Restoring Confidence in Congress: Will the House Come to Order?

>> Bill Whalen: It's Tuesday, November 12, 2024. And welcome back to Matters of Policy and Politics, a Hoover Institution podcast devoted to governance and balance of power here in America and around the free world. I'm Bill Whalen, I'm the Hoover Institution's Virginia Hobbes Carpenter Distinguished Policy Fellow in Journalism. I'm not the only Hoover Fellow who podcasts.

If you don't believe me, go to our website, which is hoover.org click on the tab on the homepage that says Commentary, then scroll down to where it says Multimedia. And over on the right you'll see a list of audiobook podcast including this one. I proudly say this podcast has excellent guests today being no exception.

Joining me for the better part of the next hour are Brandice Canes-Wrone, and former Congressman Daniel Lipinski. About Brandice, Brandice Canes-Wrone is the Maurice R Greenberg Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor in the Political Science Department at Stanford University. She's also the founding director of Hoover's center for Revitalizing American Institutions, her current research focusing on elections, campaign finance, and populism.

Daniel Lipinski served 16 years in the United States House of Representatives, representing Illinois suburban Chicago 3rd congressional district. He's no ordinary former congressman. He also happens to be an academic. He has a doctorate in Political Science from Duke University. I think that's technically the Stanford of the south, as they call it.

He also is a distinguished, prolific writer when it comes to Congress and the legislative process, which explains his involvement both with Hoover and the center for RAI and why he is here today. Brandice, Dan, thanks for joining the podcast.

>> Daniel Lipinski: Good to be with you.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Thanks so much, Bill.

>> Bill Whalen: So for the purpose of brevity, let's don't say center for Revitalizing American Institutions over and over again. Let's try to keep it limited to RAI, not REI, but RAI. So just for our listeners should know that. What I wanna focus on today, though, is a report that RAI recently issued the title "Revitalizing the House: Bipartisan Recommendations on Rules and Processes".

Brandice, let's talk about the genesis of this report. First of all, how it ties into Hoover's vision for revitalizing, in this case, Congress and the Congressman. I want you to talk about a group in Bethesda, Maryland called the SunWater Institute, which is involved as well. So Brandice, take it away.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: So Dan approached me and he'll talk about the Sunwater Institute and the people there involved. We talked about this possibility that one of the reasons there's so little trust in Congress is the fact that it's not really working the way it's supposed to work, right? Congress is Article 1 in the Constitution.

It's supposed to be the center of our government. Over the past several decades, power has gradually shifted to the executive. For that to change, we have to assume that presidents, whoever they are, that's as independent of the party or the individual in the office. Why wouldn't you want to have the power to do what you can.

>> Bill Whalen: Right.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: In four or eight years? So Congress has to take this back if we want that to shift. And so our report is a part, you know, of trying to encourage Congress to have the rules and process that would enable it to do that.

>> Bill Whalen: I did a call with our director, Condoleezza Rice, not too long ago, and I gave her a list of institutions in America that I deemed in need of fixing, and she landed on Congress as her first choice.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Yeah, I think that certainly they're not playing the constitutional role they were designed to do, and they're not playing the role, I would argue. I'll let Dan disagree if you'd like to do that. That they were playing when you entered Congress. Right. Even in the most recent few decades, you see a shift.

>> Daniel Lipinski: Yeah, it definitely has shifted. So, yeah we'll get a whole lot more into 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 task force to look at what can we do, what rules can change, what processes can change in the House to make it work the way it is supposed to work.

The House is supposed to be the bulwark of our democracy. It is supposed to produce conciliation in a very diverse country. That's the way the framers set it up. And the House is failing in that. Back in 2018, the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus had put together a set of rule changes that we were pushing at the end of 2018.

Going into the new Congress in 2019, we were only able to get a few of those done. And I thought, well, let's look again at what kind of reforms do we think can potentially get done? Because Congress has only gotten worse. I mean, the House has only gotten worse in the last six years.

So working with Brandice and I also brought in the Sun Water Institute, which is a relatively new think tank in Maryland, and they are putting together a lot of data. One of their interests is reform of Congress, and they're bringing together a lot of data to help to make the case for what has gone wrong and what might be working.

But what do we do moving forward? And one of the things that they're doing is putting all the rules, cataloging history of rules of the House and how they've changed to understand how changing the rules has made a difference in the way the House operates.

>> Bill Whalen: So let's talk for a minute about how bad things really are in the House.

So Gallup is always pulling on the House, doing job approval with the public on the house. January 2005, when young Daniel Lipinski is first going to Washington full of dreams. He's watched Jimmy Stewart, Mr. Smith goes to Washington. Who knows what wonderful things you have planned. Gallup has the house at 43% approval.

October 2024, 16%. Yikes. But let me throw this at you. Historically, the public has always enjoyed making fun of Congress, if not criticizing, at least mocking it. Will Rogers quote papers say Congress is deadlocked and can't act. I think that is the greatest blessing that can befall this country.

Mark Twain Suppose you're an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. The question how much of our dislike of Congress is baked in the cake? In other words, are they always just kind of there as a pinata or something to make fun of?

Or have we seen in the past few years a real crisis burning in terms of Congress just not able to do its fundamental job?

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: So, Bill, I think you're right that we're always gonna see this kind of making fun of Congress as a whole, usually not our member.

We always seem to like our member is different than the rest of Congress. The problem is everyone else's member. But there have been several shifts that I think have contributed to something deeper and more dysfunctional. So sometimes what we're making fun of is the fact that lawmaking can be messy.

And in fact, there are also sayings about never wanting to see it's like sausage. You really do want to just see the final product. You really don't wanna see it being made right with lawmaking. But that messiness is an important part of features of a representative system, such as compromise, such as trying to bridge divides across very disparate geographic preferences and constituencies.

And sometimes compromise doesn't look beautiful or even intellectually coherent at times, but it produces a sustainable policy that we can all live with when policy is decided by the executive. And as Congress has increasingly delegated and exited out of this negotiating and messy lawmaking process, the Federal Register, the number of pages per year has been going up and the executive branch has been taking over so you may like the election outcomes this yesterday or Sorry, not yesterday, last Tuesday.

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 and forth between two polarized extremes. You can see why people start to lose some trust in Congress in particular, but some sense that the system isn't working well.

And this is where Congress comes in, including its messiness that we can make fun of. But that's a very different type of messiness than just gonna become telemarketers who fundraise and just grant the power to the executive. That's an unfair characterization at some level. It's a very extreme characterization, but that's the direction they've been going.

>> Bill Whalen: So, Congressman, I've given you the view of the public looking into Congress, into the house, which is 16% job approval, which we can agree is wretched. What is the view from the House looking out?

>> Daniel Lipinski: It depends on who you are. Unfortunately, there's a lot of members who 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 and they think that is how you change policy.

They're not interested in really getting down into the tough work of legislating. But there are other legislators, other members of Congress who do 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 checked out and said, well, I can't do anything. It's run by the leadership. The speaker just determines what bills 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 years George W Bush was president.

There were some things Democrats took Congress in the 2006 election. There were some things in 2007, 2008 that the two sides worked together on, that we got done, even though we're fighting over the 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 of legislation that has become law that has come out of the House. But not only that, almost every single major new law that's been created, every spending bill, the tax bills has come out of the Senate with little or no input from the House because the House has become a messaging body for the majority party and that's it.

And our republic cannot survive if we continue that way, where we only have the Senate and some of the dealmakers are leaving the Senate right now. And I'm not sure where this is gonna leave us, but we can't just turn everything over to the president.

>> Bill Whalen: Can we agree that this is a bipartisan problem?

The Republicans took back the House in 1994, having not had it for, what, 50 years, and they held it for, what, the next 12 years? And then in 2006, the Democrats get it back, they hold it for four years, and then the Republicans get it back and they hold it for eight years.

Flips back to the Republicans and it looks like the Republicans will hold on to the House this time around. But if I were a betting man, I'd bet on the Democrats taking it back in 2026. This is the nature of the beast. Why does the public keep changing its mind on who it wants to have in charge of Congress or charge of the House?

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Well, the margins are really tight. So one reason that your bet is a great one is that the Republicans look set to win the House. Maybe it's been called since we started the podcast, 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.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: It's gonna be razor thin margins. So you only need a few districts to switch back. You do have a situation where when Congress itself. So I think, again, the margins are the main reason, but a secondary reason is you can already see some sort of fight setting up where Trump has certain policies that he'd like passed through Congress, and these marginal members are asked to walk the plank effectively.

The marginal members tend to be in the districts that could go in either 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's setting policy, you can expect then that the moderate members are not gonna be the ones who are gonna be squeezed.

And then to the extent that policy affects their electoral performance, it's gonna be in this negative way.

>> Daniel Lipinski: Part of this is just that there's a general dissatisfaction in this country. 70% of people think the country's going in the wrong direction. And this is only the second time, I believe, post Civil War, where the incumbent presidential party has lost three elections in a row.

The last time it happened was the late 19th century. I wouldn't be surprised if it happens again in another four years. But there's just a general dissatisfaction. And that's part of the reason why the 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, conciliation, figuring out how are we going to live together.

We're a diverse country. We're really split right now. But there are ways that we can come together. And no one seems to be trying to do that. That is what Congress is supposed to be doing. That's the way the Constitution was written in order to bring these diverse interests together and to figure out, 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 and we just keep going through that cycle and things don't seem to Americans don't seem to think things are improving.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, let's fix things and let's go to the report, Revitalizing the House, Bipartisan Recommendations on Rules and Process.

First, I want five recommendations I 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: Okay, so there's a diverse group, a bipartisan group. So that's one type of the diversity we have. But actually an interesting type that's not typical to these types of reports is we have former House members, including Dan, but also other Republican and Democratic members.

We have former staffers, including former staffers in the Republican leadership staff because as we've kind of mentioned, the centralization of power. But one of the tensions is sort of the rank and file members versus the leadership. So we wanted their input. And then we have what we call other experts, which include professors in academia, but also think tank and other types of experts.

So we mentioned the Sunwater Institute. We should certainly give Matt Chervenak full credit, who helped draft it, and Phil Wallach at AEI. But everyone on the report met over the course of the year. We had Zoom meetings so that everyone could participate regularly. One of the innovations of Zoom, since meeting monthly with people across the country would have been prohibitive.

And you know, some things got we can't talk about them but were placed on the cutting floor. So, you know, sort of proposals that maybe many people thought would be a good idea if they could be enacted. But for instance, the leadership staff might say that's just a non-starter.

And you know, this is not. So we tried to come up with a set that would appeal to both parties and appeal to both rank and file and leadership.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, Congressman, let's get into the points. Point number one, change the rules to give substantial bipartisan majorities greater access to the floor.

>> Daniel Lipinski: Well, one of the issues is it is everything runs through the majority party. That means it runs through the speaker's office. We used to have legislation passed the House that was you'd get Democrats and Republicans both supporting it. You get the majority from both sides of the aisle.

Now there is so little major legislation that ever happens. Now, there's a couple things going on here. Well, of course, we have become our country is more polarized, but there are still issues I argue and I saw this during my time in Congress. More and more issues, which there's no good reason for why it would become a partisan issue, have become partisan issues.

So what we need to do is give the opportunities. So one of the things we have in there is guaranteed regular order that says if a committee holds hearings on a piece of legislation, has an open markup, there's amending of that bill and it 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 give some power back to the committees. The speaker right now oftentimes will tell the committees what to do. And members of Congress, many of them have decided, well, it's not even worth giving the effort. I mean, that's one of the problems.

Many members have sort of checked out of the legislative process. And so this is to give them an 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 committee on the issues of this committee, I can have an impact.

So that's one of the major recommendations in here. Another one is if you get 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans who support bringing an amendment to the floor and any bill, then that amendment will get floor time, it will be debated, and we'll get a vote. And again, that is to give an incentive for members to be involved and to get to know and work with members on the other side of the aisle.

And so those two things are two of the biggest pieces. There's other things we have about changing the process. We need to do more because it just got worse and worse during the time I was there. Democrats and Republicans do not speak to 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: Yeah. So you know, the kind of classic model of Congress that for a long time was taught in classes but really shouldn't be taught as the current Congress anymore was this very committee based model, right?

Congressmen at work, is a dated expression, but that was the phrase is Congress in committees, right? So congressional members, that's where they're getting their real work done. But increasingly members are spending less time in lawmaking in committees and we show that in our report. And over time, fewer committee bills are, are being taken up by the floor.

So even though there's kind of less lawmaking in general, even those that are making it out of committee successfully aren't being taken up. And that was actually a point of 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 and we look at whether that's actually true. And it was in fact strictly, strikingly true. And that's now in the report. So I think this isn't something everyone on the Hill, for instance, knows, since that was people who'd been on.

And as Dan said that then you have the situation, well, why am I spending all this time in committee? I mean, why would I even spend time on it? If we're going to produce this bill and go through, mark it up and go through the regular process and invest time, 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 lawmaking process has sort of just declined.

>> Daniel Lipinski: 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 task force who was more familiar with leadership who thought, well, no, that's not really true.

And the former members are saying, yes, it is, that is true. So we have the data to show that, but it just shows the perspective of depending on where you're sitting up there, what you see happening or what you miss.

>> Bill Whalen: This may have grown worse in recent years, but I'm a child of Washington, DC, I grew up in Washington, DC as a journalist.

I covered the Hill in the late 80s and the early 90s when things were really starting to fray leading up 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 block of Capitol Hill and build a very large dormitory and house as many members who are willing to be in the dorm together.

And I said, what? And he said, because they'll all be housed together and they'll get to know each other and God forbid, actually collegiality will emerge from that.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: So it's certainly the case that over time, members and Dan alluded to this, now they barely talk, that members have spent less time socializing with each other.

It used to be that more members lived in DC full time, right? Or had that as their and their kids went to school together, their spouses socialized, there was more family interaction. They were there. Now there's much more of this Tuesday 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 legislating and on the floor but also outside as well.

They kind of get a bad name, these CODELs, where you go off on trips together and you explore issues, sometimes issues of national security, issues of understanding parts of the 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.

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: I'm not crazy about spending a lot of federal money, but I'm not averse to the CODEL, which is shorthand for a congressional delegation, because it does get members around the world to look at things.

I think as long as you had just almost instant reporting of the codel. Where you went.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Yes. And why.

>> Bill Whalen: And why they can be held accountable.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Yes, yes.

>> Bill Whalen: So therefore not everybody's going to Paris in August.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: That's what I was going to say.

Maybe not always the high vacation spots.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, Congressman, second point. Make committees stronger, more substantive and more effective.

>> Daniel Lipinski: 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 bill at least come to the floor.

Not guaranteed to pass, but at least come to the floor and get debated. But there's also other ways that the committee hearings can be run differently. And there's been some talk about this. I think there might be some movement on this. I've always found that having. Roundtables, which are essentially unofficial hearings were much more beneficial.

Congressional hearings have turned into just another opportunity to play for the camera.

>> Bill Whalen: Bugging for the cameras.

>> Daniel Lipinski: Yeah, we saw a couple members get into really personal, mean arguments on committee, which it just another reason why people don't like Congress. But roundtables, there's no cameras there, you actually have an opportunity, you don't just get your five minutes with the witness, and you make your points.

You actually get to have real discussion with the witnesses and with each other. Just getting committee members together in informal settings. I think some of these are definitely gonna go forward because there are members who are really pushing for this. It may sound trite, but it does make a difference.

If you know people, you are. You get to know them, you get to know. Especially, if you get to know their families or the opportunities there are for that, it helps things to work better. And the dorm idea, I think is fantastic. For a majority of my 16 years, I slept in my office, which was not that great.

But anything to get members together in socializing across the aisle is a good idea.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, showing my age again, I go back to a more gilded age of the House, when you had very giant figures like John Dingell, Henry Waxman here in California, and a gentleman from Chicago named Dan Rostenkowski running the House Ways and Committee.

But Congressman, let's talk about Rosti for 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 Means Committee, he also ended up going to jail, though.

>> Daniel Lipinski: Well, I mean, again, there's no simple, easy answers, everything has its downside.

So when someone gets that much power.

>> Bill Whalen: Right, but I mentioned this because when the Republicans came back in the House, what's one of the first things they got into? Term limits for committee chairs.

>> Daniel Lipinski: I like term limits for committee chairs,

>> Bill Whalen: really.

>> Daniel Lipinski: 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 because you can amass way too much power. Now there's downsides because you hear Republicans say, well, we lose people because after six years at the head of the committee, then they can no longer be chair or ranking 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 good friends of mine, I won't name them, but who are very independent members for decades. They get to be a committee chair, and then they realize the way things have changed in the House, they need to follow the speaker and the speaker is telling them what to do.

And that's why having these committee chairs like Rustinkowski, you talked about he actually sat down with President Reagan over this Tax Reform Bill in 1986. You'd never see a committee chair, I don't think, be in that position anymore because a speaker wouldn't let that happen. Again, the committees need to be able to do their work, and that's the way things can work much better, and committees can work in a much more bipartisan manner.

Also,

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Dan, even if you think there should be term limits, do you think it should be six years? That's pretty short term.

>> Daniel Lipinski: I mean, I'd be open to a little longer. Especially if you don't serve, that is six years as the top. It's only Republicans just so people know, it's only Republicans, Democrats don't have this rule.

And there are some chairs of committees, ranking members of Democrats who should have been gone years ago.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: We won't name names here.

>> Daniel Lipinski: No, but it also applies if you're not the chair, you're the ranking member. The ranking member is the top minority party member of that committee.

I don't think that should be counted the 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: The report also suggests ranked choice voting for committee chairs.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: 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 committee should have a private say to the speaker over who the chair should be because one of the issues right now is that.

But we did make it. This was kind of one of these compromises, you could say, between the rank and file and the leadership staff. The speaker obviously wants to have full control in the party caucus over committee chairs. But the fact that the committee doesn't weigh in at all right now, we think doesn't, you know, creates a situation where often fundraising is a dominant factor in who gets to be a committee chair.

And if that's really what's determining who a committee chair is, it's not surprising that committees aren't as invested in lawmaking and the like.

>> Daniel Lipinski: 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 remember that we had included rank.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: No, I think it's the rewarding issue.

>> Bill Whalen: I just saw it in there and just ooh, wait a second.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: No, I think it's the ranking member we'll have to look at exactly, we're not making any arguments about that.

>> Bill Whalen: Recommendation number three, give members more time for legislative work.

Let me again go back in the way back machine to the good old days, the 80s and 90s when Robert Byrd became the senate majority leader, and he started making senators work five days a week. And boy were they not happy. Now five days a week works wonderfully for Dan Lipinski because how many flights are there every day from National Airport to Chicago?

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 time getting back to see her constituents.

>> Daniel Lipinski: Well, there's actually been a lot of work on this and there are a group of members who are going to be putting forward their schedule that they think would be more helpful in that there would be more five day weeks but also more time back at home.

There'd be fewer days of travel. So essentially, trading travel days for actually days in session. And for some of those travel days will then 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 the first votes of the week at 6:30 on that Monday or Tuesday, and I was on the first plane out, and I was running as fast as I could. But it's better if there's more time that members have to concentrate on legislating in Washington.

>> Bill Whalen: Brandice, why not bring Zoom into play? Why not just stop doing everything in Washington and let members do things via Zoom in their home districts?

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: So as we mentioned, we used Zoom for discussion. So we don't want.

>> Bill Whalen: Yes

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Hypocritical, but research suggests there are differences in how people behave on Zoom and in person.

And in person,

>> Bill Whalen: you're not just talking me sitting here at the table wearing tennis shorts or something like that.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: No, no, no, there's that, but the types of comments people will make in terms of what they're willing to say. And often this relates to Dan's comments about the legislative hearings and the transparency.

People think they might be on camera and being recorded. They're going to behave very differently than in terms of when they think they're not. And I would say that even beyond that, there's evidence in negotiating that 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 people that you really trust. But that's almost a within party, even within the party, within a close colleague type of interaction. That's not the sort of messiness that we talked about at the beginning. About compromises that may or may not be adopted and where you could be caught then on camera offering something that you wouldn't want your constituents to know was offered, particularly if it's not gonna go through.

>> Bill Whalen: 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 cost money, logistically be complicated, but it would send a message that we're coming to you rather than you coming to us.

>> Daniel Lipinski: I think there should be more of that. It does happen. I think there should be more emphasis of doing more of those field hearings, as they're called, to actually get out there. Now, I found that field hearings that I did didn't always get that many members of the public who wanted to show up for them.

But I think it's good to do. It also is it actually helps the members to go and visit someone else's district. And that actually is another way of building some camaraderie. I mean, the last question you talked about Zoom, we had an experiment with that during COVID, during 2020.

And in some ways it worked. But you'd miss that real human interaction with each other. That's not over the camera. That's different in the informal discussions, which make a big difference. 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 we need to take advantage of Zoom, other virtual ways of connecting so that the House actually is doing some business. And Nancy Pelosi had the Rules Committee Democrats write a report saying why this would not work. You know, this blah, blah, blah.

And I think she was concerned about how that would, you know, whether that would work or not or. I'm not sure what she was concerned about at first, but obviously she thought it would somehow take 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 besides what I tell them we need to do.

And Nancy Pelosi all of a sudden changed and decided this is a lovely, let's just keep it going.

>> Bill Whalen: She also got to realize if she ran the hearing via Zoom, she could control the mute function.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Yes.

>> Bill Whalen: All right, let's go to point number four. Our listener is going to have fun with this raise.

Members pay My slack research indicates that members right now I think earn about $174,000 a year.

>> Daniel Lipinski: Long time now, yes.

>> Bill Whalen: Leadership I think is 193, 4. And the speaker gets about $223,000 a year. $203,500 I believe it is. And you want them to get more.

>> Daniel Lipinski: We almost left this out because we didn't want people to focus on this.

But look, members of Congress, and I hate to say this as I probably shouldn't be speaking this as a former member of Congress, cuz it sounds too self serving. Although I'm not there anymore, so I still think members should get paid more. The job that members of Congress do compared to comparable jobs I think in this country.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense that I think it's been 14 years maybe or more since House members pay has been raised. And that doesn't make any sense. You need to be attracting people who are high quality who can demand this type of 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 at it and say no, I don't want to do that. I can't afford first of all to have two places assuming they don't sleep in their office like I was doing for some 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 for staying where you're going? Now they've made some corrections of that, which is good. But I still think you need to have offer competitive salaries.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: 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 sort of in real versus nominal terms, it's just stagnated in nominal terms.

But it's also then been outpaced by private sector pay. So I mean, at some point, we want a Congress that's representative of the range of Americans and backgrounds who are in the country, right? We don't wanna feel that it's only for people who've already inherited a lot of wealth.

>> Bill Whalen: Allow me to be the obligatory jerk for a minute.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Yep.

>> Bill Whalen: The well paid executive has a board to report to. The well paid executive is running a company that has a profit line at the end of the day.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Right.

>> Bill Whalen: And I would argue that the executive who ran his company or her company, the way Congress is run, they would not be an executive for very long, would they?

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Yeah, but I think that's an argument about.

>> Bill Whalen: I'm being, I'm being facetious.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: No, no, no, no, no. I know, but I think that would be an argument about the leadership. And members do have to face voters every two years. So voters think that their individual member 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: A more serious question, Congressman, you were there for 16 years. You watched members come and go. How many members left on purely economic reasons versus maybe family reasons?

They wanted to be with their kids as they were growing up, they got tired of Washington, they got frustrated with the process. Or they saw the train coming in their direction and want to get off the tracks before they got run over. In other words, better to retire before you lose your election.

But how many cited economic concerns there?

>> Daniel Lipinski: That's really hard to say. I mean, it's a real mixed bag. I certainly knew members who did cite the economic concerns. Look, I got a couple kids who are gonna be going into college. Now and I need to, I need to make more money in order to send my kids to college.

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 one thing 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.

I'm just told to follow the leader and that's it. And so I can't do this anymore. I mean, I was, I'm too independent minded for the way things have turned now in the House. And it can be a really easy job if you just follow the leader and you do what you know that you need to do to satisfy the people who are going to fund primary.

And unfortunately, that has driven our Democrats to the left and Republicans to the right. We want people in there who are actually going to be independent thinkers, independent from their party, their party leadership in line with what their constituents really want. There aren't just two types of people in this country.

That's been my argument all along. There's not two sets that everyone thinks either this way or that way on this, all these issues. 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 supposed to really bring together and figure out how we're gonna do this together.

 

>> Bill Whalen: 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 crazy scheme for a dorm on Capitol Hill. What else can the House do in the way of bipartisanship?

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: So one of the rules proposals we make is that if there's sufficient support from members of each party, I believe it's 10 in the report that we settled on each, that the amendment would automatically be considered.

And there was some debate in the committee about what the right number was. That's why I'm trying to settle on what we came to. And that really 10 members from each 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 that would encourage members to make these kind of proposals that reach across the aisle and seem to have maybe more centrist support rather than kind of going to one extreme or the other.

>> Daniel Lipinski: A story from my early days In Congress, I was on the Small Business Committee and a Republican who I got to know during new member orientation.

So it's our first committee hearing, and he comes in and he sits down next to me at this hearing. And one of the Republicans, he's a Republican, I'm a Democrat, Republican staff member comes over to him and says, I'll leave his name out. Although probably actually reflects well on him.

Would you like their seats on the other side? Would you like to move? And he's like, no, no, no. And then that staffer again says, 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 most things are in Washington. And it's amazing that there's so few places that members can really get to know each other across the aisle. One place is the House gym. If you use the gym, there's very few other places.

And the party leadership likes it that way. They want it to be that way. They don't want you to get to know members on the other side of the aisle because they are the enemy. And if you start liking them too much, maybe. Maybe you might not follow the party leader all the time.

>> Bill Whalen: We only have about 10 minutes left, Brandice, but we haven't talked much about the Senate in this conversation. And here is a very distinguished chamber, supposed to be very different from the 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 rules on how they vote on judges. There's been talk about changing the filibuster rule. They, too, are kind of in a bad way, it seems to me. So have you guys given thought about how to fix the Senate, or does the Senate not be fixing.

We need to focus on the House first.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: I think we wanted to focus on the House first. Our report is, the people on the task force, they're primarily, particularly the practitioners, the former members, the former staffers. We looked at people who'd been on the House, although I think some staffers had been in both the House and Senate.

That's not to say that nothing could be fixed in the Senate, but we think that, as Dan said earlier in the podcast, a lot of the major legislation that's come through is now coming through the Senate. It wasn't always that way, that even if there 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 place to start, so that could be a follow up.

>> Daniel Lipinski: As a House member and before that, as a political scientist who studied Congress, I always used to say I don't really understand how the Senate actually gets anything done because they don't have that many rules.

>> Daniel Lipinski: It relies on cooperation. Why we're trying to reform House rules is there'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's a lot of the dealmakers, Mitt Romney, Kristin Sinema, Joe Manchin are leaving.

I'm very hopeful Rick Scott does not become the majority leader in the Senate because I think Rick Scott would be someone who is going to really, even though he was not in the House, he's someone who would like to run things like the House is run. He'd like to have the power of the speaker and do whatever President Trump wants 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. When I want to be independent, no one can tell me what, what to do.

And so that's why the Senate has been able to still work things out. Being reelected every six years helps a lot.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: That's what I was going to say.

>> Daniel Lipinski: That makes a big, big, big difference.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Two thirds of them won't be up for reelection until Trump's leaving officer after.

So their ability to say-

>> Daniel Lipinski: I'm hoping they're-.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Say, you do it fine, be angry at me to Trump.

>> Bill Whalen: 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 senator than 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 or the other, but you are seeing voters offering a bit of a balance out there.

So maybe that. Maybe that'll help things moving forward.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: 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 and individual races. But I agree with you, it starts to seem like a pattern.

And I think the House, we're still finding final results of the final races, thanks in part to California's brilliant procedure where we have 30 days until after the election to finalize the vote by mail and other results. But I think that the ticket splitting is a signal to senators and to members that the President may not carry them, and so they can't count on that.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, we have about five minutes to go. So tell me this, you have a wonderful report, chock full of great ideas for improving the House, how are you gonna make it happen? Are you looking for that one suicidal idiot who's gonna propose a bill and take it forward in the House?

That, to me, sounds like marching into 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? Would you ask for maybe a task force going proven House? How would you turn this into a law?

>> Daniel Lipinski: You need a few members, and because the-

>> Bill Whalen: And let me correct that, because we're talking about changing rules of the House, not laws.

>> Daniel Lipinski: 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 who different situation, but with Kevin McCarthy struggling to get the votes to be speaker, members went up to him and said, I will vote for you if you change this rule, change that rule and they got some of the rules changed.

>> Bill Whalen: And it's worth that, it's called extortion.

>> Daniel Lipinski: That's not what it's called in politics.

>> Bill Whalen: Yes.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Just.

>> Bill Whalen: Leverage.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Every day, yeah, every day.

>> Daniel Lipinski: 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, and some 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 moderate House Republican members who say, look, wait a minute, I want to have a voice here. I don't want just to have to be on the Trump train and not have a say in legislation and just speaker.

President goes to speaker, speaker goes to members, say, this is what we need to vote for. There are some of the Republicans who are gonna say, hey, I just squeaked through an election, I wanna have a voice. And so the way to guarantee that I have a voice is to change up some of these rules.

And this only takes a small number, cuz that Republican majority in the House is gonna be very, very small. And if Trump takes more members out to put in his administration, it'll be even smaller.

>> Bill Whalen: Bradis.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Well, I'd agree with what Dan said. It seems likely that in this Congress, it'll be the moderate Republicans who are likely to push it.

I would go further. I don't think we could convince Speaker Johnson, so I'm not delusional. But the current system that they've been operating has not worked out well for recent Republican speakers, right? We've had two speaker changes mid session in recent years. So if you concentrate all power in one person or in a small, a leadership team, the incentives, what people can do is they can topple that leadership team.

So again, not delusional, it's gonna have to come from the moderates. But it's not clear to me that the leaders are seeing clearly what their own long term incentives are.

>> Daniel Lipinski: I completely agree. And when all of the expectation is on the speaker to get things done, and if they're looking the speaker to make sure all the agenda gets completed and a couple of members say, no, then allow the Republican conference is gonna say, wait a minute, we told the speaker.

We gave the speaker the power to get this done. He's not getting it done, we're getting rid of them. And so I think most speakers and Mike Johnson have to look a little deeper. But it makes sense that maybe he wants to say, 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: Okay, politics being politics, you can't always get what you want. What is the one item in this report that you would like to get, Brandice?

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Well, now I'm gonna revert to being an academic, because I do think it's the 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 is the one about guaranteed regular order, which would allow each committee that went through a regular process one bill each year that could get voted on.

But I don't think it would be the most innovative and in that sense, perhaps it's the least likely.

>> Daniel Lipinski: 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 amendment that's guaranteed a floor vote. I think members would wake up to say, hey, this is a real opportunity to have an impact here.

And so I gotta start getting to know some members across the aisle and working with them. And I think that could really start a significant change in the two sides, at least some members on the two sides working together. So that's what I would like to see.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Brandice Canes-Wrone, Congressman Lipinski, congratulations on a terrific report.

I hope you go to Washington and get to testify. Or better yet, let's bring Washington out here to Stanford and have them testify here. Great.

>> Daniel Lipinski: Thank you.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Thanks, Phil.

>> Bill Whalen: You've been listening to Matters of Policy and Politics, a Hoover Institution podcast devoted to governance and balance of power here in America and around the globe.

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Also, you should sign up for Hoover's Daily Report, which keeps you updated on what Candice and Congressman Lipinski are up to. That's sent to your email weekdays by the Hoover Institution. I'm Bill Whalen. We'll be back soon with a new installment on Matters of Policy and Politics. Till then, take care.

Thanks for watching.