November 14, 2024 • 55 mins
By most metrics – a 16% job-approval rating, failing to deliver budgets much less conducting itself in a stately manner – the U.S. House of Representatives isn’t living up to the Founding Fathers’ ideals. How to restore the public’s confidence in the ways of Capitol Hill? Brandice Canes-Wrone, the Hoover Institution’s Maurice R. Greenberg senior fellow and the founding director of Hoover’s Center for Revitalizing American Institutions, joins former Illinois congressman and Hoover distinguished fellow Daniel Lipinski to discuss Revitalizing the House: Bipartisan Recommendations on Rules and Process – suggested ways to re-empower House members and committees and restore some semblance of the democratic process.
Recorded on November 12, 2024.
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Episode Transcript
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>> Bill Whalen (00:05):
It's Tuesday, November 12, 2024.
And welcome back to Matters of Policy andPolitics, a Hoover Institution podcast
devoted to governance and balance of powerhere in America and around the free world.
I'm Bill Whalen,I'm the Hoover Institution's Virginia
Hobbes Carpenter DistinguishedPolicy Fellow in Journalism.
I'm not the onlyHoover Fellow who podcasts.
If you don't believe me,go to our website,
which is hoover.org click on the tabon the homepage that says Commentary,
(00:27):
then scroll down to whereit says Multimedia.
And over on the right you'll see a listof audiobook podcast including this one.
I proudly say this podcast has excellentguests today being no exception.
Joining me for the better part of the nexthour are Brandice Canes-Wrone, and
former Congressman Daniel Lipinski.
About Brandice, Brandice Canes-Wrone isthe Maurice R Greenberg Senior Fellow at
(00:47):
the Hoover Institution and
a professor in the Political ScienceDepartment at Stanford University.
She's also the foundingdirector of Hoover's center for
Revitalizing American Institutions, hercurrent research focusing on elections,
campaign finance, and populism.
Daniel Lipinski served 16 years in theUnited States House of Representatives,
representing Illinois suburbanChicago 3rd congressional district.
(01:08):
He's no ordinary former congressman.
He also happens to be an academic.
He has a doctorate in Political Sciencefrom Duke University.
I think that's technically the Stanfordof the south, as they call it.
He also is a distinguished, prolificwriter when it comes to Congress and
the legislative process, which explainshis involvement both with Hoover and
the center for RAI andwhy he is here today.
(01:28):
Brandice, Dan, thanks forjoining the podcast.
>> Daniel Lipinski (01:30):
Good to be with you.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (01:31):
Thanks so much, Bill.
>> Bill Whalen (01:32):
So for the purpose of brevity, let's don't say center for
Revitalizing American Institutionsover and over again.
Let's try to keep it limited to RAI,not REI, but RAI.
So just forour listeners should know that.
What I wanna focus on today, though, is areport that RAI recently issued the title
"Revitalizing the House (01:49):
Bipartisan Recommendations on Rules and Processes".
Brandice, let's talk aboutthe genesis of this report.
First of all, how it ties into Hoover'svision for revitalizing, in this case,
Congress and the Congressman.
I want you to talk abouta group in Bethesda,
Maryland called the SunWater Institute,which is involved as well.
So Brandice, take it away.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (02:08):
So Dan approached me and he'll talk about
the Sunwater Institute andthe people there involved.
We talked about this possibilitythat one of the reasons there's so
little trust in Congress is the fact thatit's not really working the way it's
supposed to work, right?
(02:28):
Congress is Article 1 in the Constitution.
It's supposed to bethe center of our government.
Over the past several decades, powerhas gradually shifted to the executive.
For that to change, we have to assumethat presidents, whoever they are,
that's as independent of the party orthe individual in the office.
Why wouldn't you want to havethe power to do what you can.
>> Bill Whalen (02:49):
Right. >> Brandice Canes-Wrone
eight years?
So Congress has to take thisback if we want that to shift.
And so our report is a part, you know,of trying to encourage Congress to
have the rules andprocess that would enable it to do that.
I did a call with our director, Condoleezza Rice,
not too long ago, and I gave her a list ofinstitutions in America that I deemed in
(03:10):
need of fixing, and she landedon Congress as her first choice.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (03:13):
Yeah, I think that certainly they're not playing
the constitutional rolethey were designed to do,
and they're not playing the role,I would argue.
I'll let Dan disagree ifyou'd like to do that.
That they were playingwhen you entered Congress.
Right.
Even in the most recent few decades,you see a shift.
>> Daniel Lipinski (03:31):
Yeah, it definitely has shifted.
So, yeah we'll get a whole lot moreinto what's wrong with Congress and
about our recommendations for reforms.
But, yeah, about a year ago,I went to Brandice and
I recommended putting together a taskforce to look at what can we do,
(03:52):
what rules can change,what processes can change in the House to
make it work the way itis supposed to work.
The House is supposed to bethe bulwark of our democracy.
It is supposed to produce conciliationin a very diverse country.
That's the way the framers set it up.
And the House is failing in that.
(04:14):
Back in 2018, the bipartisan HouseProblem Solvers Caucus had put together
a set of rule changes that wewere pushing at the end of 2018.
Going into the new Congress in 2019, wewere only able to get a few of those done.
And I thought, well,
let's look again at what kind of reformsdo we think can potentially get done?
(04:37):
Because Congress has only gotten worse.
I mean, the House has only gottenworse in the last six years.
So working with Brandice andI also brought in the Sun Water Institute,
which is a relatively newthink tank in Maryland, and
they are putting together a lot of data.
One of their interests isreform of Congress, and
(04:59):
they're bringing together a lot ofdata to help to make the case for
what has gone wrong andwhat might be working.
But what do we do moving forward?
And one of the things that they'redoing is putting all the rules,
cataloging history of rules of the Houseand how they've changed to understand how
(05:20):
changing the rules has made a differencein the way the House operates.
>> Bill Whalen (05:24):
So let's talk for
a minute about how bad thingsreally are in the House.
So Gallup is always pulling on the House,
doing job approval withthe public on the house.
January 2005,
when young Daniel Lipinski is firstgoing to Washington full of dreams.
He's watched Jimmy Stewart, Mr.Smith goes to Washington.
Who knows what wonderfulthings you have planned.
Gallup has the house at 43% approval.
(05:46):
October 2024, 16%.
Yikes.
But let me throw this at you.
Historically, the public has alwaysenjoyed making fun of Congress,
if not criticizing, at least mocking it.
Will Rogers quote papers say Congressis deadlocked and can't act.
I think that is the greatest blessingthat can befall this country.
Mark Twain Suppose you're an idiot andsuppose you were a member of Congress.
(06:08):
But I repeat myself.
The question how much of our dislikeof Congress is baked in the cake?
In other words, are they alwaysjust kind of there as a pinata or
something to make fun of?
Or have we seen in the past few yearsa real crisis burning in terms of Congress
just not able to do its fundamental job?
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (06:24):
So, Bill, I think you're right that we're always gonna see
this kind of making fun of Congressas a whole, usually not our member.
We always seem to like our member isdifferent than the rest of Congress.
The problem is everyone else's member.
But there have been several shifts thatI think have contributed to something
deeper and more dysfunctional.
(06:46):
So sometimes what we're making fun of isthe fact that lawmaking can be messy.
And in fact, there are also sayings aboutnever wanting to see it's like sausage.
You really do want to justsee the final product.
You really don't wanna see itbeing made right with lawmaking.
But that messiness is an important partof features of a representative system,
(07:10):
such as compromise,such as trying to bridge divides across
very disparate geographic preferences andconstituencies.
And sometimes compromisedoesn't look beautiful or
even intellectually coherent at times,but it produces a sustainable
policy that we can all live with whenpolicy is decided by the executive.
(07:34):
And as Congress has increasingly delegatedand exited out of this negotiating and
messy lawmaking process, the FederalRegister, the number of pages per year
has been going up and the executive branchhas been taking over so you may like
the election outcomes this yesterday orSorry, not yesterday, last Tuesday.
(07:55):
It's been a busy week.
And say, well that's great.
But when your party's not in power,if it's a winner take all system where
policy just reverts back andforth between two polarized extremes.
You can see why people start to lose sometrust in Congress in particular, but
some sense that the systemisn't working well.
(08:18):
And this is where Congress comes in,
including its messinessthat we can make fun of.
But that's a very different type ofmessiness than just gonna become
telemarketers who fundraise andjust grant the power to the executive.
That's an unfaircharacterization at some level.
It's a very extreme characterization, butthat's the direction they've been going.
>> Bill Whalen (08:37):
So, Congressman,
I've given you the view of the publiclooking into Congress, into the house,
which is 16% job approval,which we can agree is wretched.
What is the view fromthe House looking out?
>> Daniel Lipinski (08:47):
It depends on who you are.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of memberswho I think want to run for Congress,
be elected to Congress, not to legislate,but because they then have a platform and
they want to perform andthey think that is how you change policy.
They're not interested in really gettingdown into the tough work of legislating.
(09:13):
But there are other legislators,
other members of Congress whodo want to legislate, and
that's who our recommendations,that's who we are reaching out to.
The ones who say, hey,I want to represent my constituents here.
I'm not getting the opportunity to do so.
Too many members have sort of checkedout and said, well, I can't do anything.
It's run by the leadership.
(09:34):
The speaker just determines whatbills we're gonna be voting on,
what's gonna be the content.
And look, I argue, I came in in 2005,
in those first four yearsGeorge W Bush was president.
There were some things Democratstook Congress in the 2006 election.
There were some things in 2007,
(09:55):
2008 that the two sides workedtogether on, that we got done,
even though we're fighting overthe aftermath of the Iraq war.
But I think really come 2010,well, 2008, 2009, things changed.
And I would argue the last 14 years,there is not one major piece
(10:17):
of legislation that has become lawthat has come out of the House.
But not only that, almost every singlemajor new law that's been created,
every spending bill, the tax bills hascome out of the Senate with little or
no input from the House because the Househas become a messaging body for
(10:39):
the majority party and that's it.
And our republic cannot survive if wecontinue that way, where we only have
the Senate and some of the dealmakersare leaving the Senate right now.
And I'm not sure where thisis gonna leave us, but
we can't just turn everythingover to the president.
>> Bill Whalen (10:57):
Can we agree that this is a bipartisan problem?
The Republicans tookback the House in 1994,
having not had it for, what, 50 years, andthey held it for, what, the next 12 years?
And then in 2006, the Democrats get itback, they hold it for four years, and
then the Republicans get it back andthey hold it for eight years.
Flips back to the Republicans and
it looks like the Republicans willhold on to the House this time around.
(11:18):
But if I were a betting man, I'd bet onthe Democrats taking it back in 2026.
This is the nature of the beast.
Why does the public keep changing itsmind on who it wants to have in charge of
Congress or charge of the House?
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (11:28):
Well, the margins are really tight.
So one reason that your bet is a great one
is that the Republicanslook set to win the House.
Maybe it's been called sincewe started the podcast,
[LAUGH] but it certainly looked->> Bill Whalen: It's gonna be in the very
low 220s, if not in the 210s.
So it's just gonna be razor thin.
It's gonna be razor thin margins.
So you only need a fewdistricts to switch back.
(11:50):
You do have a situationwhere when Congress itself.
So I think, again,the margins are the main reason, but
a secondary reason is you can already seesome sort of fight setting up where Trump
has certain policies that he'dlike passed through Congress, and
these marginal members are askedto walk the plank effectively.
The marginal members tend to be inthe districts that could go in either
(12:14):
direction.
And if the president's setting policy,right, in either party, again,
this is not a Trump factor,this is not a Biden or Obama factor.
This is just if the president'ssetting policy, you can expect then
that the moderate members are not gonnabe the ones who are gonna be squeezed.
(12:34):
And then to the extent thatpolicy affects their electoral
performance, it's gonnabe in this negative way.
>> Daniel Lipinski (12:44):
Part of this is just that there's a general dissatisfaction in
this country.
70% of people think the country'sgoing in the wrong direction.
And this is only the second time,I believe, post Civil War,
where the incumbent presidential partyhas lost three elections in a row.
The last time it happenedwas the late 19th century.
(13:06):
I wouldn't be surprised if ithappens again in another four years.
But there's just a generaldissatisfaction.
And that's part of the reason whythe House keeps flipping over.
But it's also the case,I'd argue that Congress,
especially the House,is not doing a good job of, again,
(13:28):
conciliation, figuring out howare we going to live together.
We're a diverse country.
We're really split right now.
But there are ways thatwe can come together.
And no one seems to be trying to do that.
That is what Congress issupposed to be doing.
That's the way the Constitution waswritten in order to bring these
(13:49):
diverse interests together and to figureout, okay, so what do we do with that?
Instead of having one party come in,have it their way for a couple years,
they get thrown out andwe just keep going through that cycle and
things don't seem to Americans don'tseem to think things are improving.
>> Bill Whalen (14:06):
Okay, let's fix things and let's go to the report,
Revitalizing the House, BipartisanRecommendations on Rules and Process.
First, I want five recommendationsI want to talk about, but
before we get into that,who made these recommendations?
Tell me whose input is in this report.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (14:20):
Okay, so there's a diverse group, a bipartisan group.
So that's one type ofthe diversity we have.
But actually an interesting typethat's not typical to these types
of reports is we haveformer House members,
including Dan, but also otherRepublican and Democratic members.
We have former staffers, includingformer staffers in the Republican
(14:45):
leadership staff because as we've kind ofmentioned, the centralization of power.
But one of the tensionsis sort of the rank and
file members versus the leadership.
So we wanted their input.
And then we have what we call otherexperts, which include professors in
academia, but also think tank andother types of experts.
(15:05):
So we mentioned the Sunwater Institute.
We should certainly giveMatt Chervenak full credit,
who helped draft it, andPhil Wallach at AEI.
But everyone on the report metover the course of the year.
We had Zoom meetings sothat everyone could participate regularly.
(15:27):
One of the innovations of Zoom,
since meeting monthly with people acrossthe country would have been prohibitive.
And you know, some things gotwe can't talk about them but
were placed on the cutting floor.
So, you know, sort of proposals that maybemany people thought would be a good idea
if they could be enacted.
But for instance, the leadership staffmight say that's just a non-starter.
(15:52):
And you know, this is not.
So we tried to come up with a setthat would appeal to both parties and
appeal to both rank andfile and leadership.
>> Bill Whalen (16:01):
Okay, Congressman, let's get into the points.
Point number one, change the rules to givesubstantial bipartisan majorities greater
access to the floor.
>> Daniel Lipinski (16:08):
Well, one of the issues is it is everything runs through
the majority party.
That means it runs throughthe speaker's office.
We used to have legislationpassed the House that was you'd
get Democrats andRepublicans both supporting it.
You get the majority fromboth sides of the aisle.
(16:30):
Now there is so little majorlegislation that ever happens.
Now, there's a couplethings going on here.
Well, of course, we have becomeour country is more polarized, but
there are still issues I argue andI saw this during my time in Congress.
More and more issues,which there's no good reason for
(16:51):
why it would become a partisan issue,have become partisan issues.
So what we need to do isgive the opportunities.
So one of the things we have in thereis guaranteed regular order that says
if a committee holds hearings on a pieceof legislation, has an open markup,
(17:12):
there's amending of that bill andit passes the committee,
it has some bipartisan support,that it's guaranteed to come to the floor.
And what this is going to do is givesome power back to the committees.
The speaker right now oftentimeswill tell the committees what to do.
And members of Congress,many of them have decided,
(17:34):
well, it's not evenworth giving the effort.
I mean, that's one of the problems.
Many members have sort of checkedout of the legislative process.
And so this is to give theman opportunity to say, hey,
if I work hard on my committees,this is where most of the work gets done.
I become an expert on this committeeon the issues of this committee,
(17:54):
I can have an impact.
So that's one of the majorrecommendations in here.
Another one is if you get 10 Democrats and
10 Republicans who support bringingan amendment to the floor and any bill,
then that amendment will get floor time,it will be debated, and we'll get a vote.
(18:15):
And again, that is to give an incentivefor members to be involved and
to get to know and work with memberson the other side of the aisle.
And so those two thingsare two of the biggest pieces.
There's other things we haveabout changing the process.
We need to do more becauseit just got worse and
worse during the time I was there.
(18:37):
Democrats and Republicans do not speakto each other, do not know each other.
And it only got worse.
I mean,I left three days before January 6, 2021.
It only got much worse after that.
And that has to change.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (18:54):
Yeah.
So you know, the kind of classicmodel of Congress that for
a long time was taught in classes butreally shouldn't be taught as
the current Congress anymore was thisvery committee based model, right?
Congressmen at work,is a dated expression, but
(19:14):
that was the phrase isCongress in committees, right?
So congressional members, that's wherethey're getting their real work done.
But increasingly membersare spending less time
in lawmaking in committees andwe show that in our report.
And over time, fewer committee bills are,are being taken up by the floor.
(19:36):
So even though there's kind of lesslawmaking in general, even those that
are making it out of committeesuccessfully aren't being taken up.
And that was actually a pointof debate in the committee.
I say in our task force that some,I won't name any who, but
some people said that's not true,that can't be right.
And so we said, well, how about we just,this is an empirical question.
How about we just get the data andwe look at whether that's actually true.
(19:59):
And it was in fact strictly,strikingly true.
And that's now in the report.
So I think this isn't something everyoneon the Hill, for instance, knows,
since that was people who'd been on.
And as Dan said that then youhave the situation, well,
why am I spending allthis time in committee?
I mean, why would I even spend time on it?
If we're going to produce this bill andgo through, mark it up and
(20:21):
go through the regular process and investtime, if in the end, too much of the time,
I mean, most of the time,we're not even going to get a vote on it.
So this is where the lawmakingprocess has sort of just declined.
>> Daniel Lipinski (20:36):
And I could say on the issue, I don't know if I brought up or
another of the former members brought up,that do all this work in committee,
bills don't come to the floor.
And it was someone on the taskforce who was more familiar with
leadership who thought, well,no, that's not really true.
(20:58):
And the former members are saying,yes, it is, that is true.
So we have the data to show that, butit just shows the perspective of depending
on where you're sitting up there,what you see happening or what you miss.
>> Bill Whalen (21:15):
This may have grown worse in recent years, but
I'm a child of Washington, DC, I grewup in Washington, DC as a journalist.
I covered the Hill in the late 80s andthe early 90s when things were
really starting to fray leadingup to the Gingrich revolution.
And I remember talking to a Member.
And he said, I have a solution.
And that solution is to take a blockof Capitol Hill and build a very large
dormitory and house as many members whoare willing to be in the dorm together.
(21:38):
And I said, what?
And he said, because they'll all be housedtogether and they'll get to know each
other and God forbid, actuallycollegiality will emerge from that.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (21:46):
So it's certainly the case that over time, members and
Dan alluded to this, now they barely talk,
that members have spent less timesocializing with each other.
It used to be that more memberslived in DC full time, right?
Or had that as their andtheir kids went to school together,
their spouses socialized,there was more family interaction.
(22:10):
They were there.
Now there's much more of thisTuesday to Thursday club.
I mean, this is a longstanding trend.
This is not the last ten years.
Some of our proposals in the task force,which this is why we call it rules and
process and not simply rules, have to do,as Dan mentioned, with trying to both get
members to work together in legislatingand on the floor but also outside as well.
(22:33):
They kind of get a bad name, these CODELs,[LAUGH] where you go off on trips
together and you explore issues,sometimes issues of national security,
issues of understanding parts ofthe country that you may not represent.
So, I mean, pretty serious issues,one could argue.
But they have this, you know,if you're getting to go, we hear it.
(22:55):
If you're getting to go to Italy,it kind of has a nice sound to it.
But there needs to be,maybe not in Italy, but some more time.
>> Bill Whalen (23:02):
I'm not crazy about spending a lot of federal money, but
I'm not averse to the CODEL, which isshorthand for a congressional delegation,
because it does get members aroundthe world to look at things.
I think as long as you had just almostinstant reporting of the codel.
Where you went.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (23:16):
Yes. And why.
>> Bill Whalen (23:17):
And why they can be held accountable.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (23:18):
[LAUGH] Yes, yes. >> Bill Whalen
everybody's going to Paris in August.
That's what I was going to say.
Maybe not always the high vacation spots.
>> Bill Whalen (23:24):
Okay, Congressman, second point.
Make committees stronger,more substantive and more effective.
>> Daniel Lipinski (23:28):
Well, a big part of that is the guaranteed regular order.
So committee members know that.
Members know that they do the work,
they'll get to see the billat least come to the floor.
Not guaranteed to pass, but at leastcome to the floor and get debated.
But there's also other ways that thecommittee hearings can be run differently.
(23:52):
And there's been some talk about this.
I think there might besome movement on this.
I've always found that having.
Roundtables, whichare essentially unofficial
hearings were much more beneficial.
Congressional hearings have turned intojust another opportunity to play for
(24:12):
the camera.
>> Bill Whalen (24:13):
Bugging for the cameras.
>> Daniel Lipinski (24:14):
Yeah, we saw a couple members get into really personal,
mean arguments on committee, which it just
another reason why peopledon't like Congress.
But roundtables, there's no cameras there,you actually have an opportunity,
(24:35):
you don't just get your five minutes withthe witness, and you make your points.
You actually get to have real discussionwith the witnesses and with each other.
Just getting committee memberstogether in informal settings.
I think some of these are definitely gonnago forward because there are members who
are really pushing for this.
(24:56):
It may sound trite, butit does make a difference.
If you know people, you are.
You get to know them, you get to know.
Especially, if you get toknow their families or
the opportunities there are forthat, it helps things to work better.
And the dorm idea, I think is fantastic.
(25:16):
For a majority of my 16 years, I sleptin my office, which was not that great.
But anything to get members together
in socializing acrossthe aisle is a good idea.
>> Bill Whalen (25:30):
Okay, showing my age again, I go back to a more gilded age of
the House, when you had verygiant figures like John Dingell,
Henry Waxman here in California,and a gentleman from Chicago
named Dan Rostenkowski runningthe House Ways and Committee.
But Congressman, let's talk about Rostifor a second, because on the one hand,
Rosti was a legend in Washington.
Nobody knew the tax codes more than him,but boy, did he run the Ways and
(25:52):
Means Committee,he also ended up going to jail, though.
>> Daniel Lipinski (25:55):
Well, I mean, again, there's no simple,
easy answers, everything has its downside.
So when someone gets that much power.
>> Bill Whalen (26:03):
Right, but I mentioned this because when the Republicans came
back in the House, what's one ofthe first things they got into?
Term limits for committee chairs.
>> Daniel Lipinski (26:10):
I like term limits for committee chairs,
>> Bill Whalen (26:14):
really.
>> Daniel Lipinski (26:15):
I don't like term limits for members of Congress in general.
For legislators, I don't like term limits.
For any kind of executive position,
I think term limits are good becauseyou can amass way too much power.
Now there's downsides becauseyou hear Republicans say, well,
we lose people because after sixyears at the head of the committee,
(26:36):
then they can no longer be chair orranking member.
But in general,I think it's good to have that turnover.
But right now, so many committee members,so many committee chairs,
and I saw this happen to some goodfriends of mine, I won't name them,
(26:57):
but who are very independent members fordecades.
They get to be a committee chair, and
then they realize the way thingshave changed in the House,
they need to follow the speaker andthe speaker is telling them what to do.
And that's why having thesecommittee chairs like Rustinkowski,
(27:20):
you talked about he actually sat down with
President Reagan over thisTax Reform Bill in 1986.
You'd never see a committee chair,I don't think,
be in that position anymore becausea speaker wouldn't let that happen.
Again, the committees need tobe able to do their work, and
(27:42):
that's the way things canwork much better, and
committees can work in a muchmore bipartisan manner.
Also,>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Dan,
even if you think thereshould be term limits,
do you think it should be six years?
That's pretty short term.
I mean, I'd be open to a little longer.
Especially if you don't serve,that is six years as the top.
(28:05):
It's only Republicans just sopeople know, it's only Republicans,
Democrats don't have this rule.
And there are some chairs of committees,
ranking members of Democrats whoshould have been gone years ago.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (28:19):
We won't name names here.
[LAUGH]>> Daniel Lipinski: No, but
it also applies if you're not the chair,you're the ranking member.
The ranking member is the top minorityparty member of that committee.
I don't think that should be countedthe same because that's not the same as
having, as being the, the committee chair.
But it's just a technicality.
But yeah, there are, there are those,there are trade offs there in that.
>> Bill Whalen (28:42):
The report also suggests ranked choice voting for committee chairs.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (28:50):
So to clarify, not ranked choice voting- You're
gonna have to say it,because I hear ranked choice voting.
Not that we're suggesting,
the reports suggest that the committeeshould have a private say to the speaker
over who the chair should be becauseone of the issues right now is that.
But we did make it.
(29:10):
This was kind of one of these compromises,you could say,
between the rank and file andthe leadership staff.
The speaker obviouslywants to have full control
in the party caucus over committee chairs.
But the fact that the committeedoesn't weigh in at all right now,
(29:31):
we think doesn't, you know,creates a situation where often
fundraising is a dominant factor inwho gets to be a committee chair.
And if that's really what'sdetermining who a committee chair is,
it's not surprising that committees aren'tas invested in lawmaking and the like.
>> Daniel Lipinski (29:48):
The committee chair should Be responsive to their members,
not to the Speaker.
That's really the point in that one.
I couldn't even rememberthat we had included rank.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (30:02):
No, I think it's the rewarding issue.
>> Bill Whalen (30:04):
I just saw it in there and just ooh, wait a second.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (30:06):
No, I think it's the ranking member we'll have to look at
exactly, we're not makingany arguments about that.
>> Bill Whalen (30:15):
Recommendation number three, give members more time for
legislative work.
Let me again go back in the wayback machine to the good old days,
the 80s and 90s when Robert Byrdbecame the senate majority leader, and
he started making senatorswork five days a week.
And boy were they not happy.
Now five days a week works wonderfully forDan Lipinski because how many flights
are there every day fromNational Airport to Chicago?
(30:36):
But Congressman, Brandice Canes-Wrone,representing the great state of Montana,
not so easy to get back to her district.
So tell me Congressman,why this is not why this is fair to her?
Because she's going to have a hard timegetting back to see her constituents.
>> Daniel Lipinski (30:48):
Well, there's actually been a lot of work on this and
there are a group of members whoare going to be putting forward their
schedule that they think would bemore helpful in that there would be
more five day weeks butalso more time back at home.
There'd be fewer days of travel.
So essentially, trading travel days foractually days in session.
(31:13):
And for some of those travel days willthen be in session, some will be at home.
I think that would, that would be helpful.
Look, I was on that first plane out,I'll tell you that.
I was on the last plane in before thefirst votes of the week at 6:30 on that
Monday or Tuesday, andI was on the first plane out, and
(31:36):
I was running as fast as I could.
But it's better if there'smore time that members
have to concentrate onlegislating in Washington.
>> Bill Whalen (31:48):
Brandice, why not bring Zoom into play?
Why not just stop doingeverything in Washington and
let members do things viaZoom in their home districts?
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (31:55):
So as we mentioned, we used Zoom for discussion.
So we don't want.
>> Bill Whalen (32:00):
Yes >> Brandice Canes-Wrone
research suggests there are differences inhow people behave on Zoom and in person.
And in person,>> Bill Whalen: you're not just talking me
sitting here at the table wearingtennis shorts or something like that.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (32:14):
No, no, no, there's that, but the types of comments
people will make in terms ofwhat they're willing to say.
And often this relates to Dan's commentsabout the legislative hearings and
the transparency.
People think they might be on camera andbeing recorded.
They're going to behave verydifferently than in terms of
(32:37):
when they think they're not.
And I would say that even beyond that,
there's evidence in negotiatingthat face-to-face contact.
You could argue that some Zoom, right,it doesn't have to be all or nothing.
Some zoom contact could be a good thing,
particularly between peoplethat you really trust.
But that's almost a within party,even within the party,
(33:02):
within a close colleaguetype of interaction.
That's not the sort of messiness thatwe talked about at the beginning.
About compromises that may ormay not be adopted and
where you could be caught then on cameraoffering something that you wouldn't want
your constituents to know was offered,particularly if it's not gonna go through.
>> Bill Whalen (33:23):
Should committees think about doing more roadshows,
taking hearings beyond the beltway,going into districts and
meeting people in person there?
It seemed to be there, yes, it would costmoney, logistically be complicated, but
it would send a message that we're comingto you rather than you coming to us.
>> Daniel Lipinski (33:38):
I think there should be more of that.
It does happen.
I think there should be more emphasisof doing more of those field hearings,
as they're called,to actually get out there.
Now, I found that field hearingsthat I did didn't always get
that many members of the publicwho wanted to show up for them.
(34:01):
But I think it's good to do.
It also is it actuallyhelps the members to go and
visit someone else's district.
And that actually is another wayof building some camaraderie.
I mean,the last question you talked about Zoom,
(34:22):
we had an experiment with thatduring COVID, during 2020.
And in some ways it worked.
But you'd miss that real humaninteraction with each other.
That's not over the camera.
That's different in the informaldiscussions, which make a big difference.
(34:42):
And I found that it's funny at first,when COVID shut everything down,
the House is not in session,there are all these, I was pushing for.
And I wrote an op ed saying weneed to take advantage of Zoom,
other virtual ways of connecting so thatthe House actually is doing some business.
(35:05):
And Nancy Pelosi hadthe Rules Committee Democrats
write a report sayingwhy this would not work.
You know, this blah, blah, blah.
And I think she was concernedabout how that would,
you know,whether that would work or not or.
(35:25):
I'm not sure what she wasconcerned about at first, but
obviously she thought it would somehowtake some of her power away, I believe.
But what happened was we did,we started doing it and
then she realized, no,I have greater power now because no one's
here to conspire to do anything besideswhat I tell them we need to do.
(35:46):
And Nancy Pelosi all of a suddenchanged and decided this is a lovely,
let's just keep it going.
>> Bill Whalen (35:52):
She also got to realize if she ran the hearing via Zoom,
she could control the mute function.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (35:56):
Yes.
>> Bill Whalen (35:58):
All right, let's go to point number four.
Our listener is going tohave fun with this raise.
Members pay My slack research indicates
that members right now I thinkearn about $174,000 a year.
>> Daniel Lipinski (36:10):
Long time now, yes.
>> Bill Whalen (36:11):
Leadership I think is 193, 4.
And the speaker getsabout $223,000 a year.
$203,500 I believe it is.
And you want them to get more.
>> Daniel Lipinski (36:21):
We almost left this out because we didn't want people to focus
on this.
But look, members of Congress, and I hateto say this as I probably shouldn't be
speaking this as a former member ofCongress, cuz it sounds too self serving.
Although I'm not there anymore, so Istill think members should get paid more.
The job that members ofCongress do compared
(36:45):
to comparable jobs Ithink in this country.
It doesn't make a whole lot of sensethat I think it's been 14 years maybe or
more since House memberspay has been raised.
And that doesn't make any sense.
(37:06):
You need to be attractingpeople who are high quality
who can demand this typeof pay somewhere else.
And I think it would be helpful, I mean,It's not gonna solve all the problems.
But I think there are people who look atit and say no, I don't want to do that.
I can't afford first of all to have twoplaces assuming they don't sleep in
(37:29):
their office like I was doing forsome of that time or there's no dorm.
They look at it and say,I can't have two places of residence.
I always argued, look,what other job do you need to travel for
the job, but you don't get paid forstaying where you're going?
Now they've made some corrections of that,which is good.
(37:53):
But I still think you need tohave offer competitive salaries.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (37:57):
So we show in the report that over the same period that
congressional pay has stagnated,executive pay has gone up noticeably.
And it's also stagnated, of course,relative, I mean, it's just stagnated.
I should note this is not a sortof in real versus nominal terms,
it's just stagnated in nominal terms.
But it's also then beenoutpaced by private sector pay.
(38:19):
So I mean, at some point,we want a Congress that's representative
of the range of Americans andbackgrounds who are in the country, right?
We don't wanna feel that it's only for
people who've alreadyinherited a lot of wealth.
>> Bill Whalen (38:35):
Allow me to be the obligatory jerk for a minute.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (38:37):
Yep. >> Bill Whalen
has a board to report to.
The well paid executive is runninga company that has a profit
line at the end of the day.
Right. >> Bill Whalen
I would argue that the executivewho ran his company or her company,
the way Congress is run, they would not bean executive for very long, would they?
Yeah, but I think that's an argument about.
>> Bill Whalen (38:55):
I'm being, I'm being facetious.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (38:56):
No, no, no, no, no.
I know, but I think that would bean argument about the leadership.
And members do have to facevoters every two years.
So voters think that their individualmember is not doing a good job,
they face difficult.
In many cases, some differently.
In all cases,there's a large primary threat.
In other cases,there's a general election threat as well.
>> Bill Whalen (39:21):
A more serious question, Congressman, you were there for 16 years.
You watched members come and go.
How many members left on purely economicreasons versus maybe family reasons?
They wanted to be with theirkids as they were growing up,
they got tired of Washington,they got frustrated with the process.
Or they saw the train comingin their direction and
want to get off the tracksbefore they got run over.
In other words, better to retirebefore you lose your election.
(39:43):
But how many citedeconomic concerns there?
>> Daniel Lipinski (39:47):
That's really hard to say.
I mean, it's a real mixed bag.
I certainly knew members whodid cite the economic concerns.
Look, I got a couple kids whoare gonna be going into college.
Now and I need to, I need to make moremoney in order to send my kids to college.
(40:08):
It was a lot more, you know,spend time with my family or,
you know, I just can't stand this place.
That was probably the number onething that I started hearing,
especially in the 2010s,is I just don't like this anymore.
We're not getting anything done.
I don't have,I don't have a role here anymore.
(40:30):
I'm just told to follow the leader andthat's it.
And so I can't do this anymore.
I mean, I was,I'm too independent minded for
the way things haveturned now in the House.
And it can be a really easy jobif you just follow the leader and
(40:53):
you do what you know thatyou need to do to satisfy
the people who are going to fund primary.
And unfortunately, that has drivenour Democrats to the left and
Republicans to the right.
We want people in there who are actuallygoing to be independent thinkers,
(41:16):
independent from their party,
their party leadership in line withwhat their constituents really want.
There aren't just two typesof people in this country.
That's been my argument all along.
There's not two sets that everyonethinks either this way or
that way on this, all these issues.
(41:37):
And that diversity in this country,which was diverse when we started,
it's even more diverse now.
And that's what the House is supposedto really bring together and
figure out how we'regonna do this together.
>> Bill Whalen (41:51):
You set me up for our fifth and final point, which is promote
bipartisan collaborations in Candace,we've talked about CODELs, congressional
delegations, we've talked about a crazyscheme for a dorm on Capitol Hill.
What else can the House do inthe way of bipartisanship?
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (42:04):
So one of the rules proposals we make is that if there's
sufficient support frommembers of each party,
I believe it's 10 in the reportthat we settled on each,
that the amendment wouldautomatically be considered.
And there was some debate in the committeeabout what the right number was.
(42:25):
That's why I'm trying tosettle on what we came to.
And that really 10 members fromeach party is a pretty large group
supporting an amendment.
So we think there are things you can do.
That's one response to your answer.
Within the rules themselves thatwould encourage members to make these
kind of proposals that reach acrossthe aisle and seem to have maybe more
(42:49):
centrist support rather than kind ofgoing to one extreme or the other.
>> Daniel Lipinski (42:54):
A story from my early days In Congress,
I was on the Small Business Committee and
a Republican who I got to knowduring new member orientation.
So it's our first committee hearing, and
he comes in andhe sits down next to me at this hearing.
And one of the Republicans,he's a Republican, I'm a Democrat,
(43:18):
Republican staff member comes over tohim and says, I'll leave his name out.
Although probably actuallyreflects well on him.
Would you like theirseats on the other side?
Would you like to move?
And he's like, no, no, no.
And then that staffer again says,
(43:40):
now would you like to move over to.
He's like, no.
He's like,you need to move to the other side.
This is the Democratic side.
You can't be sitting here.
And that's the way mostthings are in Washington.
And it's amazing that there's sofew places that members
can really get to know eachother across the aisle.
(44:04):
One place is the House gym.
If you use the gym,there's very few other places.
And the party leadershiplikes it that way.
They want it to be that way.
They don't want you to get to know memberson the other side of the aisle because
they are the enemy.
And if you start liking them too much,maybe.
(44:26):
Maybe you might not followthe party leader all the time.
>> Bill Whalen (44:29):
We only have about 10 minutes left, Brandice, but
we haven't talked much aboutthe Senate in this conversation.
And here is a very distinguished chamber,
supposed to be very different fromthe House, not be as populist, as kind of
angry as the House because kind of pulse,refined, dignified, just conversations.
And what have they done?
They've changed the ruleson how they vote on judges.
There's been talk aboutchanging the filibuster rule.
(44:50):
They, too, are kind of in a bad way,it seems to me.
So have you guys given thoughtabout how to fix the Senate, or
does the Senate not be fixing.
We need to focus on the House first.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (44:59):
I think we wanted to focus on the House first.
Our report is, the people onthe task force, they're primarily,
particularly the practitioners,the former members, the former staffers.
We looked at peoplewho'd been on the House,
although I think some staffers hadbeen in both the House and Senate.
That's not to say that nothingcould be fixed in the Senate, but
(45:22):
we think that,as Dan said earlier in the podcast,
a lot of the major legislation that's comethrough is now coming through the Senate.
It wasn't always that way, that even ifthere was some imbalance, there were some
legislative bills that were really coming,many in fact, from the House.
So we thought it was the right placeto start, so that could be a follow up.
>> Daniel Lipinski (45:46):
As a House member and before that, as a political scientist who
studied Congress, I always used to say Idon't really understand how the Senate
actually gets anything done becausethey don't have that many rules.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (45:58):
[LAUGH] >> Daniel Lipinski
cooperation.
Why we're trying to reform House rules isthere's a lot of rules in the House and
rules have been rigged in a certain way.
I'm really concerned about the Senate,though,
because as I mentioned earlier, there'sa lot of the dealmakers, Mitt Romney,
Kristin Sinema, Joe Manchin are leaving.
(46:24):
I'm very hopeful Rick Scott doesnot become the majority leader in
the Senate because I think Rick Scottwould be someone who is going to really,
even though he was not in the House,
he's someone who would like torun things like the House is run.
He'd like to have the powerof the speaker and
(46:45):
do whatever President Trumpwants him to do.
I'm hopeful that the senators,because they all just say senators,
all think very highly of themselves.
I hope they continue to say,look, I'm a senator and
I want to maintain my,you know, independence.
(47:07):
When I want to be independent,no one can tell me what, what to do.
And so that's why the Senate hasbeen able to still work things out.
Being reelected everysix years helps a lot.
That's what I was going to say.
>> Daniel Lipinski (47:21):
That makes a big, big, big difference.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (47:23):
Two thirds of them won't be up for
reelection until Trump'sleaving officer after.
So their ability to say->> Daniel Lipinski: I'm hoping they're-.
[LAUGH] Say, you do it fine, be angry at me to Trump.
>> Bill Whalen (47:34):
Another sign for the Senate is Tickets.
In the 2016 presidential election,not a single state in America voted for
a different party for their senatorthan their presidential candidate.
But what did we see last week in America?
Arizona went in different directions.
Nevada went in different directions.
Wisconsin went in different directions.
Michigan went in different directions.
I'm not advocating one part orthe other, but
(47:56):
you are seeing voters offeringa bit of a balance out there.
So maybe that.
Maybe that'll help things moving forward.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (48:01):
Yeah, I think that's one of the big questions of
the elections.
Obviously, when you have a few examples,you can try to explain it
through idiosyncratic factors andindividual races.
But I agree with you,it starts to seem like a pattern.
And I think the House, we're stillfinding final results of the final races,
(48:21):
thanks in part to California's brilliantprocedure [LAUGH] where we have 30
days until after the election to finalizethe vote by mail and other results.
But I think that the ticket splittingis a signal to senators and
to members that the Presidentmay not carry them,
(48:45):
and so they can't count on that.
>> Bill Whalen (48:49):
Okay, we have about five minutes to go.
So tell me this, you have a wonderfulreport, chock full of great ideas for
improving the House,how are you gonna make it happen?
Are you looking for that one suicidalidiot who's gonna propose a bill and
take it forward in the House?
That, to me, sounds like marchinginto no man's land in World War I.
But on a serious front,how would you actually put this into play?
Would you approach the speaker with this?
(49:11):
Would you ask formaybe a task force going proven House?
How would you turn this into a law?
>> Daniel Lipinski (49:15):
You need a few members, and because the-
>> Bill Whalen (49:19):
And let me correct that,
because we're talking about changingrules of the House, not laws.
>> Daniel Lipinski (49:23):
You need a few members who say, look,
I do not want to just follow the speaker.
Two years ago, we saw what happened.
There were Republicans whodifferent situation, but
with Kevin McCarthy strugglingto get the votes to be speaker,
members went up to him and said, I willvote for you if you change this rule,
(49:47):
change that rule andthey got some of the rules changed.
>> Bill Whalen (49:50):
And it's worth that, it's called extortion.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (49:52):
[LAUGH] >> Daniel Lipinski
called in politics.
>> Bill Whalen (49:55):
Yes. >> Brandice Canes-Wrone
Leverage. >> Brandice Canes-Wrone
every day.
>> Daniel Lipinski (50:02):
And there were members two years ago, Republican members two
years ago, who said,we wanna open the process up more, okay?
I would think that this time, andsome of those are Freedom Caucus members.
So waiting to see what they say.
Now, it may be different,because they have President Trump.
It may be the moderateHouse Republican members who say,
(50:24):
look, wait a minute,I want to have a voice here.
I don't want just to have tobe on the Trump train and
not have a say in legislation andjust speaker.
President goes to speaker,speaker goes to members, say,
this is what we need to vote for.
There are some of the Republicanswho are gonna say, hey,
(50:47):
I just squeaked through an election,I wanna have a voice.
And so the way to guarantee that I have avoice is to change up some of these rules.
And this only takes a small number,
cuz that Republican majority inthe House is gonna be very, very small.
And if Trump takes more membersout to put in his administration,
(51:08):
it'll be even smaller.
>> Bill Whalen (51:10):
Bradis.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (51:10):
Well, I'd agree with what Dan said.
It seems likely that in this Congress,
it'll be the moderate Republicanswho are likely to push it.
I would go further.
I don't think we could convinceSpeaker Johnson, so I'm not delusional.
But the current system that they've beenoperating has not worked out well for
recent Republican speakers, right?
(51:31):
We've had two speaker changesmid session in recent years.
So if you concentrate all power in oneperson or in a small, a leadership team,
the incentives, what people can do isthey can topple that leadership team.
So again, not delusional, it's gonnahave to come from the moderates.
But it's not clear to me that the leadersare seeing clearly what their own
(51:55):
long term incentives are.
>> Daniel Lipinski (51:57):
I completely agree.
And when all of the expectation is onthe speaker to get things done, and
if they're looking the speaker to makesure all the agenda gets completed and
a couple of members say, no, then allowthe Republican conference is gonna say,
wait a minute, we told the speaker.
(52:17):
We gave the speakerthe power to get this done.
He's not getting it done,we're getting rid of them.
And so I think most speakers andMike Johnson have to look a little deeper.
But it makes sense that maybe he wants tosay, hey, I'm not gonna be responsible for
getting everything done here,cuz it's gonna be really hard.
Look what happened to Kevin McCarthy,I don't want that to happen to me.
>> Bill Whalen (52:39):
Okay, politics being politics,
you can't always get what you want.
What is the one item in this reportthat you would like to get, Brandice?
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (52:47):
Well, now I'm gonna revert to being an academic,
because I do think it'sthe least likely item.
But you asked what do I want,not what do I think is likely, and
I'd have a different answer.
Our most original and creative proposal isthe one about guaranteed regular order,
which would allow each committeethat went through a regular process
(53:08):
one bill each year thatcould get voted on.
But I don't think it would be the mostinnovative and in that sense,
perhaps it's the least likely.
>> Daniel Lipinski (53:18):
So I would concur.
So then since that's been chosen already,I'd say the ten and ten, ten Democrats,
ten Republicans offer an amendmentthat's guaranteed a floor vote.
I think members would wake up to say, hey,
this is a real opportunityto have an impact here.
And so I gotta start getting to knowsome members across the aisle and
(53:42):
working with them.
And I think that could really starta significant change in the two sides,
at least some members onthe two sides working together.
So that's what I would like to see.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (53:58):
Brandice Canes-Wrone, Congressman Lipinski,
congratulations on a terrific report.
I hope you go to Washington andget to testify.
Or better yet, let's bringWashington out here to Stanford and
have them testify here.
Great.>> Daniel Lipinski: Thank you.
Thanks, Phil.
>> Bill Whalen (54:10):
You've been listening to Matters of Policy and Politics,
a Hoover Institution podcastdevoted to governance and
balance of power here in America andaround the globe.
If you've been enjoying this podcast,please don't forget to rate, review and
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Also, if you wouldn't mind,spread the word.
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Go to the Hoover Institution's website,hoover.org and
(54:31):
check out all the greatwork that RAI is doing.
Also, you should sign up forHoover's Daily Report,
which keeps you updated on what Candiceand Congressman Lipinski are up to.
That's sent to your email weekdaysby the Hoover Institution.
I'm Bill Whalen.
We'll be back soon with a new installmenton Matters of Policy and Politics.
Till then, take care.
Thanks for watching.
[MUSIC]
It's Tuesday, November 12, 2024.
And welcome back to Matters of Policy andPolitics, a Hoover Institution podcast
devoted to governance and balance of powerhere in America and around the free world.
I'm Bill Whalen,I'm the Hoover Institution's Virginia
Hobbes Carpenter DistinguishedPolicy Fellow in Journalism.
I'm not the onlyHoover Fellow who podcasts.
If you don't believe me,go to our website,
which is hoover.org click on the tabon the homepage that says Commentary,
(00:27):
then scroll down to whereit says Multimedia.
And over on the right you'll see a listof audiobook podcast including this one.
I proudly say this podcast has excellentguests today being no exception.
Joining me for the better part of the nexthour are Brandice Canes-Wrone, and
former Congressman Daniel Lipinski.
About Brandice, Brandice Canes-Wrone isthe Maurice R Greenberg Senior Fellow at
(00:47):
the Hoover Institution and
a professor in the Political ScienceDepartment at Stanford University.
She's also the foundingdirector of Hoover's center for
Revitalizing American Institutions, hercurrent research focusing on elections,
campaign finance, and populism.
Daniel Lipinski served 16 years in theUnited States House of Representatives,
representing Illinois suburbanChicago 3rd congressional district.
(01:08):
He's no ordinary former congressman.
He also happens to be an academic.
He has a doctorate in Political Sciencefrom Duke University.
I think that's technically the Stanfordof the south, as they call it.
He also is a distinguished, prolificwriter when it comes to Congress and
the legislative process, which explainshis involvement both with Hoover and
the center for RAI andwhy he is here today.
(01:28):
Brandice, Dan, thanks forjoining the podcast.
>> Daniel Lipinski (01:30):
Good to be with you.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (01:31):
Thanks so much, Bill.
>> Bill Whalen (01:32):
So for the purpose of brevity, let's don't say center for
Revitalizing American Institutionsover and over again.
Let's try to keep it limited to RAI,not REI, but RAI.
So just forour listeners should know that.
What I wanna focus on today, though, is areport that RAI recently issued the title
"Revitalizing the House (01:49):
Bipartisan Recommendations on Rules and Processes".
Brandice, let's talk aboutthe genesis of this report.
First of all, how it ties into Hoover'svision for revitalizing, in this case,
Congress and the Congressman.
I want you to talk abouta group in Bethesda,
Maryland called the SunWater Institute,which is involved as well.
So Brandice, take it away.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (02:08):
So Dan approached me and he'll talk about
the Sunwater Institute andthe people there involved.
We talked about this possibilitythat one of the reasons there's so
little trust in Congress is the fact thatit's not really working the way it's
supposed to work, right?
(02:28):
Congress is Article 1 in the Constitution.
It's supposed to bethe center of our government.
Over the past several decades, powerhas gradually shifted to the executive.
For that to change, we have to assumethat presidents, whoever they are,
that's as independent of the party orthe individual in the office.
Why wouldn't you want to havethe power to do what you can.
>> Bill Whalen (02:49):
Right. >> Brandice Canes-Wrone
eight years?
So Congress has to take thisback if we want that to shift.
And so our report is a part, you know,of trying to encourage Congress to
have the rules andprocess that would enable it to do that.
I did a call with our director, Condoleezza Rice,
not too long ago, and I gave her a list ofinstitutions in America that I deemed in
(03:10):
need of fixing, and she landedon Congress as her first choice.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (03:13):
Yeah, I think that certainly they're not playing
the constitutional rolethey were designed to do,
and they're not playing the role,I would argue.
I'll let Dan disagree ifyou'd like to do that.
That they were playingwhen you entered Congress.
Right.
Even in the most recent few decades,you see a shift.
>> Daniel Lipinski (03:31):
Yeah, it definitely has shifted.
So, yeah we'll get a whole lot moreinto what's wrong with Congress and
about our recommendations for reforms.
But, yeah, about a year ago,I went to Brandice and
I recommended putting together a taskforce to look at what can we do,
(03:52):
what rules can change,what processes can change in the House to
make it work the way itis supposed to work.
The House is supposed to bethe bulwark of our democracy.
It is supposed to produce conciliationin a very diverse country.
That's the way the framers set it up.
And the House is failing in that.
(04:14):
Back in 2018, the bipartisan HouseProblem Solvers Caucus had put together
a set of rule changes that wewere pushing at the end of 2018.
Going into the new Congress in 2019, wewere only able to get a few of those done.
And I thought, well,
let's look again at what kind of reformsdo we think can potentially get done?
(04:37):
Because Congress has only gotten worse.
I mean, the House has only gottenworse in the last six years.
So working with Brandice andI also brought in the Sun Water Institute,
which is a relatively newthink tank in Maryland, and
they are putting together a lot of data.
One of their interests isreform of Congress, and
(04:59):
they're bringing together a lot ofdata to help to make the case for
what has gone wrong andwhat might be working.
But what do we do moving forward?
And one of the things that they'redoing is putting all the rules,
cataloging history of rules of the Houseand how they've changed to understand how
(05:20):
changing the rules has made a differencein the way the House operates.
>> Bill Whalen (05:24):
So let's talk for
a minute about how bad thingsreally are in the House.
So Gallup is always pulling on the House,
doing job approval withthe public on the house.
January 2005,
when young Daniel Lipinski is firstgoing to Washington full of dreams.
He's watched Jimmy Stewart, Mr.Smith goes to Washington.
Who knows what wonderfulthings you have planned.
Gallup has the house at 43% approval.
(05:46):
October 2024, 16%.
Yikes.
But let me throw this at you.
Historically, the public has alwaysenjoyed making fun of Congress,
if not criticizing, at least mocking it.
Will Rogers quote papers say Congressis deadlocked and can't act.
I think that is the greatest blessingthat can befall this country.
Mark Twain Suppose you're an idiot andsuppose you were a member of Congress.
(06:08):
But I repeat myself.
The question how much of our dislikeof Congress is baked in the cake?
In other words, are they alwaysjust kind of there as a pinata or
something to make fun of?
Or have we seen in the past few yearsa real crisis burning in terms of Congress
just not able to do its fundamental job?
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (06:24):
So, Bill, I think you're right that we're always gonna see
this kind of making fun of Congressas a whole, usually not our member.
We always seem to like our member isdifferent than the rest of Congress.
The problem is everyone else's member.
But there have been several shifts thatI think have contributed to something
deeper and more dysfunctional.
(06:46):
So sometimes what we're making fun of isthe fact that lawmaking can be messy.
And in fact, there are also sayings aboutnever wanting to see it's like sausage.
You really do want to justsee the final product.
You really don't wanna see itbeing made right with lawmaking.
But that messiness is an important partof features of a representative system,
(07:10):
such as compromise,such as trying to bridge divides across
very disparate geographic preferences andconstituencies.
And sometimes compromisedoesn't look beautiful or
even intellectually coherent at times,but it produces a sustainable
policy that we can all live with whenpolicy is decided by the executive.
(07:34):
And as Congress has increasingly delegatedand exited out of this negotiating and
messy lawmaking process, the FederalRegister, the number of pages per year
has been going up and the executive branchhas been taking over so you may like
the election outcomes this yesterday orSorry, not yesterday, last Tuesday.
(07:55):
It's been a busy week.
And say, well that's great.
But when your party's not in power,if it's a winner take all system where
policy just reverts back andforth between two polarized extremes.
You can see why people start to lose sometrust in Congress in particular, but
some sense that the systemisn't working well.
(08:18):
And this is where Congress comes in,
including its messinessthat we can make fun of.
But that's a very different type ofmessiness than just gonna become
telemarketers who fundraise andjust grant the power to the executive.
That's an unfaircharacterization at some level.
It's a very extreme characterization, butthat's the direction they've been going.
>> Bill Whalen (08:37):
So, Congressman,
I've given you the view of the publiclooking into Congress, into the house,
which is 16% job approval,which we can agree is wretched.
What is the view fromthe House looking out?
>> Daniel Lipinski (08:47):
It depends on who you are.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of memberswho I think want to run for Congress,
be elected to Congress, not to legislate,but because they then have a platform and
they want to perform andthey think that is how you change policy.
They're not interested in really gettingdown into the tough work of legislating.
(09:13):
But there are other legislators,
other members of Congress whodo want to legislate, and
that's who our recommendations,that's who we are reaching out to.
The ones who say, hey,I want to represent my constituents here.
I'm not getting the opportunity to do so.
Too many members have sort of checkedout and said, well, I can't do anything.
It's run by the leadership.
(09:34):
The speaker just determines whatbills we're gonna be voting on,
what's gonna be the content.
And look, I argue, I came in in 2005,
in those first four yearsGeorge W Bush was president.
There were some things Democratstook Congress in the 2006 election.
There were some things in 2007,
(09:55):
2008 that the two sides workedtogether on, that we got done,
even though we're fighting overthe aftermath of the Iraq war.
But I think really come 2010,well, 2008, 2009, things changed.
And I would argue the last 14 years,there is not one major piece
(10:17):
of legislation that has become lawthat has come out of the House.
But not only that, almost every singlemajor new law that's been created,
every spending bill, the tax bills hascome out of the Senate with little or
no input from the House because the Househas become a messaging body for
(10:39):
the majority party and that's it.
And our republic cannot survive if wecontinue that way, where we only have
the Senate and some of the dealmakersare leaving the Senate right now.
And I'm not sure where thisis gonna leave us, but
we can't just turn everythingover to the president.
>> Bill Whalen (10:57):
Can we agree that this is a bipartisan problem?
The Republicans tookback the House in 1994,
having not had it for, what, 50 years, andthey held it for, what, the next 12 years?
And then in 2006, the Democrats get itback, they hold it for four years, and
then the Republicans get it back andthey hold it for eight years.
Flips back to the Republicans and
it looks like the Republicans willhold on to the House this time around.
(11:18):
But if I were a betting man, I'd bet onthe Democrats taking it back in 2026.
This is the nature of the beast.
Why does the public keep changing itsmind on who it wants to have in charge of
Congress or charge of the House?
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (11:28):
Well, the margins are really tight.
So one reason that your bet is a great one
is that the Republicanslook set to win the House.
Maybe it's been called sincewe started the podcast,
[LAUGH] but it certainly looked->> Bill Whalen: It's gonna be in the very
low 220s, if not in the 210s.
So it's just gonna be razor thin.
It's gonna be razor thin margins.
So you only need a fewdistricts to switch back.
(11:50):
You do have a situationwhere when Congress itself.
So I think, again,the margins are the main reason, but
a secondary reason is you can already seesome sort of fight setting up where Trump
has certain policies that he'dlike passed through Congress, and
these marginal members are askedto walk the plank effectively.
The marginal members tend to be inthe districts that could go in either
(12:14):
direction.
And if the president's setting policy,right, in either party, again,
this is not a Trump factor,this is not a Biden or Obama factor.
This is just if the president'ssetting policy, you can expect then
that the moderate members are not gonnabe the ones who are gonna be squeezed.
(12:34):
And then to the extent thatpolicy affects their electoral
performance, it's gonnabe in this negative way.
>> Daniel Lipinski (12:44):
Part of this is just that there's a general dissatisfaction in
this country.
70% of people think the country'sgoing in the wrong direction.
And this is only the second time,I believe, post Civil War,
where the incumbent presidential partyhas lost three elections in a row.
The last time it happenedwas the late 19th century.
(13:06):
I wouldn't be surprised if ithappens again in another four years.
But there's just a generaldissatisfaction.
And that's part of the reason whythe House keeps flipping over.
But it's also the case,I'd argue that Congress,
especially the House,is not doing a good job of, again,
(13:28):
conciliation, figuring out howare we going to live together.
We're a diverse country.
We're really split right now.
But there are ways thatwe can come together.
And no one seems to be trying to do that.
That is what Congress issupposed to be doing.
That's the way the Constitution waswritten in order to bring these
(13:49):
diverse interests together and to figureout, okay, so what do we do with that?
Instead of having one party come in,have it their way for a couple years,
they get thrown out andwe just keep going through that cycle and
things don't seem to Americans don'tseem to think things are improving.
>> Bill Whalen (14:06):
Okay, let's fix things and let's go to the report,
Revitalizing the House, BipartisanRecommendations on Rules and Process.
First, I want five recommendationsI want to talk about, but
before we get into that,who made these recommendations?
Tell me whose input is in this report.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (14:20):
Okay, so there's a diverse group, a bipartisan group.
So that's one type ofthe diversity we have.
But actually an interesting typethat's not typical to these types
of reports is we haveformer House members,
including Dan, but also otherRepublican and Democratic members.
We have former staffers, includingformer staffers in the Republican
(14:45):
leadership staff because as we've kind ofmentioned, the centralization of power.
But one of the tensionsis sort of the rank and
file members versus the leadership.
So we wanted their input.
And then we have what we call otherexperts, which include professors in
academia, but also think tank andother types of experts.
(15:05):
So we mentioned the Sunwater Institute.
We should certainly giveMatt Chervenak full credit,
who helped draft it, andPhil Wallach at AEI.
But everyone on the report metover the course of the year.
We had Zoom meetings sothat everyone could participate regularly.
(15:27):
One of the innovations of Zoom,
since meeting monthly with people acrossthe country would have been prohibitive.
And you know, some things gotwe can't talk about them but
were placed on the cutting floor.
So, you know, sort of proposals that maybemany people thought would be a good idea
if they could be enacted.
But for instance, the leadership staffmight say that's just a non-starter.
(15:52):
And you know, this is not.
So we tried to come up with a setthat would appeal to both parties and
appeal to both rank andfile and leadership.
>> Bill Whalen (16:01):
Okay, Congressman, let's get into the points.
Point number one, change the rules to givesubstantial bipartisan majorities greater
access to the floor.
>> Daniel Lipinski (16:08):
Well, one of the issues is it is everything runs through
the majority party.
That means it runs throughthe speaker's office.
We used to have legislationpassed the House that was you'd
get Democrats andRepublicans both supporting it.
You get the majority fromboth sides of the aisle.
(16:30):
Now there is so little majorlegislation that ever happens.
Now, there's a couplethings going on here.
Well, of course, we have becomeour country is more polarized, but
there are still issues I argue andI saw this during my time in Congress.
More and more issues,which there's no good reason for
(16:51):
why it would become a partisan issue,have become partisan issues.
So what we need to do isgive the opportunities.
So one of the things we have in thereis guaranteed regular order that says
if a committee holds hearings on a pieceof legislation, has an open markup,
(17:12):
there's amending of that bill andit passes the committee,
it has some bipartisan support,that it's guaranteed to come to the floor.
And what this is going to do is givesome power back to the committees.
The speaker right now oftentimeswill tell the committees what to do.
And members of Congress,many of them have decided,
(17:34):
well, it's not evenworth giving the effort.
I mean, that's one of the problems.
Many members have sort of checkedout of the legislative process.
And so this is to give theman opportunity to say, hey,
if I work hard on my committees,this is where most of the work gets done.
I become an expert on this committeeon the issues of this committee,
(17:54):
I can have an impact.
So that's one of the majorrecommendations in here.
Another one is if you get 10 Democrats and
10 Republicans who support bringingan amendment to the floor and any bill,
then that amendment will get floor time,it will be debated, and we'll get a vote.
(18:15):
And again, that is to give an incentivefor members to be involved and
to get to know and work with memberson the other side of the aisle.
And so those two thingsare two of the biggest pieces.
There's other things we haveabout changing the process.
We need to do more becauseit just got worse and
worse during the time I was there.
(18:37):
Democrats and Republicans do not speakto each other, do not know each other.
And it only got worse.
I mean,I left three days before January 6, 2021.
It only got much worse after that.
And that has to change.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (18:54):
Yeah.
So you know, the kind of classicmodel of Congress that for
a long time was taught in classes butreally shouldn't be taught as
the current Congress anymore was thisvery committee based model, right?
Congressmen at work,is a dated expression, but
(19:14):
that was the phrase isCongress in committees, right?
So congressional members, that's wherethey're getting their real work done.
But increasingly membersare spending less time
in lawmaking in committees andwe show that in our report.
And over time, fewer committee bills are,are being taken up by the floor.
(19:36):
So even though there's kind of lesslawmaking in general, even those that
are making it out of committeesuccessfully aren't being taken up.
And that was actually a pointof debate in the committee.
I say in our task force that some,I won't name any who, but
some people said that's not true,that can't be right.
And so we said, well, how about we just,this is an empirical question.
How about we just get the data andwe look at whether that's actually true.
(19:59):
And it was in fact strictly,strikingly true.
And that's now in the report.
So I think this isn't something everyoneon the Hill, for instance, knows,
since that was people who'd been on.
And as Dan said that then youhave the situation, well,
why am I spending allthis time in committee?
I mean, why would I even spend time on it?
If we're going to produce this bill andgo through, mark it up and
(20:21):
go through the regular process and investtime, if in the end, too much of the time,
I mean, most of the time,we're not even going to get a vote on it.
So this is where the lawmakingprocess has sort of just declined.
>> Daniel Lipinski (20:36):
And I could say on the issue, I don't know if I brought up or
another of the former members brought up,that do all this work in committee,
bills don't come to the floor.
And it was someone on the taskforce who was more familiar with
leadership who thought, well,no, that's not really true.
(20:58):
And the former members are saying,yes, it is, that is true.
So we have the data to show that, butit just shows the perspective of depending
on where you're sitting up there,what you see happening or what you miss.
>> Bill Whalen (21:15):
This may have grown worse in recent years, but
I'm a child of Washington, DC, I grewup in Washington, DC as a journalist.
I covered the Hill in the late 80s andthe early 90s when things were
really starting to fray leadingup to the Gingrich revolution.
And I remember talking to a Member.
And he said, I have a solution.
And that solution is to take a blockof Capitol Hill and build a very large
dormitory and house as many members whoare willing to be in the dorm together.
(21:38):
And I said, what?
And he said, because they'll all be housedtogether and they'll get to know each
other and God forbid, actuallycollegiality will emerge from that.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (21:46):
So it's certainly the case that over time, members and
Dan alluded to this, now they barely talk,
that members have spent less timesocializing with each other.
It used to be that more memberslived in DC full time, right?
Or had that as their andtheir kids went to school together,
their spouses socialized,there was more family interaction.
(22:10):
They were there.
Now there's much more of thisTuesday to Thursday club.
I mean, this is a longstanding trend.
This is not the last ten years.
Some of our proposals in the task force,which this is why we call it rules and
process and not simply rules, have to do,as Dan mentioned, with trying to both get
members to work together in legislatingand on the floor but also outside as well.
(22:33):
They kind of get a bad name, these CODELs,[LAUGH] where you go off on trips
together and you explore issues,sometimes issues of national security,
issues of understanding parts ofthe country that you may not represent.
So, I mean, pretty serious issues,one could argue.
But they have this, you know,if you're getting to go, we hear it.
(22:55):
If you're getting to go to Italy,it kind of has a nice sound to it.
But there needs to be,maybe not in Italy, but some more time.
>> Bill Whalen (23:02):
I'm not crazy about spending a lot of federal money, but
I'm not averse to the CODEL, which isshorthand for a congressional delegation,
because it does get members aroundthe world to look at things.
I think as long as you had just almostinstant reporting of the codel.
Where you went.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (23:16):
Yes. And why.
>> Bill Whalen (23:17):
And why they can be held accountable.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (23:18):
[LAUGH] Yes, yes. >> Bill Whalen
everybody's going to Paris in August.
That's what I was going to say.
Maybe not always the high vacation spots.
>> Bill Whalen (23:24):
Okay, Congressman, second point.
Make committees stronger,more substantive and more effective.
>> Daniel Lipinski (23:28):
Well, a big part of that is the guaranteed regular order.
So committee members know that.
Members know that they do the work,
they'll get to see the billat least come to the floor.
Not guaranteed to pass, but at leastcome to the floor and get debated.
But there's also other ways that thecommittee hearings can be run differently.
(23:52):
And there's been some talk about this.
I think there might besome movement on this.
I've always found that having.
Roundtables, whichare essentially unofficial
hearings were much more beneficial.
Congressional hearings have turned intojust another opportunity to play for
(24:12):
the camera.
>> Bill Whalen (24:13):
Bugging for the cameras.
>> Daniel Lipinski (24:14):
Yeah, we saw a couple members get into really personal,
mean arguments on committee, which it just
another reason why peopledon't like Congress.
But roundtables, there's no cameras there,you actually have an opportunity,
(24:35):
you don't just get your five minutes withthe witness, and you make your points.
You actually get to have real discussionwith the witnesses and with each other.
Just getting committee memberstogether in informal settings.
I think some of these are definitely gonnago forward because there are members who
are really pushing for this.
(24:56):
It may sound trite, butit does make a difference.
If you know people, you are.
You get to know them, you get to know.
Especially, if you get toknow their families or
the opportunities there are forthat, it helps things to work better.
And the dorm idea, I think is fantastic.
(25:16):
For a majority of my 16 years, I sleptin my office, which was not that great.
But anything to get members together
in socializing acrossthe aisle is a good idea.
>> Bill Whalen (25:30):
Okay, showing my age again, I go back to a more gilded age of
the House, when you had verygiant figures like John Dingell,
Henry Waxman here in California,and a gentleman from Chicago
named Dan Rostenkowski runningthe House Ways and Committee.
But Congressman, let's talk about Rostifor a second, because on the one hand,
Rosti was a legend in Washington.
Nobody knew the tax codes more than him,but boy, did he run the Ways and
(25:52):
Means Committee,he also ended up going to jail, though.
>> Daniel Lipinski (25:55):
Well, I mean, again, there's no simple,
easy answers, everything has its downside.
So when someone gets that much power.
>> Bill Whalen (26:03):
Right, but I mentioned this because when the Republicans came
back in the House, what's one ofthe first things they got into?
Term limits for committee chairs.
>> Daniel Lipinski (26:10):
I like term limits for committee chairs,
>> Bill Whalen (26:14):
really.
>> Daniel Lipinski (26:15):
I don't like term limits for members of Congress in general.
For legislators, I don't like term limits.
For any kind of executive position,
I think term limits are good becauseyou can amass way too much power.
Now there's downsides becauseyou hear Republicans say, well,
we lose people because after sixyears at the head of the committee,
(26:36):
then they can no longer be chair orranking member.
But in general,I think it's good to have that turnover.
But right now, so many committee members,so many committee chairs,
and I saw this happen to some goodfriends of mine, I won't name them,
(26:57):
but who are very independent members fordecades.
They get to be a committee chair, and
then they realize the way thingshave changed in the House,
they need to follow the speaker andthe speaker is telling them what to do.
And that's why having thesecommittee chairs like Rustinkowski,
(27:20):
you talked about he actually sat down with
President Reagan over thisTax Reform Bill in 1986.
You'd never see a committee chair,I don't think,
be in that position anymore becausea speaker wouldn't let that happen.
Again, the committees need tobe able to do their work, and
(27:42):
that's the way things canwork much better, and
committees can work in a muchmore bipartisan manner.
Also,>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Dan,
even if you think thereshould be term limits,
do you think it should be six years?
That's pretty short term.
I mean, I'd be open to a little longer.
Especially if you don't serve,that is six years as the top.
(28:05):
It's only Republicans just sopeople know, it's only Republicans,
Democrats don't have this rule.
And there are some chairs of committees,
ranking members of Democrats whoshould have been gone years ago.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (28:19):
We won't name names here.
[LAUGH]>> Daniel Lipinski: No, but
it also applies if you're not the chair,you're the ranking member.
The ranking member is the top minorityparty member of that committee.
I don't think that should be countedthe same because that's not the same as
having, as being the, the committee chair.
But it's just a technicality.
But yeah, there are, there are those,there are trade offs there in that.
>> Bill Whalen (28:42):
The report also suggests ranked choice voting for committee chairs.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (28:50):
So to clarify, not ranked choice voting- You're
gonna have to say it,because I hear ranked choice voting.
Not that we're suggesting,
the reports suggest that the committeeshould have a private say to the speaker
over who the chair should be becauseone of the issues right now is that.
But we did make it.
(29:10):
This was kind of one of these compromises,you could say,
between the rank and file andthe leadership staff.
The speaker obviouslywants to have full control
in the party caucus over committee chairs.
But the fact that the committeedoesn't weigh in at all right now,
(29:31):
we think doesn't, you know,creates a situation where often
fundraising is a dominant factor inwho gets to be a committee chair.
And if that's really what'sdetermining who a committee chair is,
it's not surprising that committees aren'tas invested in lawmaking and the like.
>> Daniel Lipinski (29:48):
The committee chair should Be responsive to their members,
not to the Speaker.
That's really the point in that one.
I couldn't even rememberthat we had included rank.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (30:02):
No, I think it's the rewarding issue.
>> Bill Whalen (30:04):
I just saw it in there and just ooh, wait a second.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (30:06):
No, I think it's the ranking member we'll have to look at
exactly, we're not makingany arguments about that.
>> Bill Whalen (30:15):
Recommendation number three, give members more time for
legislative work.
Let me again go back in the wayback machine to the good old days,
the 80s and 90s when Robert Byrdbecame the senate majority leader, and
he started making senatorswork five days a week.
And boy were they not happy.
Now five days a week works wonderfully forDan Lipinski because how many flights
are there every day fromNational Airport to Chicago?
(30:36):
But Congressman, Brandice Canes-Wrone,representing the great state of Montana,
not so easy to get back to her district.
So tell me Congressman,why this is not why this is fair to her?
Because she's going to have a hard timegetting back to see her constituents.
>> Daniel Lipinski (30:48):
Well, there's actually been a lot of work on this and
there are a group of members whoare going to be putting forward their
schedule that they think would bemore helpful in that there would be
more five day weeks butalso more time back at home.
There'd be fewer days of travel.
So essentially, trading travel days foractually days in session.
(31:13):
And for some of those travel days willthen be in session, some will be at home.
I think that would, that would be helpful.
Look, I was on that first plane out,I'll tell you that.
I was on the last plane in before thefirst votes of the week at 6:30 on that
Monday or Tuesday, andI was on the first plane out, and
(31:36):
I was running as fast as I could.
But it's better if there'smore time that members
have to concentrate onlegislating in Washington.
>> Bill Whalen (31:48):
Brandice, why not bring Zoom into play?
Why not just stop doingeverything in Washington and
let members do things viaZoom in their home districts?
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (31:55):
So as we mentioned, we used Zoom for discussion.
So we don't want.
>> Bill Whalen (32:00):
Yes >> Brandice Canes-Wrone
research suggests there are differences inhow people behave on Zoom and in person.
And in person,>> Bill Whalen: you're not just talking me
sitting here at the table wearingtennis shorts or something like that.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (32:14):
No, no, no, there's that, but the types of comments
people will make in terms ofwhat they're willing to say.
And often this relates to Dan's commentsabout the legislative hearings and
the transparency.
People think they might be on camera andbeing recorded.
They're going to behave verydifferently than in terms of
(32:37):
when they think they're not.
And I would say that even beyond that,
there's evidence in negotiatingthat face-to-face contact.
You could argue that some Zoom, right,it doesn't have to be all or nothing.
Some zoom contact could be a good thing,
particularly between peoplethat you really trust.
But that's almost a within party,even within the party,
(33:02):
within a close colleaguetype of interaction.
That's not the sort of messiness thatwe talked about at the beginning.
About compromises that may ormay not be adopted and
where you could be caught then on cameraoffering something that you wouldn't want
your constituents to know was offered,particularly if it's not gonna go through.
>> Bill Whalen (33:23):
Should committees think about doing more roadshows,
taking hearings beyond the beltway,going into districts and
meeting people in person there?
It seemed to be there, yes, it would costmoney, logistically be complicated, but
it would send a message that we're comingto you rather than you coming to us.
>> Daniel Lipinski (33:38):
I think there should be more of that.
It does happen.
I think there should be more emphasisof doing more of those field hearings,
as they're called,to actually get out there.
Now, I found that field hearingsthat I did didn't always get
that many members of the publicwho wanted to show up for them.
(34:01):
But I think it's good to do.
It also is it actuallyhelps the members to go and
visit someone else's district.
And that actually is another wayof building some camaraderie.
I mean,the last question you talked about Zoom,
(34:22):
we had an experiment with thatduring COVID, during 2020.
And in some ways it worked.
But you'd miss that real humaninteraction with each other.
That's not over the camera.
That's different in the informaldiscussions, which make a big difference.
(34:42):
And I found that it's funny at first,when COVID shut everything down,
the House is not in session,there are all these, I was pushing for.
And I wrote an op ed saying weneed to take advantage of Zoom,
other virtual ways of connecting so thatthe House actually is doing some business.
(35:05):
And Nancy Pelosi hadthe Rules Committee Democrats
write a report sayingwhy this would not work.
You know, this blah, blah, blah.
And I think she was concernedabout how that would,
you know,whether that would work or not or.
(35:25):
I'm not sure what she wasconcerned about at first, but
obviously she thought it would somehowtake some of her power away, I believe.
But what happened was we did,we started doing it and
then she realized, no,I have greater power now because no one's
here to conspire to do anything besideswhat I tell them we need to do.
(35:46):
And Nancy Pelosi all of a suddenchanged and decided this is a lovely,
let's just keep it going.
>> Bill Whalen (35:52):
She also got to realize if she ran the hearing via Zoom,
she could control the mute function.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (35:56):
Yes.
>> Bill Whalen (35:58):
All right, let's go to point number four.
Our listener is going tohave fun with this raise.
Members pay My slack research indicates
that members right now I thinkearn about $174,000 a year.
>> Daniel Lipinski (36:10):
Long time now, yes.
>> Bill Whalen (36:11):
Leadership I think is 193, 4.
And the speaker getsabout $223,000 a year.
$203,500 I believe it is.
And you want them to get more.
>> Daniel Lipinski (36:21):
We almost left this out because we didn't want people to focus
on this.
But look, members of Congress, and I hateto say this as I probably shouldn't be
speaking this as a former member ofCongress, cuz it sounds too self serving.
Although I'm not there anymore, so Istill think members should get paid more.
The job that members ofCongress do compared
(36:45):
to comparable jobs Ithink in this country.
It doesn't make a whole lot of sensethat I think it's been 14 years maybe or
more since House memberspay has been raised.
And that doesn't make any sense.
(37:06):
You need to be attractingpeople who are high quality
who can demand this typeof pay somewhere else.
And I think it would be helpful, I mean,It's not gonna solve all the problems.
But I think there are people who look atit and say no, I don't want to do that.
I can't afford first of all to have twoplaces assuming they don't sleep in
(37:29):
their office like I was doing forsome of that time or there's no dorm.
They look at it and say,I can't have two places of residence.
I always argued, look,what other job do you need to travel for
the job, but you don't get paid forstaying where you're going?
Now they've made some corrections of that,which is good.
(37:53):
But I still think you need tohave offer competitive salaries.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (37:57):
So we show in the report that over the same period that
congressional pay has stagnated,executive pay has gone up noticeably.
And it's also stagnated, of course,relative, I mean, it's just stagnated.
I should note this is not a sortof in real versus nominal terms,
it's just stagnated in nominal terms.
But it's also then beenoutpaced by private sector pay.
(38:19):
So I mean, at some point,we want a Congress that's representative
of the range of Americans andbackgrounds who are in the country, right?
We don't wanna feel that it's only for
people who've alreadyinherited a lot of wealth.
>> Bill Whalen (38:35):
Allow me to be the obligatory jerk for a minute.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (38:37):
Yep. >> Bill Whalen
has a board to report to.
The well paid executive is runninga company that has a profit
line at the end of the day.
Right. >> Bill Whalen
I would argue that the executivewho ran his company or her company,
the way Congress is run, they would not bean executive for very long, would they?
Yeah, but I think that's an argument about.
>> Bill Whalen (38:55):
I'm being, I'm being facetious.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (38:56):
No, no, no, no, no.
I know, but I think that would bean argument about the leadership.
And members do have to facevoters every two years.
So voters think that their individualmember is not doing a good job,
they face difficult.
In many cases, some differently.
In all cases,there's a large primary threat.
In other cases,there's a general election threat as well.
>> Bill Whalen (39:21):
A more serious question, Congressman, you were there for 16 years.
You watched members come and go.
How many members left on purely economicreasons versus maybe family reasons?
They wanted to be with theirkids as they were growing up,
they got tired of Washington,they got frustrated with the process.
Or they saw the train comingin their direction and
want to get off the tracksbefore they got run over.
In other words, better to retirebefore you lose your election.
(39:43):
But how many citedeconomic concerns there?
>> Daniel Lipinski (39:47):
That's really hard to say.
I mean, it's a real mixed bag.
I certainly knew members whodid cite the economic concerns.
Look, I got a couple kids whoare gonna be going into college.
Now and I need to, I need to make moremoney in order to send my kids to college.
(40:08):
It was a lot more, you know,spend time with my family or,
you know, I just can't stand this place.
That was probably the number onething that I started hearing,
especially in the 2010s,is I just don't like this anymore.
We're not getting anything done.
I don't have,I don't have a role here anymore.
(40:30):
I'm just told to follow the leader andthat's it.
And so I can't do this anymore.
I mean, I was,I'm too independent minded for
the way things haveturned now in the House.
And it can be a really easy jobif you just follow the leader and
(40:53):
you do what you know thatyou need to do to satisfy
the people who are going to fund primary.
And unfortunately, that has drivenour Democrats to the left and
Republicans to the right.
We want people in there who are actuallygoing to be independent thinkers,
(41:16):
independent from their party,
their party leadership in line withwhat their constituents really want.
There aren't just two typesof people in this country.
That's been my argument all along.
There's not two sets that everyonethinks either this way or
that way on this, all these issues.
(41:37):
And that diversity in this country,which was diverse when we started,
it's even more diverse now.
And that's what the House is supposedto really bring together and
figure out how we'regonna do this together.
>> Bill Whalen (41:51):
You set me up for our fifth and final point, which is promote
bipartisan collaborations in Candace,we've talked about CODELs, congressional
delegations, we've talked about a crazyscheme for a dorm on Capitol Hill.
What else can the House do inthe way of bipartisanship?
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (42:04):
So one of the rules proposals we make is that if there's
sufficient support frommembers of each party,
I believe it's 10 in the reportthat we settled on each,
that the amendment wouldautomatically be considered.
And there was some debate in the committeeabout what the right number was.
(42:25):
That's why I'm trying tosettle on what we came to.
And that really 10 members fromeach party is a pretty large group
supporting an amendment.
So we think there are things you can do.
That's one response to your answer.
Within the rules themselves thatwould encourage members to make these
kind of proposals that reach acrossthe aisle and seem to have maybe more
(42:49):
centrist support rather than kind ofgoing to one extreme or the other.
>> Daniel Lipinski (42:54):
A story from my early days In Congress,
I was on the Small Business Committee and
a Republican who I got to knowduring new member orientation.
So it's our first committee hearing, and
he comes in andhe sits down next to me at this hearing.
And one of the Republicans,he's a Republican, I'm a Democrat,
(43:18):
Republican staff member comes over tohim and says, I'll leave his name out.
Although probably actuallyreflects well on him.
Would you like theirseats on the other side?
Would you like to move?
And he's like, no, no, no.
And then that staffer again says,
(43:40):
now would you like to move over to.
He's like, no.
He's like,you need to move to the other side.
This is the Democratic side.
You can't be sitting here.
And that's the way mostthings are in Washington.
And it's amazing that there's sofew places that members
can really get to know eachother across the aisle.
(44:04):
One place is the House gym.
If you use the gym,there's very few other places.
And the party leadershiplikes it that way.
They want it to be that way.
They don't want you to get to know memberson the other side of the aisle because
they are the enemy.
And if you start liking them too much,maybe.
(44:26):
Maybe you might not followthe party leader all the time.
>> Bill Whalen (44:29):
We only have about 10 minutes left, Brandice, but
we haven't talked much aboutthe Senate in this conversation.
And here is a very distinguished chamber,
supposed to be very different fromthe House, not be as populist, as kind of
angry as the House because kind of pulse,refined, dignified, just conversations.
And what have they done?
They've changed the ruleson how they vote on judges.
There's been talk aboutchanging the filibuster rule.
(44:50):
They, too, are kind of in a bad way,it seems to me.
So have you guys given thoughtabout how to fix the Senate, or
does the Senate not be fixing.
We need to focus on the House first.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (44:59):
I think we wanted to focus on the House first.
Our report is, the people onthe task force, they're primarily,
particularly the practitioners,the former members, the former staffers.
We looked at peoplewho'd been on the House,
although I think some staffers hadbeen in both the House and Senate.
That's not to say that nothingcould be fixed in the Senate, but
(45:22):
we think that,as Dan said earlier in the podcast,
a lot of the major legislation that's comethrough is now coming through the Senate.
It wasn't always that way, that even ifthere was some imbalance, there were some
legislative bills that were really coming,many in fact, from the House.
So we thought it was the right placeto start, so that could be a follow up.
>> Daniel Lipinski (45:46):
As a House member and before that, as a political scientist who
studied Congress, I always used to say Idon't really understand how the Senate
actually gets anything done becausethey don't have that many rules.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (45:58):
[LAUGH] >> Daniel Lipinski
cooperation.
Why we're trying to reform House rules isthere's a lot of rules in the House and
rules have been rigged in a certain way.
I'm really concerned about the Senate,though,
because as I mentioned earlier, there'sa lot of the dealmakers, Mitt Romney,
Kristin Sinema, Joe Manchin are leaving.
(46:24):
I'm very hopeful Rick Scott doesnot become the majority leader in
the Senate because I think Rick Scottwould be someone who is going to really,
even though he was not in the House,
he's someone who would like torun things like the House is run.
He'd like to have the powerof the speaker and
(46:45):
do whatever President Trumpwants him to do.
I'm hopeful that the senators,because they all just say senators,
all think very highly of themselves.
I hope they continue to say,look, I'm a senator and
I want to maintain my,you know, independence.
(47:07):
When I want to be independent,no one can tell me what, what to do.
And so that's why the Senate hasbeen able to still work things out.
Being reelected everysix years helps a lot.
That's what I was going to say.
>> Daniel Lipinski (47:21):
That makes a big, big, big difference.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (47:23):
Two thirds of them won't be up for
reelection until Trump'sleaving officer after.
So their ability to say->> Daniel Lipinski: I'm hoping they're-.
[LAUGH] Say, you do it fine, be angry at me to Trump.
>> Bill Whalen (47:34):
Another sign for the Senate is Tickets.
In the 2016 presidential election,not a single state in America voted for
a different party for their senatorthan their presidential candidate.
But what did we see last week in America?
Arizona went in different directions.
Nevada went in different directions.
Wisconsin went in different directions.
Michigan went in different directions.
I'm not advocating one part orthe other, but
(47:56):
you are seeing voters offeringa bit of a balance out there.
So maybe that.
Maybe that'll help things moving forward.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (48:01):
Yeah, I think that's one of the big questions of
the elections.
Obviously, when you have a few examples,you can try to explain it
through idiosyncratic factors andindividual races.
But I agree with you,it starts to seem like a pattern.
And I think the House, we're stillfinding final results of the final races,
(48:21):
thanks in part to California's brilliantprocedure [LAUGH] where we have 30
days until after the election to finalizethe vote by mail and other results.
But I think that the ticket splittingis a signal to senators and
to members that the Presidentmay not carry them,
(48:45):
and so they can't count on that.
>> Bill Whalen (48:49):
Okay, we have about five minutes to go.
So tell me this, you have a wonderfulreport, chock full of great ideas for
improving the House,how are you gonna make it happen?
Are you looking for that one suicidalidiot who's gonna propose a bill and
take it forward in the House?
That, to me, sounds like marchinginto no man's land in World War I.
But on a serious front,how would you actually put this into play?
Would you approach the speaker with this?
(49:11):
Would you ask formaybe a task force going proven House?
How would you turn this into a law?
>> Daniel Lipinski (49:15):
You need a few members, and because the-
>> Bill Whalen (49:19):
And let me correct that,
because we're talking about changingrules of the House, not laws.
>> Daniel Lipinski (49:23):
You need a few members who say, look,
I do not want to just follow the speaker.
Two years ago, we saw what happened.
There were Republicans whodifferent situation, but
with Kevin McCarthy strugglingto get the votes to be speaker,
members went up to him and said, I willvote for you if you change this rule,
(49:47):
change that rule andthey got some of the rules changed.
>> Bill Whalen (49:50):
And it's worth that, it's called extortion.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (49:52):
[LAUGH] >> Daniel Lipinski
called in politics.
>> Bill Whalen (49:55):
Yes. >> Brandice Canes-Wrone
Leverage. >> Brandice Canes-Wrone
every day.
>> Daniel Lipinski (50:02):
And there were members two years ago, Republican members two
years ago, who said,we wanna open the process up more, okay?
I would think that this time, andsome of those are Freedom Caucus members.
So waiting to see what they say.
Now, it may be different,because they have President Trump.
It may be the moderateHouse Republican members who say,
(50:24):
look, wait a minute,I want to have a voice here.
I don't want just to have tobe on the Trump train and
not have a say in legislation andjust speaker.
President goes to speaker,speaker goes to members, say,
this is what we need to vote for.
There are some of the Republicanswho are gonna say, hey,
(50:47):
I just squeaked through an election,I wanna have a voice.
And so the way to guarantee that I have avoice is to change up some of these rules.
And this only takes a small number,
cuz that Republican majority inthe House is gonna be very, very small.
And if Trump takes more membersout to put in his administration,
(51:08):
it'll be even smaller.
>> Bill Whalen (51:10):
Bradis.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (51:10):
Well, I'd agree with what Dan said.
It seems likely that in this Congress,
it'll be the moderate Republicanswho are likely to push it.
I would go further.
I don't think we could convinceSpeaker Johnson, so I'm not delusional.
But the current system that they've beenoperating has not worked out well for
recent Republican speakers, right?
(51:31):
We've had two speaker changesmid session in recent years.
So if you concentrate all power in oneperson or in a small, a leadership team,
the incentives, what people can do isthey can topple that leadership team.
So again, not delusional, it's gonnahave to come from the moderates.
But it's not clear to me that the leadersare seeing clearly what their own
(51:55):
long term incentives are.
>> Daniel Lipinski (51:57):
I completely agree.
And when all of the expectation is onthe speaker to get things done, and
if they're looking the speaker to makesure all the agenda gets completed and
a couple of members say, no, then allowthe Republican conference is gonna say,
wait a minute, we told the speaker.
(52:17):
We gave the speakerthe power to get this done.
He's not getting it done,we're getting rid of them.
And so I think most speakers andMike Johnson have to look a little deeper.
But it makes sense that maybe he wants tosay, hey, I'm not gonna be responsible for
getting everything done here,cuz it's gonna be really hard.
Look what happened to Kevin McCarthy,I don't want that to happen to me.
>> Bill Whalen (52:39):
Okay, politics being politics,
you can't always get what you want.
What is the one item in this reportthat you would like to get, Brandice?
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (52:47):
Well, now I'm gonna revert to being an academic,
because I do think it'sthe least likely item.
But you asked what do I want,not what do I think is likely, and
I'd have a different answer.
Our most original and creative proposal isthe one about guaranteed regular order,
which would allow each committeethat went through a regular process
(53:08):
one bill each year thatcould get voted on.
But I don't think it would be the mostinnovative and in that sense,
perhaps it's the least likely.
>> Daniel Lipinski (53:18):
So I would concur.
So then since that's been chosen already,I'd say the ten and ten, ten Democrats,
ten Republicans offer an amendmentthat's guaranteed a floor vote.
I think members would wake up to say, hey,
this is a real opportunityto have an impact here.
And so I gotta start getting to knowsome members across the aisle and
(53:42):
working with them.
And I think that could really starta significant change in the two sides,
at least some members onthe two sides working together.
So that's what I would like to see.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone (53:58):
Brandice Canes-Wrone, Congressman Lipinski,
congratulations on a terrific report.
I hope you go to Washington andget to testify.
Or better yet, let's bringWashington out here to Stanford and
have them testify here.
Great.>> Daniel Lipinski: Thank you.
Thanks, Phil.
>> Bill Whalen (54:10):
You've been listening to Matters of Policy and Politics,
a Hoover Institution podcastdevoted to governance and
balance of power here in America andaround the globe.
If you've been enjoying this podcast,please don't forget to rate, review and
say a few kind words about us.
Also, if you wouldn't mind,spread the word.
Have your friends take a look at us.
The Hoover Institution has Facebook,Instagram, and X feeds.
Go to the Hoover Institution's website,hoover.org and
(54:31):
check out all the greatwork that RAI is doing.
Also, you should sign up forHoover's Daily Report,
which keeps you updated on what Candiceand Congressman Lipinski are up to.
That's sent to your email weekdaysby the Hoover Institution.
I'm Bill Whalen.
We'll be back soon with a new installmenton Matters of Policy and Politics.
Till then, take care.
Thanks for watching.
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