The Broken Branch: A Look at the Contemporary Congress

BOOK FORUM

Wednesday, July 12, 2006 | 9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.

Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

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About This Event

In The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Oxford University Press, 2006), authors Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann suggest that over the past fifteen years, Congress has seen the collapse of the deliberative process, the erosion of the regular Listen to Audio
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Download Audio as MP3 order, and a corresponding decline in the quality of legislation passed. The authors believe that the state of today’s Congress is worse than it has been in the more than three decades each of them has spent immersed in the dynamics of Congress.

Two former Speakers of the House, Thomas Foley (D-Wash.) and Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), will join Ornstein and Mann to discuss the state of Congress today, how we got here, and what it means for governance in the future.

Agenda

8:45 a.m.	Registration

9:00	Introduction:	John Fortier, AEI
	Panelists:	Thomas Foley, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, L.L.P
		Newt Gingrich, AEI
		Thomas E. Mann, The Brookings Institution
		Norman J. Ornstein, AEI

11:00	Adjournment

Speaker biographies

Event Materials

The Broken Branch: A Look at the Contemporary Congress

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AEI Participants

John C.
Fortier

John Fortier is the principal contributor to the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project and executive director of the Continuity of Government Commission. A political scientist who has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Delaware, Boston College, and Harvard University, Mr. Fortier has written numerous scholarly and popular articles. His books include Second-Term Blues: How George W. Bush Has Governed (Brookings Institution Press, 2007); Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises, and Perils (AEI Press, 2006); and After the People Vote: A Guide to the Electoral College (AEI Press, 2004). Mr. Fortier writes a column for Politico and is a frequent radio and television commentator on the presidency, Congress, and elections.
Phone: 2022186779
Email: jfortier@bipartisanpolicy.org
Assistant Info
Phone: 2028625899

Norman J.
Ornstein

Norman Ornstein is a long-time observer of Congress and politics. He writes a weekly column for Roll Call and is an election analyst for CBS News. He served as codirector of the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project and participates in AEI's Election Watch series. He also serves as a senior counselor to the Continuity of Government Commission. Mr. Ornstein led a working group of scholars and practitioners that helped shape the law, known as McCain-Feingold, that reformed the campaign financing system. He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. His many books include The Permanent Campaign and Its Future (AEI Press, 2000); the coauthored The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Oxford University Press, 2006); and, most recently, Vital Statistics on Congress 2008 (Brookings Institution Press, 2008), also coauthored.
Phone: 202-862-5893
Email: nornstein@aei.org
Assistant Info
Name: Jennifer Marsico
Phone: 202-862-5899
Email: jennifer.marsico@aei.org