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

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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They have been replaced by congressmen and women who have allowed lobbyists to write the bills for the special interests they represent.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 Well, congress rescinded it, but gave the same amount of money to the state which has made it clear they intend to build it anyway.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.

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.

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.

I have long understood the original terrible sin of Congress, the obscene corruption. I did not understand party line corruption (forcing Members to vote the party line instead of for their constituents until I read Tom Coburns Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders.

This book helped me understand that the third sin is that partisan politics have turned Members into (the author's term) "footsoldiers for the President" and thus a complete abdication of their role as the Article 1 (i.e. first) branch of government.

This book helped me understand that it is the long-serving Members who are often shaking down lobbyists and extorting funds from people, not the other way around, where bribes are offered by the lobbyists.

I read this book after reading David Broder's article in the 8 August 2006 issue of the Washington Post, an article entitled "Contempt for Congress" and summarizing the utter disdain that the Governors--both Republican and Democratic--have for most Members. The Congress is indeed broken and dysfunctional. There is a tide sweeping against all incumbents, regardless of party, in this year.

Hence, as Congress reconvenes on 5 September for one last session ending in early October, it could be quite fruitful for as many voters as possible to read this book and Tom Coburn's book, and demand of Congress two things in this next session: Electoral Reform, and a Public Intelligence Agency independent of both the President and Congress. We have a window for reform. This book is one of two pillars for those who wish to "raise the roof."

See also, with a review, Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It.

It is vital that the 100 million voters who have "dropped out" of the broken partisan political scene come back in 2008.

The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How To Get It Back On Track is a newly published but long-awaited diagnosis of the pernicious conditions that challenge the short-term health of the first branch and the long-term well-being of American democracy.

Its authors, Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, senior scholars at two of Washington's preeminent think tanks - Brookings Institution and American Enterprise Institute - came to town in 1969 from doctoral studies at the University of Michigan to serve as Congressional Fellows, and never used their return tickets.

What they have learned in their collective eight decades of careful, thoughtful, daily observations of and direct participation in the inner workings of Congress forms the structure of this very insightful look at Congress in the early years of the 21st century.

Mann and Ornstein are often described as "Congress watchers." Well, maybe, but that would be like calling Watson and Crick "molecule watchers" or Lewis and Clark "trail watchers."

These are two of America's leading political scientists, both fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, preeminent historians of the first branch, widely respected for having built trusting relationships with a diverse array of members in both chambers of the branch and both political parties, and known for their willingness to speak truth to power, which they do unstintingly in this book.

They ply their scholarship at two contrasting institutions, have substantive differences on certain political and public policy issues, and yet have formed the kind of collaborative and collegial relationship that once characterized the Congress itself.

So, let's begin our story right there.

"The broken branch distresses us as longtime students of American democracy who believe Congress is the linchpin of our constitutional system. But the consequences go far beyond our sensibilities, resonating in ways that damage the country as a whole."

Hence, 'the broken branch' endangers the entire tree: dysfunctional Congress means dysfunctional government means dysfunctional Union.

In just under 250 fast-paced pages, these two scholar-practitioners take their readers through the `theory and practice of the first branch; then to the period - 1969-1994 - in which they find "the seeds of the contemporary problem;"then a frank appraisal of the promise and then the detritus of "a decade of Republican control; which leads to an analysis of "institutional decline."

But if I were to recommend how a reader might most profitably spend an hour with this book - and I do so knowing that no author appreciates such counsel from a reviewer - it would be on the last two chapters - "The Case of Continuity" and "Conclusion." For it is in these pages that you get the best of the authors combined skills - literary and reportorial, investigative and analytical, winding up with a thoughtful and implementable set of recommendations for mending "the broken branch."

But, most importantly, while Congress is on its summer recess, and before you make your choice for voting in the November congressional elections, be sure to spend an hour or two with Mann and Ornstein so that you can be part of the vital democratic process of mending the broken branch.

Mann and Ornstein have written a nice treatise on the frighteningly dysfunctional modern Congress. It is clear that Congress has abdicated it's responsibly to the American people and that personal agendas (including the almighty dollar) take precedence to good governance.

Unfortunately many of the recommendations made in this book to right the ship are unlikely to be enacted given the selfish, self-aggrandizing make up the individuals in Congress. If Congress continues to operate in such an undemocratic and unrepresentative fashion, only bad things can occur. It is shameful that the branch of government designed to be the closest to the people and the most democratic has failed to live it up this ideal.

This book is a good for any student of American government and should be a wake-up call for citizens.

While both authors of this book are frequent commentators on NPR (a source I regularly listen to), neither is a good writer. The depth of understanding they have of how Congress works and it's importance to the whole picture of government is impressive but their ability to communicate it clearly is compromised by the way they write. Their sentences are convoluted by the way they mix in dependent clauses and the way they separate the subject from the predicate by involved, dependent clauses. They should have had help from an editor to smooth out the flow of information they are trying to share.
Their basic theme, the fact that the House of Representatives was meant by the Constitution to be the leading element in governing, is very important for citizens of this country to remember. The House, under Republican control, has ceded authority and control to the executive branch and this is unconstitutional and dangerous. The authors deserve thanks for alerting us to this danger.

In 2003 Gallup conducted a survey that asked the public to rank professions according to honesty and ethics. Members of Congress ended up with a 17% approval rating in this regard. This was, of course, before Mann and Ornstein wrote this book. Having now read the book I would tend to give them a 7% rating which would tie them with used car salesmen.

This is not a highly partisan book. It was written by two Washington think tank men who have worked with congress for over 30 years. Democrats and Republicans share in the disgrace that is recounted here. The horror of it is that it is getting worse each year. The authors start the book with a history of congress and how it evolved. It is interesting to note that Party power struggles were part of the congressional system throughout the history of the republic.

Rules are frequently changed to strengthen the party that is in power. There was a rule that vote counts were to take 15 minutes, yet when the Medicare drug plan came up for a vote three hours passed while Republican leaders went around threatening, and even bribing members to change their vote. Members often spend only two days a week in Washington. Thousand page bills are brought up on the floor with no notice. Conference reports are changed in the middle of the night, and rules are used to suppress debate.

Committee chairmen, in a certain sense, buy their chairs insofar as they often go to the biggest money raisers, and not the most senior or the most competent. Congressional staffers come and go in revolving door manner so they can go work for lobbying firms, which firms are required to employ only those belonging to the party in power. Congressional members even shake down lobbying firms for money. There is no true, properly functioning ethics committee.

This was a very painful and depressing book to read. The fact that this book also ranks down around 11,000 on Amazon's best seller list is also sad. I think that high school civics teachers should make this book required reading in their classes so that our youth can see how our democracy really runs. What kind of government do we end up with when no one has the time or inclination to read the bills that end up for a vote which sometimes is taken at 3 AM. First there were the books on the Iraqi war that I finished reading, and now this sad book. If I read many more books on the world situation I'm going to have to start taking Prozac.

The notion of the smooth operating machinery of government was always a myth at best, but today it has become a dream of another era. There was always partisanship in Congress, but there was also respect for the institution and its responsiblities. This is no longer the case: party and ideology take precedence above everything else. The traditional rules and norms of conduct that made policy-making balanced and effective are no longer being followed. Getting results - ends justifying the means - is the only thing that matters today.

Respected policy wonks and congressional observers Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein have been watching the broken branch for decades, and in this book they give an excellent history of its demise as a respected institution. They assert that both parties are responsible for its downfall; however, they emphasize that things have gotten much worse since 1994, the year the Republicans took control. Even though the Democrats were high-handed and arrogant toward the end of their reign, the Republicans have since gone far beyond.

One of the most famous examples of violation of congressional conduct was the disregard of the "15 minute" rule by Jim Wright back in 1987. Congress was allowed 15 minutes to vote on bills, but Speaker Wright kept the vote open for an extra 10 minutes since they were short one vote on an important piece of legislation. The Democrats got their vote, but there were howls of disapproval from the Republican minority.

Fast forward to 2003. With the passage of the Medicare prescription drug bill hanging in the balance, congressional Republicans are holding the vote open for 3 hours applying all sorts of pressure and barely legal coercion to get the required votes - and this was taking place at 3 in the morning. The sad part is that this is no longer the exception, this is how bills are now passed.

Aside from the policy-making process turning into an excercise in arm-twisting and bribery, the role of Congress as a check to presidential powers has also suffered under Republican stewardship. The leaders of Congress have become nothing more than yes-men for the executive branch. The detrimental consequences are becoming more obvious by the day. Not only are we mired in a poorly planned and executed war in two countries, we have an administration that can get away with torture and warrantless wiretapping. Lack of congressional oversight is putting it nicely, dereliction of duty would be more accurate.

Mann and Ornstein elaborate on a number of reforms that need to take place in order for Congress to reclaim its honorable tradition. Now that the Democrats have retaken control there is the hope that they can do some of these reforms before they too take for granted their position of power. Unfortunately optimism was also present when the Republicans gained power in 1994. The adage about power corrupting still applies and the Democrats should take note. Mann and Ornstein call upon Congress to rise above petty partisanship and once again become a strong and respectable institution that can temper a powerful and aggressive executive branch. This book is a timely contribution to much needed congressional reform.

I read this after I saw one of the authors interviewed by Chris Matthews who spoke of the quality of the text. The author had obviously been 'around the block' a few times in Washington and it is clear he not only knows Congress's procedures but he knows the players as well. The author does a remarkable job of explaining how legislation is crafted and how deals are put together often in the 11th hour to 'insure' the outcome of the vote. Much discussion, often critical, of how Congress has failed on both sides of the aisle gives the book a very non-partisan feel. You sit back and hope that somehow this thing is on cruise control, because with more and more human intervention, things just seem to be getting worse.