The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy) [Hardcover]

Thomas E. Mann (Author), Norman J. Ornstein (Author)

Book Description

Series: Institutions of American Democracy | Publication Date: August 1, 2006

Congress is the first branch of government in the American system, write Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, but now it is a broken branch, damaged by partisan bickering and internal rancor. The Broken Branch offers both a brilliant diagnosis of the cause of Congressional decline and a much-needed blueprint for change, from two experts who understand politics and revere our institutions, but believe that Congress has become deeply dysfunctional.
Mann and Ornstein, two of the nations most renowned and judicious scholars of government and politics, bring to light the historical roots of Congress's current maladies, examining 40 years of uninterrupted Democratic control of the House and the stunning midterm election victory of 1994 that propelled Republicans into the majority in both House and Senate. The byproduct of that long and grueling but ultimately successful Republican campaign, the authors reveal, was a weakened institution bitterly divided between the parties. They highlight the dramatic shift in Congress from a highly decentralized, committee-based institution into a much more regimented one in which party increasingly trumps committee. The resultant changes in the policy process--the demise of regular order, the decline of deliberation, and the weakening of our system of checks and balances--have all compromised the role of Congress in the American Constitutional system. Indeed, Speaker Dennis Hastert has unabashedly stated that his primary responsibility is to pass the president's legislative program--identifying himself more as a lieutenant of the president than a steward of the house. From tax cuts to the war against Saddam Hussein to a Medicare prescription drug benefit, the legislative process has been bent to serve immediate presidential interests and have often resulted in poorly crafted and stealthily passed laws. Strong majority leadership in Congress, the authors conclude, led not to a vigorous exertion of congressional authority but to a general passivity in the face of executive power.
A vivid portrait of an institution that has fallen far from the aspirations of our Founding Fathers, The Broken Branch highlights the costs of a malfunctioning Congress to national policymaking, and outlines what must be done to repair the damage.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Until recently, one could be forgiven for thinking that the present Congress is essentially an arm of the Bush administration, according to Mann and Ornstein, nationally renowned congressional scholars from the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, respectively. Their book argues persuasively that relentless partisanship and a disregard for institutional procedures have led Congress to be more dysfunctional than at any time in recent memory. Looking back to the arbitrary and sometimes authoritarian leadership of Democratic speaker Jim Wright and the Abscam scandals of the 1980s, the authors demonstrate how they presage the much worse abuses of power committed by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and superlobbyist Jack Abramoff. In outlining more than 200 years of congressional history, Mann and Ornstein sometimes allow just a sentence or two to explain the policies and philosophies of an important politician or even an entire party, even as they catalogue deviations from obscure points of procedure in extensive detail. Their book may be useful and enjoyable to the specialist, though recent conservative pushback on issues from the Harriet Miers nomination to warrantless wiretapping and immigration will make some wish the authors had had the opportunity to add a postscript. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Mann and Ornstein are affiliated with different political parties and work at rival Washington think tanks, but they share a fascination with Congress and an abiding dedication to the First Branch's productivity. With this book, they stage an intervention. Over the past 20 years, they assert, legislators have increasingly subordinated earnest deliberation to partisan tribalism, eroding that branch into division and dysfunction. Although careful to remind us that the root causes of this decline lay in an escalating dialectic of majority arrogance and creative rule bending perpetuated by both parties, the brunt of Mann and Ornstein's criticisms are of the current Republican majority. They are not afraid to name names: House Speaker Dennis Hastert, for example, is repeatedly singled out as guilty of putting party before duty. The majority of Mann and Ornstein's analysis, however, examines incremental yet insidious tweaks of congressional procedure: three-day workweeks and innovative methods of arm-twisting. Both a plea for a return to dignified deliberation and a brave discussion of which legislative behaviors need to be changed, this book is timed for the upcoming congressional elections. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; annotated edition edition (August 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195174461
• ISBN-13: 978-0195174465
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #240,214 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #100 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Government     > Congresses, Senates, & Legislative Bodies

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

61 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Power Corrupts; Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, August 28, 2006

By 

Edwin C. Pauzer (New York City) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy) (Hardcover)

Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein bring to light what many Americans don't know, or don't care to know. The legislative branch of government, the House of Representatives and the Senate have long ago stopped serving the constituents they were elected to serve.

In this searing story that will scare the republic out of you, the authors tell how the Congress of yesteryear, the Congress that would negotiate, debate, compromise, represent the will of their constituents, and the best interest of the country, are a dying breed.

They have been replaced by congressmen and women who have allowed lobbyists to write the bills for the special interests they represent. They have cajoled party members to vote strictly along party lines at the expense of constituent representation and independent thought. They have introduced bills hundreds of pages long with little or no time for debate or compromise, let alone time to read its provisions. They have introduced bills late at night demanding an up or down vote. Having complained long and loud about democratic pork, the republican congress has increased "earmarks" from hundreds to the thousands. And this is the laziest congress in years, working less than 100 days a year.

Leading the charge of congressional dysfunction are Sennsenbrenner, Frist, Hastert and Delay. Sennsenbrenner allowed the credit card industry to write the new bankruptcy bill. Sennsenbrenner wouldn't allow any amendments that would have allowed veterans to keep their homes or seniors to keep theirs in the face of astronomical medical bills. Hastert removed a congressman from the Ethics committee because he was investigating Delay. Delay demanded that lobbying firms replace their democrat lobbyists with republican ones if they wanted to be "allowed in." Then there's Frist. For the first time, Frist, a senator, went to another state to campaign against the democrat incumbent.

As for that bridge to nowhere, in Alaska, that was going to connect to a community of 50 at a cost of $22 million. Well, congress rescinded it, but gave the same amount of money to the state which has made it clear they intend to build it anyway. Then, there is the $10 billion of pork that congress made great fanfare about removing from the highway bill. What the average American doesn't realize is that they added an additional $10 billion just before they removed it. This was legislative sleight-of-hand.

Mann and Ornstein's strongest assertion is that Congress has failed as an independent branch of government. They claim they are subservient to the Executive branch and Mr. Bush. They do his bidding. The loss of billions of dollars in Iraq, money the legislature authorized for Afghanistan that was used in Iraq (an impeachable offense,) and the sluggish reaction to Hurricane Katrina have not generated any calls from a republican Congress for full and independent investigations.

This is a book that should be read by every American so he or she might awaken from their somnambulistic, political indifference. It is the average American who is allowing his and her rights to be trampled upon by apathy and ignorance.

The number of recent congressional and lobbying scandals give the book its credibility and validity. It also gives something else validity--

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

41 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Accurate analysis of the current state of national politics, August 1, 2006

By 

birdmanct (Connecticut) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy) (Hardcover)

I just watched a two hour panel on BookTV.org, CSPAN2. The panelists were the two authors, Newt Gingrich, and Tom Foley, the Democrat Speaker of the House before Newt. All were in agreement with the premise of this book: that the House has become a tool of the Executive branch, and has abrogated it's oversight duty. Bills are devised in the dead of night without bipartisan or even intra-party debate, simply to implement White House policy. Leader PACs and fund-raising are the key duties of our representatives. I was shocked to hear that the House has cut its in-session time from three days a week to one, as most members fly into DC on Tuesday night and out on Thursday morning. Most of the time they spend in DC is with lobbyists. This leaves no time for discussion or even reading the bills they are voting on. It leaves no time to get to talk with and to know the other Congressmen, or to hear dissenting views, and leads to the passage of flawed bills and acrimony with their colleagues.

Scariest of all is the invocation of war powers in a war that probably will not end in our lifetimes, at a time when the House, Senate, White House, and Supreme Court are all dominatted by one party. We could be just one terrorist attack away from a dictatorship. This book is a must-read for politicians, political scientists, reporters, and voters. Congress is neglecting its duty, and the American people are neglecting theirs by not voting and by not thinking about the issues that this book raises.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Insight to a Major Problem, August 18, 2006

By 

Loyd E. Eskildson "Pragmatist" (Phoenix, AZ.) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy) (Hardcover)

The "broken branch" Mann refers to is Congress' House of Representatives. He has concluded that a majority of today's Republicans in Congress see themselves more as foot soldiers in the President's army than as members of an independent branch of government. Serious congressional oversight of the executive branch has largely disappeared. This is NOT an exclusively Republican phenomena - arrogance, greed, venality, and condescension towards the minority were significant evidence prior to the Republican takeover in '94; however, since President Bush took office these practices have been raised to new levels.

Passage of the Medicare drug benefit in the House serves as the authors' prime example of abuse. The vote was held open for 2 hours, 51 minutes - far beyond the normal 15 minutes. This extension allowed enough pressure, threats and bribes to achieve passage. (In the 22 years Democrats ran the House after electronic voting, it only happened once - and that in a seemingly justifiable instance. The Republicans did it at least a dozen times both before and after the Medicare vote.) In addition, Democrats were left out of the bill's drafting (as were most Republicans - it was created in a special committee, without hearings), as well as most of the conference committee Democrats. Further, it (like many other key bills) was brought to a floor vote under closed rules (members cannot offer amendments - this has occurred 2-3X as often under Republican leadership), and without time to even read the legislation. There was also the issue of inaccurate cost estimates provided to help sell the bill. The authors then go on to argue that the House has become polarized by extreme gerrymandering that gives inordinate power to extremists in both parties.

Framers of the Constitution intended that Congress be first among equals of the three branches - it can override a veto, change the size and jurisdiction of the courts, and remove presidents and justices. Standing committees were created in the 1700s, partly to provide sources of independent information and expertise vs. eg. the Treasury Secretary at the time - Alexander Hamilton. By 1969 it had evolved into a collection of barons (committee chairs) who had near full control of committee resources and the flow of legislation to the floor, were selected in ironclad fashion by seniority, and were virtually immune from removal. They could also hire/fire the committee staff, set jurisdiction of subcommittees, select members of conference committees, and control debate on the floor when committee matters came up. Nearly all key committee meetings were closed and without recorded votes. In 1971 cracks began to appear in their power - a vote on any chair nominee was allowed if ten members demanded, and members were limited to sub-committee chairmanship apiece - preventing the chairman from just using a few select allies.

After Newt Gingrich arrived, Republicans began offering regular floor amendments designed to put the Democrats in embarrassing positions for use as campaign fodder; then there was also the C-SPAN tactic of pretending to challenge Democrats in the evening and not receive any response - therefore they must be guilty as charged. Party politics were further acerbated when the Republicans began refusing to work with Democrats after Clinton was elected, at least partly in response to a series of Democrat abuses that had seriously offended the Republicans.

Upon assuming the Speaker's position, Gingrich used the power associated with his Contract with America to centralize power (name committee chairs), limit chairmanship tenure, assign committee members, set committee agendas, and create leadership task forces to write key legislation - bypassing House committees. The result greatly reduced the amount and quality of deliberation.

After President Bush's 2000 election, rules and ideas about fairness were trumped by a desire to produce results for the president, Bush's push for executive secrecy and the withholding of executive branch information, the Senate's overturning precedent using a parliamentary procedure to allow ending filibusters of judicial appointments (Bush did not consult with the ranking Democratic member of the Judiciary, nor the "home-state senators" as Clinton had done), and DeLay's threats to withhold campaign funding help for non-cooperative members or even run alternative candidates in primaries and use of earmarks to threaten/bribe members.

The authors ultimately conclude that while the "good old days" weren't all that good, things have gotten a lot worse, and they then offer a number of suggestions for improvement.