Brookings: Experts - Thomas E. Mann

Finding the Common Good in an Era of Dysfunctional Governance

Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:32:00 -0400

The framers designed a constitutional system in which the government would play a vigorous role in securing the liberty and well-being of a large and diverse population. They built a political system around a number of key elements, including debate and deliberation, divided powers competing with one another, regular order in the legislative process, and avenues to limit and punish corruption. America in recent years has struggled to adhere to each of these principles, leading to a crisis of governability and legitimacy. The roots of this problem are twofold. The first is a serious mismatch between our political parties, which have become as polarized and vehemently adversarial as parliamentary parties, and a separation-of-powers governing system that makes it extremely difficult for majorities to act. The second is the asymmetric character of the polarization. The Republican Party has become a radical insurgency—ideologically extreme, scornful of facts and compromise, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. Securing the common good in the face of these developments will require structural changes but also an informed and strategically focused citizenry.

Read the full essay at amacad.org » (PDF)

Editor's Note: The above is from the Spring 2013 issue of Daedalus (a journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences) co-edited by William A. Galston (Brookings) and Norman J. Ornstein (American Enterprise Institute), which contains essays on the topic of “American Democracy and the Common Good” by Galston, Brookings’ Thomas Mann, and a number of other noted scholars. The essays range from theoretical and historical inquiries to examinations of specific institutions in the public and private sectors and in civil society.

Authors

Thomas E. Mann
Norman J. Ornstein

Publication: Daedalus

Why Congress is Failing Us

Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:54:00 -0400

Editor’s Note: Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Thomas E. Mann is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. They are co-authors of “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism.” On April 26, 2013, Mann and Ornstein discussed why Congress is failing the American people in a Moyers & Company video interview:

Why Congress is Failing Us from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Veteran Congress-watchers Thomas Mann and Norman J. Ornstein spoke with Bill Moyers about the Senate’s failure to make progress on gun control in April despite 90% of the American public supporting background checks. Though leadership is contextual and there have been historically dysfunctional legislatures, today’s extreme political polarization is unique and the American people are those affected the most by partisan polarization.

In the interview, Thomas Mann explains that "sadly, divided party government, which we have because of the Republican House, in a time of extreme partisan polarization, is a formula for inaction and absolutist opposition politics, not for problem solving. It wasn’t that long ago when you could actually get something done under divided government.”

How do Mann and Ornstein reply when Bill Moyers asks who wins and who loses when we have this deadlock and dysfunction?

Norman J. Ornstein: Well first of all the public and future generations really do lose. We have real problems, short and long term, in the country…

Thomas Mann: …We’ve been living through, now, years of stagnant wages, of high unemployment, of growing economic inequality. So the work of our legislature, our government, makes a big difference. And right now those issues are not being addressed in any substantial way because of the dysfunctional politics and because the Republican party has drifted so far from the mainstream of our politics.

Watch the full video on billmoyers.com »

Authors

Thomas E. Mann
Norman J. Ornstein

Publication: Moyers & Company

Image Source: © Larry Downing / Reuters

China-Taiwan-United States Relations

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 09:00:00 -0400

Event Information

April 23, 2013
9:00 AM - 3:00 PM EDT

Conference Room B-1
Center for Strategic and International Studies
1800 K Street, NW
Washington, DC

Register for the Event
China and Taiwan have improved both the tone and substance of their relationship over the past five years, especially on bilateral economic issues. But these advances have not been matched by progress on more difficult political or multilateral issues, and some observers believe that the improvement of cross-Strait relations will lose momentum as these more sensitive issues come up for discussion. The respective political calendars in China and Taiwan may further complicate matters.

On April 23, the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at Brookings and the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies hosted a public seminar featuring senior experts from the United States, China and Taiwan. Panelists analyzed the domestic forces influencing cross-Strait relations; prospects for developments in the political, security and regional economic arenas; and possible roles for the United States. Raymond Burghardt, chairman of the board of the American Institute in Taiwan, delivered a keynote address.

Watch video from the event at csis.org »

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20130423_china_taiwan_us_transcript

Gridlock is No Way to Govern

Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 09:47:00 -0400

Editor’s Note: Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Thomas E. Mann is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. They are co-authors of “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism.”

Larry Summers is a brilliant, award-winning economist. Monday, in his monthly op-ed column for The Post, he opined about politics and history [“Sometimes, gridlock is good for America,” April 15]. Our advice, as political scientists, is that Summers should stick to economics.

Summers painted a rosy scenario, saying that the frustration people feel at the slowness and gridlock of recent years is misplaced — that things were just as bad, if not worse, in the early 1960s; that the failures to enact health-care and welfare reform in the Nixon years were a good thing; and that more gridlock, not less, would have been helpful during the George W. Bush years. Summers also lauded the economic policies that have enabled the United States to avoid the double- or triple-dip recessions that have hit Europe, as well as passage of the Affordable Care Act and financial regulation, and advances in energy and the widespread acceptance of same-sex marriage.

We were left wondering what political system Summers has been living in the past several years. This level of partisan polarization, veering from ideological differences into tribalism, has not been seen in more than a century. The U.S. system has always moved slowly, but in times past major advances were achieved with some level of cooperation or restraint, if not consensus, between the parties. No more.

The progress on energy and the shift in public opinion on same-sex marriage have occurred with little or no relationship to Washington’s political pathologies. The policy triumphs that Summers trumpeted — stabilization and economic stimulus, health reform, financial regulation — were all achieved in the first two years of the Obama administration over the united, vociferous opposition of Republicans in Congress. The stimulus package passed in early 2009 was a major step to avert depression but was watered down and diverted into unproductive uses because of House Republicans’ strategic unwillingness to cooperate and the need to accommodate senators of both parties to get the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster — one of countless episodes in the past five years when the filibuster has been used in unprecedented ways.

The Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank reforms were enacted despite GOP obduracy and promiscuous use of the filibuster, in part because Democrats for a short time had 60 votes in the Senate and kept their members together. But the quality of both laws was diminished by the unwillingness of members of the minority to vote for the final product on the floor after many concessions they requested had been agreed to during committee markups. More important, passing laws in this fashion left nearly half the polity viewing the legislation as illegitimate. Efforts followed to demonize and hamstring the laws as they moved toward implementation — including the unprecedented blockage for years of highly qualified nominees to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

It is true that politicians of both parties came together in the fall of 2008 to save the financial system and economy from utter disaster — but only after House Republicans blocked the initial bailout plan and were chastened by a sharp drop in the stock market. That was followed in 2011 by congressional Republicans’ reprehensible use of the federal debt limit as a hostage, resulting in the first-ever downgrade in the United States’ credit rating. We are not confident that the result would be the same if there were an equally urgent need for action today to save the global economy.

To be sure, the United States has done better than Europe. But years after the initial crisis, and in significant part because of the shortcomings of our political system, we are still sputtering, having missed multiple opportunities to emerge from the financial crisis in a far better way.

Finally, Summers’s idea that climate change and inequality are issues not of gridlock but of vision forgets the fact that serious debates about policy avenues in these areas are impossible if half the political arena believes that climate change is a hoax, and if one political party is animated by the Grover Norquist no-tax pledge and the Mitt Romney vision of a nation of 53 percent makers and 47 percent takers.

Yes, there are signs of progress in our political system. The universe of problem-solvers in the Senate has increased since the 2012 elections. But the broader pathologies in our politics remain. For all the problems that existed in previous decades, in a system designed not to act with dispatch, there was a strong political center, with responsible bipartisan leadership. The same cannot be said today.

Authors

Thomas E. Mann
Norman J. Ornstein

Publication: The Washington Post

Image Source: © Jason Reed / Reuters

Countering Corruption: 2012 Conference Report from the World Forum on Governance

Stephen M. Davis, Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Reformers, businesspeople, investors and citizens alike are grappling with a common issue around the world: Good governance. How can each nation secure government that is honest and not corrupt, that serves the public interest and not special interests, and that aims to deliver practical solutions to today’s most pressing problems? How can corporations and institutional investors achieve good governance of their own, that protects and promotes long term value while complying with legal norms, ethical standards and customer expectations? What is the relationship between good corporate and democratic governance? Indeed, is either possible without the other?

In December 2012, Brookings convened the second World Forum on Governance, which has unique capacity to join thought leaders from the public and private sectors together. The objective was to identify means to leverage the collective power of capital, media, public policy and social organization behind the movement against global corruption.

Conference participants included a rich mix of leaders, experts and grassroots innovators from Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, North America, the corporate and investment worlds, traditional and new media and faith-based organizations. Delegates revisited the Ten Principles outlined in the Prague Declaration, which was formulated during the 2011 World Forum on Governance, reviewed reports on initiatives raised at the 2011 meeting, and discussed next steps to address governance and integrity.

Most importantly, breakout sessions trained attention on four policy action areas critical to the fight against corruption:

Crafting effective law, regulation and enforcement within and across borders;
Strengthening the business and investment case for managing corruption risk;
Linking a wider group of civil society organizations, including faith groups, behind the push for integrity in the public and private sectors; and
Enhancing the capacity of traditional and social media to serve as watchdogs against corruption.

One plenary session concentrated debate on the experience of financial institutions; a second addressed how the strengths and weaknesses of democracy affect corruption. By the end of the 2012 WFG, conference organizers gained enough feedback and useful ideas from the participants to decide upon an agenda of next steps. These policy action ideas are clustered around five themes. Organizers can steer follow-up on each to specific conference participants or relevant organizations; other actions can be taken forward by the Brookings Institution.

Establishing a framework for an investor road show, to bring the voice of capital directly to political leaders on the business value of fighting corruption.
Encouraging greater collaboration among policymakers around the world to incubate legislative and policy action to improve anti-corruption efforts.
Increasing the capacity for the media to report on and be educated about corruption and increasing accountability for media companies themselves.
Engaging with the faith community to identify a role for this critical voice in the fight against corruption.
Raising the profile of firms considered leaders in the field for business integrity, transparency, and corporate governance.

Download and read the full conference report » (PDF)

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Norman J. Ornstein

As 'Devastating' as Sequester is, not 'Immediate Catastrophe'

Thomas E. Mann — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Editor's Note: In an interview with NPR Host Rachel Martin, Thomas Mann speaks about the economic and political impact of sequestration. He is the co-author of a book about political gridlock, called It's Even Worse Than It Looks.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: So, the satirical news site the Onion ran a headline this past week, and it read as follows: Obama, Congress must reach deal on budget by March 1st, and then April 1st and then April 20th and then April 28th and then May 1st and then twice a week for the next four years. Now, the Onion headline is fake, yes, those deadlines are not real, but it can be hard to tell, considering the current political climate in Washington.

Thomas Mann has followed Congress for a long time. He's a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution here in Washington, and he says the careening from fiscal crisis to fiscal crisis has taken a toll.

THOMAS MANN: It's really quite devastating. We've come through the worst financial economic crisis since the Great Depression in reasonably good shape. But in the course of setting up these artificial crises and insisting on immediate cuts, we've actually slowed the rate of growth. We've made job creation all the more difficult and, in general, embarrassed ourselves in front of the rest of the world.

MARTIN: Interesting though, Wall Street seems to have adapted to this "new normal." quote, unquote. But is this a good thing that Wall Street has adapted, or not a good thing?

MANN: That's a good question. Wall Street and, frankly, the bond market are responding to the fundamentals of our economy and the U.S. relative to the rest of the world. More immediately, the sequester itself is not seen as capable of disrupting the macroeconomy. The damage it does is uneven across the country and to individual Americans. It will roll out slowly over time and it will hurt us on the longer-term quest to make the kind of investments and changes we need to thrive over the long haul. But it's just not an immediate catastrophe for the overall economy.

Listen to the full interview at npr.org »

Authors

Thomas E. Mann

Publication: NPR

Five Myths About the Sequester

Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 13:42:00 -0500

Editor's Note: Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein are authors of It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism.

Our political system was not designed to be efficient, but it wasn't supposed to be self-destructive, either. After a near-default on the public debt and a fiscal cliff that threatened a new recession, we are facing another man-made crisis: the sequester, across-the-board cuts in discretionary domestic and defense spending that are set to begin Friday and extend over a decade. Let's separate fact from fiction about the sequester and its impact.

1. Blame Obama — the sequester was his White House's idea.

Identifying the origins of the sequester has become a major Washington fight. Bob Woodward weighed in recently with a Washington Post op-ed making the case that the idea began in the White House. He’s right in a narrow sense, mainly because he focuses on the middle of the 2011 negotiations between Obama and Republican lawmakers. If you look before and after, a different picture emerges.

In our view, what happened is quite straightforward: In 2011, House Republican leaders used their new majority to force their priorities on the Democratically controlled Senate and the president by holding the debt limit hostage to demands for deep and immediate spending cuts. After negotiations between Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner failed (Eric Cantor recently took credit for scuttling a deal), the parties at the eleventh hour settled on a two-part solution: immediate discretionary spending caps that would result in cuts of almost $1 trillion over 10 years; and the creation of a "supercommittee" tasked with reducing the 2012-2021 deficit by another $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion. If the supercommittee didn't broker a deal, automatic spending cuts of $1.2 trillion over the next decade—the sequester—would go into effect. The sequester was designed to be so potentially destructive that the supercommittee would surely reach a deal to avert it.

The sequester's origins can't be blamed on one person—or one party. Republicans insisted on a trigger for automatic cuts; Jack Lew, then the White House budget director, suggested the specifics, modeled after a sequester-like mechanism Congress used in the 1980s, but with automatic tax increases added. Republicans rejected the latter but, at the time, took credit for the rest. Obama took the deal to get a debt-ceiling increase. But the president never accepted the prospect that the sequester would occur, nor did he ever agree to take tax increases off the table.

2. At least the automatic cuts will reduce runaway spending and begin to control the deficit.

What runaway spending? The $787 billion stimulus was a one-time expenditure that has come and gone. Under current law not including the sequester, non-defense discretionary spending as a share of the economy will shrink to a level not seen in 50 years. Defense spending grew substantially over the past decade, but that pattern has slowed and will soon end. Additional reductions must be achieved intelligently, tied to legitimate national security needs.

Across-the-board cuts can have perverse effects on deficits; as services are cut, the fees users pay for those services are lost. For example, sequester-driven furloughs of air-traffic controllers will lead to the number of flights being reduced.

The annual budget deficit is projected to fall by almost 50 percent in 2013 compared with the height of the recession. Reducing the deficit over the long term requires going where the money is—boosting economic growth, controlling health-care costs and increasing revenue to handle the expense of an aging population. Deeper discretionary-spending cuts are counterproductive; immediate cuts, as Europe has made recently, could lead to a recession and bigger deficits.

3. The amounts are so small, they won’t hurt much.

The size of the automatic cuts this fiscal year, $85 billion, looks trivial compared with our $3.7 trillion federal budget. As Post columnist George F. Will has written: "Head for the storm cellar—spending will be cut 2.3 percent! Or: Washington chain-saw massacre—we must scrape by on 97.7 percent of current spending!"

It seems like 2.3 percent of savings can be found without inflicting harm. But that 2.3 percent is applied to only a small part of the budget. And seven months, not 12, remain in this fiscal year to make the cuts. With little discretion about trimming areas such as aviation and food safety, layoffs and furloughs will interrupt services vital to the economy and public health. As disruptive as the first year of the sequester would be, imagine what a decade of automatic cuts would produce.

4. The cuts are so large, they will be catastrophic.

The administration has released state-by-state estimates of the sequester and highlighted the cutbacks most likely to harm or inconvenience the public. The reality is not so immediate or dramatic. The damage will accumulate in less visible ways, as irrational reductions in public spending impede economic growth and job creation; reduce investments in education, infrastructure and scientific research; and further disrupt the routines of a modern democracy. The longer the sequester remains in place, the more harm is inflicted.

5. This fight is all about money.

Those who relish using a sequester—some House Republicans, along with a gaggle of radio talk-show hosts, editorial writers and cable television commentators—say this is one small step toward reducing U.S. deficits and debt. But if the goal were really debt reduction, it would be easy to get a bipartisan deal that would lower the debt enough to meet the original target set by the Simpson-Bowles fiscal commission, with roughly a third coming from revenue. The insistence on deep discretionary-spending reductions while calling for even deeper tax cuts shows that the sequester is not about money but about taking a meat ax to government as we know it.

The tactics to achieve that goal—from the sequester to the threat to shut down the government in late March to the next confrontation over the debt limit—have made basic governance a huge challenge for the executives managing programs and agencies, nearly all of whom lack a clear sense of how much money they will have from one day to the next. Planning, recruiting personnel and drafting long-term contracts have become impossible in areas from cybersecurity to embassy security to medical research to homeland security, damaging not industries rife with waste, fraud and abuse but critical services. If only it were all about money!

Authors

Thomas E. Mann
Norman J. Ornstein

Publication: The Washington Post

Image Source: © Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

What to Expect in Obama's State of the Union Address

Thomas E. Mann — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 14:36:00 -0500

We have been struggling through an exceptionally difficult and troubling period in American public life, with an economy still performing well below its potential and a polarized political system producing dysfunctional governance. Might President Obama’s State of the Union speech this coming Tuesday, building on his more decisive than expected re-election victory and well-received inaugural address, consolidate his elevated political standing and provide a map to a more cooperative and productive policymaking process?

That is too much to expect. SOTU speeches seldom strengthen a president’s hand, alter the incentives of the opposition party to cooperate or oppose, or increase his prospects for policy success. But they can and this year will shed light on how he proposes to capitalize on his reelection and where he intends to invest most of his energy.

Obama still faces a very conservative Republican majority in the House and a Senate prone to holds and filibusters. Differences between the parties on taxes and spending have not narrowed and solutions to the self-inflicted crises surrounding sequestration, the expiration of the CR, and the debt ceiling are nowhere in sight. The best bet is that the months ahead will be as contentious and ugly as the entire 112th Congress.

Yet the election has altered the political dynamic and Republicans are well aware that their strategy of unremitting opposition to Obama as a route back to power has failed. They are at serious risk of becoming a minority party in presidential elections. Dissident voices are beginning to be heard among Senate and House Republicans and issues that once seemed hopeless are now under serious consideration.

The State of the Union speech will give us a better sense of how the President intends to deal with the continuing constraints and new opportunities. That alone makes it well worth the watch.

Authors

Thomas E. Mann

Image Source: © Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Brookings Expert Roundtable on President Obama’s State of the Union Priorities

Sarah A. Binder, William A. Galston, Ron Haskins and Thomas E. Mann — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 13:30:00 -0500

President Obama will use the first State of the Union address of his second term on February 12 to present his agenda for the year ahead, the issues he wants address and the battles he hopes to win. In a roundtable discussion, Brookings experts Tom Mann, Sarah Binder, Bill Galston and Ron Haskins preview the hot-button issues the president is likely to cover in his speech. The nation’s economy and the debt crisis top their list, and they offer insights about how the still-pervasive partisanship on Capitol Hill could stand between the White House and its goals.

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Five Myths about the 112th Congress

Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

When we set out to write a book about the growing extremism in American politics about 18 months ago, we thought that the 112th Congress was the worst we had seen in our four decades in Washington. However, the fight over the debt limit, the fiscal cliff and the farm bill — and the shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration — convinced us it has been the worst Congress ever. Despite its dysfunction, there are also widespread misconceptions about the 112th Congress and what lies ahead. Let’s correct a few of them.

1. The 112th Congress was as bad as the 80th “do-nothing” Congress during the Truman era.

The comparison is completely unfair — to the 80th Congress. Harry Truman’s improbable comeback to win the 1948 presidential election was fueled by his relentless campaign against the “do-nothing” Republican Congress of 1947-48. That Congress had many parallels with the 112th — it pitted a hostile, conservative Republican House against an activist, liberal president.

But the 80th Congress was unfairly stuck with the “do nothing” label. It enacted a respectable 906 laws, including the Marshall Plan, one of the most consequential initiatives of the 20th century. It created the Defense Department and the National Security Council as part of a sweeping reorganization of our national security apparatus.

In contrast, the 112th Congress enacted the smallest number of laws in modern history, fewer than 250 (some are still awaiting presidential action). At least 40 of those were trivial acts such as post office namings or commemorative resolutions. What was the 112th’s equivalent of the Marshall Plan? The debt-limit debacle, which led to the first-ever downgrade of the nation’s credit rating.

2. President Obama wasn’t adept at working with Congress.

Robert Caro’s latest volume about Lyndon B. Johnson prompted much talk about the good old days when presidents plied members of Congress with food and drink, and twisted arms to achieve national goals. And Bob Woodward’s latest bestseller found Obama lacking in his high-stakes negotiations in 2011 to reach a “grand bargain” with House Speaker John A. Boehner on the debt ceiling. Throughout and after the fiscal cliff negotiations, commentators bemoaned a lack of presidential leadership in speaking honestly to the public about our fiscal imbalance and presenting a plan for controlling entitlements and raising revenue. This is nonsense.

Leadership is contextual. LBJ, thrust into today’s congressional environment, would be bewildered and frustrated; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is no Everett Dirksen, and Boehner is no Gerald Ford. Throughout his first term, Obama faced uncompromising opposition. Bold public pronouncements and sweet private talk had no chance of winning GOP votes in 2011 and 2012. Republicans acted like radical insurgents determined to make the president a one-termer.

3. Boehner was the big loser.

A constant refrain throughout the 112th Congress was that Boehner was a weak speaker. His 2010 warning to his party colleagues against using the debt limit to force spending cuts went unheeded. Backbenchers routinely objected to leadership compromises and denied the speaker a majority on the House floor — most recently on his “Plan B” legislation during the fiscal cliff negotiations. His leadership team was more of a threat than a source of support.

But Boehner’s problem was a lack of followership, not leadership. His party conference was filled with zealots who had an animus toward Obama. Many of his colleagues were far more worried about primary challenges from the right than about pressure from their leaders in Congress. Under these conditions, Boehner’s success in getting the Senate’s fiscal cliff deal to the House floor for an up-or-down vote, in spite of the opposition of a majority of Republicans,was an example of effective leadership in the face of severe adversity.

4. Debt-limit debacles will become business as usual in Congress.

From 1960 to August 2011, Congress voted 78 times to increase the debt limit, 49 times under Republican presidents and 29 times under Democratic presidents. Political gamesmanship was routine: Many lawmakers not of the president’s party would oppose increasing the debt limit, claiming fealty to fiscal discipline; partisans of the president would vote aye, noting a responsibility to govern and protect the full faith and credit of the United States.

Many of the votes were close and done at the eleventh hour. But as we have noted, the leaders of both parties always knew that they would find the votes to keep the United States from default. The 2011 faceoff was the first time the minority party used the debt limit as a hostage.

In two months, Republicans will try to do it again. But this time should be different. First, the president has made clear that he will not play this game. Second, the business and financial communities, largely absent from the 2011 debate, are speaking up about their opposition to routine threats not to raise the debt limit. Third, the public is more aware of the negative consequences of gambling with America’s credit.

So even if early March is gut-wrenching, it does not mean that Congress will again take the country to the precipice. Even most of the willing hostage-takers are not that reckless.

5. The 113th Congress will be as unproductive as the 112th.

There was not much in the 2012 elections to suggest that the deep pathologies in the American political system have been ameliorated. Republicans retained their majority in the House, and the conference moved further to the right. Moreover, the GOP demand for major spending cuts — with the sequestration, continuing spending resolution and debt-limit deadlines looming in the next two months — suggests that this will be another contentious “do-nothing” Congress.

But there are reasons to believe otherwise. Electoral prospects for Republicans have dimmed considerably, removing some of the incentives for opposing the president. The election brought a startling opening for a comprehensive immigration bill. New natural gas reserves provide an opportunity to craft a bipartisan approach to energy production and conservation. Gun-control legislation is suddenly more feasible. One more round of spending cuts and revenue increases totaling about $1 trillion over the next decade, with tax reform a major source of the latter, would at least stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio for the medium term and free policymakers to focus on economic growth, and health-care delivery and financing reforms.

Not all of these things are likely to happen. But if even a few do, it would mean a productive record for the 113th Congress compared with its dismal predecessor.

Authors

Thomas E. Mann
Norman J. Ornstein

Publication: The Washington Post

Election 2012 Data: The Impact on the House

Thomas E. Mann, Korin Davis, Raffaela Wakeman and Elana Firsht — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 10:10:00 -0500

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Thomas E. Mann
Korin Davis
Raffaela Wakeman
Elana Firsht

First Step in Ending D.C. Dysfunction

Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 12:31:00 -0500

After the sound and the fury, the public disdain for government — particularly for Congress — the high stakes and looming fiscal disaster and $6 billion, we end up where we began — with Barack Obama in the White House, Democrats with a modest majority in the Senate, and Republicans retaining control of the House.

It appears we are back to the same ingredients that produced the least productive and most destructive Congress in memory, whose public approval plummeted to historic lows. That reality is reinforced by House Speaker John Boehner’s claim of a mandate for House Republicans even as Obama won a sweeping electoral victory for a second term.

But appearances can be deceiving. In this case, they are.

The Republican approach for Obama’s first term was simple — use every available tool of obstruction to hamper and delegitimize his presidency. They opposed anything and everything he proposed, even policies they had recently embraced. The GOP used the filibuster to defeat, obstruct or discredit his every initiative. They took the debt ceiling hostage after their 2010 election victory, which lowered America’s credit rating and slowed the economic recovery, and gave us the “fiscal cliff.” They killed every serious effort in Congress to strengthen the economy, increase jobs and pass a balanced package of deficit reduction and debt stabilization.

Read the full piece at Reuters »

Authors

Thomas E. Mann
Norman J. Ornstein

Publication: Reuters

Post-Election Day Analysis – What Happened and What Comes Next?

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 10:00:00 -0500

Event Information

November 7, 2012
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EST

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

On November 7, the Campaign 2012 project at Brookings hosted a final forum analyzing the election’s outcomes and how these results could affect the policy agenda of the next administration and Congress. Panelists discussed the approach of the second Obama term, the political makeup of the new 113th Congress and the prospect for policy breakthroughs on key social, fiscal and foreign policy issues.

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