Word: branches
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...Given last year's experience, it seems likely that Reid will again move to limit amendments. But doing so is a controversial move that angers Republicans, who have used it as Exhibit A of how Democrats in Congress aren't extending the bipartisan olive branch pushed by President Barack Obama. "Standard Harry Reid," says Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican. "No bipartisanship. Just ram it through. Just pick off a few Republicans. That's been their strategy from the beginning." (Watch a video about why Harry Reid encouraged Barack Obama to run for President...
Congress and the President have broad powers to find and fix what ails government. Congress has oversight and investigative authority granted implicitly by the Constitution and explicitly by statute. Pretty much every agency in the executive branch, even top-secret ones, has an inspector general charged with rooting out fraud, waste and abuse. And whole organizations exist to pursue and expose noncriminal bad behavior in government...
...When one party is in control of both the White House and one or both chambers of Congress, the Hill often overlooks oversight of the executive branch. For example, says American Enterprise Institute scholar Norm Ornstein, during the period of GOP dominance under George W. Bush, homeland-security oversight failed. "The failure to do any oversight of the Homeland Security Department helped lead to the failure of Katrina," Ornstein says...
...America's power expanded from a ragtag collection of 13 colonies to the world's only superpower, so too did the responsibilities of the legislative branch. No longer can members of Congress convene for a few months in the spring while spending the rest of the year on their farms. The greater power has added bureaucracy and it often takes the clout and leverage of an elder statesman to push through legislation: just look at the prolific careers of Ted Kennedy or Everett Dirksen...
...state senate or Congress, Senators look for congressional seats, or lawmakers look out for cushy jobs in the private sector afterward, thus giving more power to the permanent staff. Bad idea," says Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and co-author of The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track...