the chamber, French thought that reading aloud to members was like reading “with his head stuck into an oven.” When the House moved to larger windowless quarters in 1857, the acoustics improved but the air didn’t. This wasn’t just a matter of cigar smoke, whiskey fumes, and body odor. A series of climate studies revealed the scope of the problem: no air was circulating in the chamber, and the wisp of a draft that rose through the floor grates had to pass through a layer of “lint, dirt, tobacco quids, expectoration, and filth of every sort.” One member claimed that the “confined and poisonous” air had caused “much sickness and even several deaths,” and indeed, a handful of congressmen died during an average session, though not necessarily because of the air. Ongoing whimpering from the floor produced another study, this one demonstrating that it was thirty degrees warmer inside than outside and that the chamber smelled of sewage from the basement. Visiting the new chamber not long after it opened, French wasn’t impressed. The idea of “shutting up a thousand or two people in a kind of cellar, where none of God’s direct light or air can come in to them . . . does not jump with my notions of living,” he groused. Thirty years later, members still declared the House “the worst ventilated building on the continent."

In 1856, Senator Sumner delivered his famous "Crime Against Kansas" speech.  He attacked the absent Andrew Butler (SC), saying he had " a mistress . . . who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight—I mean," the harlot, Slavery."

Two days later, Butler's cousin, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina, responded:




You can see the cane in a Boston museum:



Lincoln-Douglas debates 


Congress and the Civil War

The congressional oath of office dates from this era.

Shifting partisan composition of Congress: