Congressional Quote of the Year
“We can spend an entire year getting nothing done.” Sen. John Kennedy, R-LA, in Politico on the possibility that the House and Senate will not agree on President Trump’s “one beautiful” tax and spending bill.
Fixing Congress
The 119th: Unserious, unprincipled, unproductive
What has the new Republican-controlled Congress accomplished legislatively in its first three months? Just this: fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year under a continuing resolution narrowly passed with only Republican votes that lets the president set spending levels rather than Congress. All the rest has been partisan posturing full of sound…
Opinion: Democrats had months to head off Schumer’s no-win dilemma
To hear it from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrats were faced with two terrible choices: force a lengthy government shutdown that would have hurt millions of ordinary Americans and given President Trump and Elon Musk an opportunity to disembowel more government programs, or acquiesce to a six-month Republican funding bill that would have hurt…
Opinion: A third way for congressional Democrats
Some Democrats believe the only viable strategy for slowing and eventually halting the Trump steamroller is all-out resistance on every issue in every forum. Others prefer giving Trump plenty of rope, confident they will pursue radical policies that will prove so unpopular that Republicans will lose the next two elections. The first approach is likely…
Top GOP aide tells Members of Congress: Start doing your jobs!
Brendan Buck, a top aide to former Republican Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan, posted an eloquent essay in the New York Times today recounting the many ways in which Congress has allowed its legislative muscles to atrophy and its power to be usurped by a succession of presidents. The essay echoes many of the…
Jim Cooper
Biography Jim Cooper represented two Nashville area districts in the House, the first from 1983 to 1995 and the second from 2003 to 2023. In 1994, he ran for the Senate seat from Tennessee vacated by Al Gore when he was elected vice president, losing to Republican Fred Thompson. A moderate “blue dog” Democrat, he served…
Charlie Dent
Biography After 14 years in the Pennsylvania House and Senate, Charlie Dent served seven terms in Congress from a district in eastern and south-central Pennsylvania. He was a longtime member of the House Appropriations Committee, chairing subcommittees on Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and served for two years as chairman of the Ethics Committee. He was also…
Byron Dorgan
Biography Byron L. Dorgan was a congressman and senator for North Dakota for 30 years before retiring from the Senate in 2011. In the Senate, he served for 16 years in party leadership positions, first as assistant Democratic floor leader and then as chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee. He served as chairman of the Senate…
Ezra Klein on our “non-player” Congress
New York Times columnist Ezra Klein offered an insightful column last weekend on the utter failure of Congress to assume its role as a check on the hostile takeover of the federal government now being carried out by President Trump and his billionaire henchman, Elon Musk. Like us, at Fixing Congress, he assigns some blame…
Trump may be misguided, but he’s not wrong about everything
President Trump is often misinformed and misguided. He lies and exaggerates about a lot of things, but he’s not completely wrong about everything. He’s not wrong that the immigration system is broken and illegal immigration had got out of hand, straining local budgets, overwhelming local culture in some places, and undermining the rule of law.…