The Center conducts research consistent with its mission of developing a greater understanding of Congress. Research focuses not only on examining the rules and procedures of Congress but also on the ways in which the Senate and House of Representatives help determine the substance of law and policy for the Government of the United States—through their leaders, committees, caucuses, conferences, staffs and individual members, and through the interaction of Congress with the executive and judicial branches.
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- The Reflections Project: Departing Members of Congress Assess the Institution
- Legislating for the Future
- John Brademas Center Intern Research Papers
The Reflections Project: Departing Members of Congress Assess the Institution
To establish a public record of the first-person accounts, opinions, anecdotes and reflections of Members who retire from office each term, The Brademas Center has announced a new initiative, "The Reflections Project: Departing Members of Congress Assess the Institution." Beginning the summer of 2006, we will ask departing and newly retired Members to look back on their careers, some spanning up to 30 years, and to explore what they have learned about the country and the institution. This material will help scholars track the evolving nature and decision-making capacity of Congress, and could potentially contain observations that could lead to other research projects at the Center and at other institutions across the nation. It is our goal for the Brademas Center to become the main repository for Members’ exit interviews. Ultimately, the Center would like to build enough resources for this project to reach out to all Members as they leave office.
For more information please click here.
The Brademas Center has already conducted several interviews, led by Linda Douglass, a Senior Fellow of the Center and former chief Capitol Hill correspondent for ABC News. These include:
- Representative Henry Hyde (R-IL), former chair of the House International Relations committee
- Representative Tom DeLay (R-TX), former House Majority Leader (resigned June of 2006)
- Representative Bill Thomas (R-CA), former chair of the House Ways and Means Committee
- Representative Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), former chair of the House Science Committee
- Democratic Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), former Senate Majority Leader
- Representative Major Owens (D-NY)
- Representative Jim Kolbe (R-AZ)
- Representative Martin Sabo (D-MN)
For the full videos of each of these interviews, please click here!
Legislating for the Future
Under the direction of NYU Wagner Professor Paul Light, the Center has completed a major research endeavor, Legislating for the Future. By assessing congressional capacity and the institution’s ability to make long-term decisions for the 21st Century, the project aims to explore difficulties that Congress faces when trying to predict outcomes; obstacles to policy making such as the existing committee structure and the increasingly divisive partisanship; and what can be done to make Congress more flexible and adaptive to future problems. This project is a part of Professors Light's Organizational Performance Initiative, which is designed to help organizations respond to the increased uncertainty that surrounds their missions.
On Friday, September 29, 2006, the “Legislating for the Future” project was officially launched at a news conference in Washington, DC. At this news conference, a just-completed national survey by the Brademas Center was released, which shows that, while Congressional races concentrate on the war in Iraq and the state of the economy, Americans are worried about long-term issues such as global warming, terrorism, Social Security and Medicare -- and they doubt Congress has the knowledge or ability to address them. NYU Professor Paul C. Light, the author of the survey, was joined by former Congressman Lee H. Hamilton, who is President and Director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and an advisory group chairman for the “Legislating the Future.” The study’s dissemination sets the stage for a series of research-based forums.
The first of such forums was held on Friday, December 15, 2006 at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. At the event, which was covered live by C-SPAN, former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota) and former U.S. Representative Bill Frenzel (R-Minnesota) shared their perspectives on the institutional barriers to legislating for the future. In addition, Paul Light presented his research on why Congress has difficulty legislating on long-term issues the public often describes as paramount, as did Sarah A. Binder, a Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution; James A. Dewar, Senior Policy Analyst at RAND; and G. Calvin Mackenzie, Professor of American Government at Colby College. All the presenters also discussed concrete ways to improve the decision-making capacity of “The People’s Branch.”
The next event in this project series, which focused on the difficulties of addressing the complex long-range issue of the global environment, given the institutional barriers to action in Congress, took place on Friday, March 30, 2007 on Capitol Hill. The panel of three speakers (Barry Rabe, University of Michigan and the Brookings Institution; Robert Lempert, RAND Corporation; and Leon Fuerth, the George Washington University) examined the politics of the global environmental issue, ways that Congress can anticipate the future through a new analytic approach, and the overall challenges of making long-range policy.
The Brademas Center was proud to host a special event on April 10, 2007 on Capitol Hill as part of "Legislating for the Future," which brought together Senator John Kerry and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich for a public event during with they considered the issue of global climate change and the environment, and what Congress should do to address these issues. Senator John Kerry, author of This Moment on Earth, and the Honorable Newt Gingrich, author of Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America, delivered remarks on the ways in which Congress might be able to resolve its differences on global climate change and the environment through institutional change, new analytic techniques, and legislative innovation.
TO WATCH THE VIDEO FROM THE EVENT, CLICK HERE
TO READ THE TRANSCRIPT, CLICK HERE
Following the issue of the global environment, the project focused on Social Security, which many argue is one of the most controversial policy problems on the legislative agenda. Even though many experts agree that the program is headed for crisis, Congress simply cannot find enough focus to examine the problems, sift through the solutions and reach a consensus on how to protect Social Security. The question is not whether the program will need repair, but what kinds of repairs Congress can bear. On September 21, 2007 three papers were presented by the John Brademas Center for the Study of Congress. The authors are three of the leading scholars in the field – former White House aides and Brookings Institution scholars Jason Furman and William Galston, and RAND scholar Steven Popper.
When setting legislative agendas in Washington, defense has always been a controversial issue. But it will become even more controversial in the future as Congress eventually comes to grips with the War on Terror and other defense issues such as changes in force structure, Department of Defense reform and base closings. The question is how Congress can address these defense issues before they become so difficult that action is impossible. On December 14, 2007, the Brademas Center held its last forum in this series by presenting three papers by three of the leading scholars in the field – Paul K. Davis, Principal Researcher, The Rand Corporation, Kenneth R. Mayer, Professor of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Michael O’Hanlon, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution.
John Brademas Center Intern Research Papers
2009
Carolyn Seuthe (Rep. Jerrold Nadler): When to Fight: The Congressional Progressive Caucus Letter
Julie Raisch (Sen. Charles Schumer): Upstate NY: The Case for High Speed Rail
Maxwell Zorick (Rep. Steny Hoyer): Politics of Misinformation: Debate over Health Reform
Mary "Meb" Byrne (Rep. Dan Maffei): Congressman Maffei’s Policy Approach to Green Jobs
Pratik Mehta (Rep. Patrick Kennedy): The Role of a Representative from a Constituent’s Viewpoint
Rachel Botos (Sen. John Kerry): Misconceived Notions of the Role of a Congressman
Robert Atterbury (Rep. Carolyn McCarthy): Can’t live with them, Can’t live without them
2008
Aaron Ampaw (Rep. Bobby Rush): Consumer Product Safety Commission Embargoed
Aditi Rajaram (Sen. Chuck Hagel): The Evolution of the FISA Reauthorization
Angelo Mayo (Rep. Mike Honda): Integration Act
Chris Collins (Rep. Steny Hoyer): Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Embargoed
Elon Rubin (Rep. John Hall): The Audacity of Change - Term Length and Campaign Finance Reform
Lucas Pattan (Rep. Patrick Kennedy): Genomics and Personalized Medicine Act of 2008
Nicole Callan (Sen. Hillary Clinton): A Legislative Success Story in the US Senate
Thiago Marques (Congressional Reseach Service): The Creation, Role and Purpose of CRS
2007
Catherine Bilkey (Rep. Carolyn Maloney): Agroterrorism: Preparation, Effects and Prevention
Kenna LaForge (Rep. Nancy Boyda): Increasing Energy Efficiency in the 110th Congress
Peter James Kralovec (Rep. Steny Hoyer): State Children's Health Insurance Program - SCHIP