Download or read book Hijacking the Agenda written by Christopher Witko and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are the economic interests and priorities of lower- and middle-class Americans so often ignored by the U.S. Congress, while the economic interests of the wealthiest are prioritized, often resulting in policies favorable to their interests? In Hijacking the Agenda, political scientists Christopher Witko, Jana Morgan, Nathan J. Kelly, and Peter K. Enns examine why Congress privileges the concerns of businesses and the wealthy over those of average Americans. They go beyond demonstrating that such economic bias exists to illuminate precisely how and why economic policy is so often skewed in favor of the rich. The authors analyze over 20 years of floor speeches by several hundred members of Congress to examine the influence of campaign contributions on how the national economic agenda is set in Congress. They find that legislators who received more money from business and professional associations were more likely to discuss the deficit and other upper-class priorities, while those who received more money from unions were more likely to discuss issues important to lower- and middle-class constituents, such as economic inequality and wages. This attention imbalance matters because issues discussed in Congress receive more direct legislative action, such as bill introductions and committee hearings. While unions use campaign contributions to push back against wealthy interests, spending by the wealthy dwarfs that of unions. The authors use case studies analyzing financial regulation and the minimum wage to demonstrate how the financial influence of the wealthy enables them to advance their economic agenda. In each case, the authors examine the balance of structural power, or the power that comes from a person or company’s position in the economy, and kinetic power, the power that comes from the ability to mobilize organizational and financial resources in the policy process. The authors show how big business uses its structural power and resources to effect policy change in Congress, as when the financial industry sought deregulation in the late 1990s, resulting in the passage of a bill eviscerating New Deal financial regulations. Likewise, when business interests want to preserve the policy status quo, it uses its power to keep issues off of the agenda, as when inflation eats into the minimum wage and its declining purchasing power leaves low-wage workers in poverty. Although groups representing lower- and middle-class interests, particularly unions, can use their resources to shape policy responses if conditions are right, they lack structural power and suffer significant resource disadvantages. As a result, wealthy interests have the upper hand in shaping the policy process, simply due to their pivotal position in the economy and the resulting perception that policies beneficial to business are beneficial for everyone. Hijacking the Agenda is an illuminating account of the way economic power operates through the congressional agenda and policy process to privilege the interests of the wealthy and marks a major step forward in our understanding of the politics of inequality.

Download or read book Congressional Record written by United States. Congress and published by . This book was released on 1919 with total page 1084 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Working Agenda for the New Congress written by and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book How Our Laws are Made written by John V. Sullivan and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Setting the Agenda written by Gary W. Cox and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-09-26 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demonstrates that the majority party seizes agenda control at nearly every stage of the legislative process.

Download or read book Cultural Conservatism written by and published by Institute for Cultural Conse ND Education Foundation. This book was released on 1987 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Agenda written by Ian Millhiser and published by . This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 2011, when Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives, until the present, Congress enacted hardly any major legislation outside of the tax law President Trump signed in 2017. In the same period, the Supreme Court dismantled much of America's campaign finance law, severely weakened the Voting Rights Act, permitted states to opt-out of the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion, weakened laws protecting against age discimination and sexual and racial harassment, and held that every state must permit same-sex couples to marry. This powerful unelected body, now controlled by six very conservative Republicans, has and will become the locus of policymaking in the United States. Ian Millhiser, Vox's Supreme Court correspondent, tells the story of what those six justices are likely to do with their power. It is true that the right to abortion is in its final days, as is affirmative action. But Millhiser shows that it is in the most arcane decisions that the Court will fundamentally reshape America, transforming it into something far less democratic, by attacking voting rights, dismantling and vetoing the federal administrative state, ignoring the separation of church and state, and putting corporations above the law. The Agenda exposes a radically altered Supreme Court whose powers extend far beyond transforming any individual right--its agenda is to shape the very nature of America's government, redefining who gets to have legal rights, who is beyond the reach of the law, and who chooses the people who make our laws.

Download or read book Agenda Setting in the U S Senate written by Chris Den Hartog and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-16 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proposes a new theory of Senate agenda setting that reconciles a divide in literature between the conventional wisdom – in which party power is thought to be mostly undermined by Senate procedures and norms – and the apparent partisan bias in Senate decisions noted in recent empirical studies. Chris Den Hartog and Nathan W. Monroe's theory revolves around a 'costly consideration' framework for thinking about agenda setting, where moving proposals forward through the legislative process is seen as requiring scarce resources. To establish that the majority party pays lower agenda consideration costs through various procedural advantages, the book features a number of chapters examining partisan influence at several stages of the legislative process, including committee reports, filibusters and cloture, floor scheduling and floor amendments. Not only do the results support the book's theoretical assumption and key hypotheses, but they shed new light on virtually every major step in the Senate's legislative process.

Download or read book Presidential Agenda written by Roger T. Larocca and published by Parliaments & Legislatures. This book was released on 2019-01-07 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is well understood that the president is a powerful agenda-setting influence in Congress. But how exactly does the president, who lacks any formal power in early stages of the legislative process, influence the congressional agenda? In The Presidential Agenda, Roger T. Larocca argues that the president's agenda-setting influence arises from two informal powers: the ability to communicate directly to voters and the ability to control the expertise of the many executive agencies that advise Congress on policy. ​Larocca develops a theoretical model that explains how the president can raise the public salience of issues in his major addresses, long accepted as one of the president's strongest agenda-setting tools. He also develops a theoretical model that explains how control over executive agency expertise yields a more reliable and persistent influence on the congressional agenda than presidential addresses. The Presidential Agenda tests these theoretical models with an innovative empirical study of presidential agenda setting. Using data from all House and Senate Commerce Committee bills from 1979 to 2002, Larocca converts information about bills into information about policy issues and then traces the path of presidential influence through the committee and floor stages of legislative consideration.

Download or read book Agendas and Instability in American Politics written by Frank R. Baumgartner and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-03-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Agendas and Instability in American Politics appeared fifteen years ago, offering a profoundly original account of how policy issues rise and fall on the national agenda, the Journal of Politics predicted that it would “become a landmark study of public policy making and American politics.” That prediction proved true and, in this long-awaited second edition, Bryan Jones and Frank Baumgartner refine their influential argument and expand it to illuminate the workings of democracies beyond the United States. The authors retain all the substance of their contention that short-term, single-issue analyses cast public policy too narrowly as the result of cozy and dependable arrangements among politicians, interest groups, and the media. Jones and Baumgartner provide a different interpretation by taking the long view of several issues—including nuclear energy, urban affairs, smoking, and auto safety—to demonstrate that bursts of rapid, unpredictable policy change punctuate the patterns of stability more frequently associated with government. Featuring a new introduction and two additional chapters, this updated edition ensures that their findings will remain a touchstone of policy studies for many years to come.

Download or read book Reaching for a New Deal written by Theda Skocpol and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2011-06-24 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During his winning presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to counter rising economic inequality and revitalize America's middle-class through a series of wide-ranging reforms. His transformational agenda sought to ensure affordable healthcare; reform the nation's schools and make college more affordable; promote clean and renewable energy; reform labor laws and immigration; and redistribute the tax burden from the middle class to wealthier citizens. The Wall Street crisis and economic downturn that erupted as Obama took office also put U.S. financial regulation on the agenda. By the middle of President Obama's first term in office, he had succeeded in advancing major reforms by legislative and administrative means. But a sluggish economic recovery from the deep recession of 2009, accompanied by polarized politics and governmental deadlock in Washington, DC, have raised questions about how far Obama's promised transformations can go. Reaching for a New Deal analyzes both the ambitious domestic policy of Obama's first two years and the consequent political backlash—up to and including the 2010 midterm elections. Reaching for a New Deal opens by assessing how the Obama administration overcame intense partisan struggles to achieve legislative victories in three areas—health care reform, federal higher education loans and grants, and financial regulation. Lawrence Jacobs and Theda Skocpol examine the landmark health care bill, signed into law in spring 2010, which extended affordable health benefits to millions of uninsured Americans after nearly 100 years of failed legislative attempts to do so. Suzanne Mettler explains how Obama succeeded in reorienting higher education policy by shifting loan administration from lenders to the federal government and extending generous tax tuition credits. Reaching for a New Deal also examines the domains in which Obama has used administrative action to further reforms in schools and labor law. The book concludes with examinations of three areas—energy, immigration, and taxes—where Obama's efforts at legislative compromises made little headway. Reaching for a New Deal combines probing analyses of Obama's domestic policy achievements with a big picture look at his change-oriented presidency. The book uses struggles over policy changes as a window into the larger dynamics of American politics and situates the current political era in relation to earlier pivotal junctures in U.S. government and public policy. It offers invaluable lessons about unfolding political transformations in the United States.

Download or read book Enactment of a Law written by United States. Congress. Senate and published by . This book was released on 1953 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Policy Dynamics written by Frank R. Baumgartner and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2002-06-15 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While governmental policies and institutions may remain more or less the same for years, they can also change suddenly and unpredictably in response to new political agendas and crises. What causes stability or change in the political system? What role do political institutions play in this process? To investigate these questions, Policy Dynamics draws on the most extensive data set yet compiled for public policy issues in the United States. Spanning the past half-century, these data make it possible to trace policies and legislation, public and media attention to them, and governmental decisions over time and across institutions. Some chapters analyze particular policy areas, such as health care, national security, and immigration, while others focus on institutional questions such as congressional procedures and agendas and the differing responses by Congress and the Supreme Court to new issues. Policy Dynamics presents a radical vision of how the federal government evolves in response to new challenges-and the research tools that others may use to critique or extend that vision.

Download or read book Legislative Effectiveness in the United States Congress written by Craig Volden and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-27 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores why some members of Congress are more effective than others at navigating the legislative process and what this means for how Congress is organized and what policies it produces. Craig Volden and Alan E. Wiseman develop a new metric of individual legislator effectiveness (the Legislative Effectiveness Score) that will be of interest to scholars, voters, and politicians alike. They use these scores to study party influence in Congress, the successes or failures of women and African Americans in Congress, policy gridlock, and the specific strategies that lawmakers employ to advance their agendas.

Download or read book Constitution written by United States and published by . This book was released on 1893 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Beyond Ideology written by Frances E. Lee and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-12-15 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The congressional agenda, Frances Lee contends, includes many issues about which liberals and conservatives generally agree. Even over these matters, though, Democratic and Republican senators tend to fight with each other. What explains this discord? Beyond Ideology argues that many partisan battles are rooted in competition for power rather than disagreement over the rightful role of government. The first book to systematically distinguish Senate disputes centering on ideological questions from the large proportion of them that do not, this volume foregrounds the role of power struggle in partisan conflict. Presidential leadership, for example, inherently polarizes legislators who can influence public opinion of the president and his party by how they handle his agenda. Senators also exploit good government measures and floor debate to embarrass opponents and burnish their own party’s image—even when the issues involved are broadly supported or low-stakes. Moreover, Lee contends, the congressional agenda itself amplifies conflict by increasingly focusing on issues that reliably differentiate the parties. With the new president pledging to stem the tide of partisan polarization, Beyond Ideology provides a timely taxonomy of exactly what stands in his way.

Download or read book Ideology and Congress written by Keith T. Poole and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2007 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Ideology and Congress, authors Poole and Rosenthal have analyzed over 13 million individual roll call votes spanning the two centuries since Congress began recording votes in 1789. By tracing the voting patterns of Congress throughout the country's history, the authors find that, despite a wide array of issues facing legislators, over 81 percent of their voting decisions can be attributed to a consistent ideological position ranging from ultraconservatism to ultraliberalism. In their classic 1997 volume, Congress: A Political Economic History of Roll Call Voting, roll call voting became the framework for a novel interpretation of important episodes in American political and economic history. Congress demonstrated that roll call voting has a very simple structure and that, for most of American history, roll call voting patterns have maintained a core stability based on two great issues: the extent of government regulation of, and intervention in, the economy; and race. In this new, paperback volume, the authors include nineteen years of additional data, bringing in the period from 1986 through 2004.