How Congress Works

Guests: Cliff Stearns, former Republican Congressman from Florida, current President of the United States Association of Former Members of Congress, author, “Life in the Marble Palace”; James Curry, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Utah, Co-director, Utah Chapter of the Scholars Strategy Network, author, “Legislating in the Dark” How our elected representatives in Congress get their work done is Top of Mind this hour. There’s a public perception they don’t. Or that when they do manage to get something done, it’s hashed out in backroom deals between partisan power players and then rammed through a party-line vote without much effort to really air the issue in public, debate the merits or make amendments. This only adds to the frustration among Americans that Congress is some mysterious club better at grandstanding and sparring on cable TV than actually solving the nation’s problems. At least 70 percent of Americans think Congress is doing a bad job. Today we get the inside scoop from a former Republican Congressman and a political scientist who's studied the way US House leaders control information to get laws passed.