Understanding Congress AEI Podcasts

This topic of this special episode of the Understanding Congress podcast is a recent book by a former Hill staffer. It is titled Fire Alarm: The Investigation of the U.S. House Select Committee on Benghazi (Lexington Books, 2023)
The author is Bradley F. Podliska is an Assistant Professor of Military and Security Studies at the U.S. Air Force Air Command and Staff College in Montgomery, Alabama.
Brad is a retired U.S. Air Force Reserve intelligence officer with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was deployed to Iraq in 2008 and also worked as an intelligence analyst for the Department of Defense.
Dr. Podliska is a former investigator for the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Benghazi. He is the author of two books, and that latter experience working on the Hill formed the basis for his book, Fire Alarm: The Investigation of the U.S. House Select Committee on Benghazi.
Kevin Kosar:
Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution, and few Americans think well of it. But Congress is essential to our republic. It is a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be.
And that is why we are here: to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I am your host, Kevin Kosar, and I’m a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington DC.
Professor Podliska, welcome to the podcast.
Bradley Podliska:
Thank you, Kevin, for having me. I appreciate being here.
Kevin Kosar:
You were an investigator for the House of Representatives. I introduced you as a professor, but you had on-the-ground experience inside Congress as an investigator for the House of Representatives. For audience members who have never heard of that position, what do House investigators do? And how did you get to that position?
Bradley Podliska:
Investigators are another term for subject matter experts, usually based on their executive branch experience. The role of an investigator is to interview witnesses, request documents, analyze those documents and then provide new information back to the members for the committee so they can conduct their investigation. Now with that said, the titles when it comes to the Benghazi Committee were completely and totally arbitrary. Attorneys had “counsel” in their title and if you were a non-attorney, you either had the title of investigator, professional staff member, or advisor, but we all did the same work. So we were all analyzing documents, we were all interviewing witnesses, and then we were reporting the results to the committee members.
In my particular case, I spent 17 years in the intelligence community and the Defense Department, and I knew someone that had known the Republican staff director of the Benghazi committee for over two decades. So I submitted a resume and I was hired soon thereafter, and this is a point I actually make in my book Fire Alarm, which is that you're basically hired on perceived party loyalty. I refer to this as a non-compensatory dimension. In other words, merit is a secondary condition. You might be the best person for a job, but if you are not perceived as a partisan, you are not going to be hired in the first place. This is done is through those personal connections that I talked about. I am not aware of any staff member that was hired on the Benghazi committee that either did not have prior Capitol Hill experience or did not know somebody on the committee itself.
Kevin Kosar:
And that...

The topic of this episode is “Why is Congress struggling to manage the nation’s finances?”
My guest is Representative David Schweikert of Arizona. He was first elected to Congress in 2011. Prior to that, he was a businessman, served in Arizona’s state legislature, and as Maricopa County Treasurer.
He is a Republican and holds a seat on the Ways and Means Committee, which writes tax policy. David also is the Vice Chairman of the bicameral Joint Economic Committee (JEC) and co-chairs both the Blockchain and Telehealth caucuses. He is passionate about economics and finance, which makes him an excellent person to ask, “Why is Congress struggling to manage the nation’s finances?”
Kevin Kosar:
Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution, and few Americans think well of it. But Congress is essential to our republic. It's a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be.
And that is why we are here: to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I'm your host, Kevin Kosar, and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington DC.
Dave, welcome to the podcast.
David Schweikert:
Kevin, thank you for having me.
Kevin Kosar:
What is the state of the federal budget? Do we even have one in 2024?
David Schweikert:
That is sort of the magic question. You have one, but it is not the one you want. In many ways, we are operating on the spending authorization from previous years, which has been renewed over and over. In other words, we are funding things that were supposed to have expired and not funding things that we are supposed to be getting ready to do.
It is the absurdity of a dysfunctional Congress. Priorities that go back to when Nancy Pelosi was speaker are still being funded today.
Kevin Kosar:
Why is that?
David Schweikert:
I actually have an overarching theory, and then we can get into the nitty-gritty of some of the chaos. There is a general lack of understanding of the level of financial stress that the US Congress and the entire country are under.
We play this bookkeeping game in the United States of, here is publicly borrowed money, and here is the money we are borrowing internally. On Friday (February 23, 2024), I believe we hit an all-time record of borrowing about $92,000 a second. Now you hit this sort of constant stress where every dime a member of Congress votes on now is on borrowed money: all defense and all non-defense discretionary.
If my math is correct, we are going to borrow almost a trillion dollars of Medicare into mandatory this year. So now, you come back and you get a member who is all excited, saying he is going to cut spending on HHS (Department of Health and Human Services), some other agency, or some part of discretionary, and he is going to save $500 million.
That is a lot of money. But when you are borrowing about $7.5 billion a day, many of the fights we are having are over a few hours’—if not just a couple days’—worth of borrowing. It is a way we can look like we are doing something because we are terrified of getting in front of a camera and telling the American public that 100% of borrowing for the next 30 years will be interest, healthcare costs,...

The topic of this episode is, “What is legislative effectiveness?”
We voters often say that we want our senators and members of Congress to do things, and preferably, the right things. We tend to dislike it when we see people on Capitol Hill who are all talk and no action. And in theory, we should vote out of office those lawmakers who are ineffective.
Let me have a caveat here. To be sure, there are some legislators who have turned noise making into a profitable brand, and they do use it to get reelected again and again. But in my 20 years of watching Capitol Hill, it's my estimate that they comprise a small percentage of the total membership. Most people in Congress are, to varying degrees, trying to get things done. So how, then, are we voters supposed to tell which of these legislators are effective and which are not?
To help me answer that question, I have with me Craig Volden. He is a professor of Public Policy and Politics at the University of Virginia. Dr. Volden is the author of many publications. Critically for this podcast's purpose, he is the founder and co-director of the Center for Effective Lawmaking, which produces scores of legislator effectiveness that you can find at: thelawmakers.org.
Kevin Kosar:
Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution, and few Americans think well of it. But Congress is essential to our republic. It's a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be.
And that is why we are here: to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I'm your host, Kevin Kosar, and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington DC.
Welcome to the program.
Craig Volden:
Thanks so much for having me. It is a delight to join you, Kevin.
Kevin Kosar:
So let's cut straight to the topic of the program. What is legislative effectiveness?
Craig Volden:
This is something that I have been thinking about for a long time working with Professor Alan Wiseman at Vanderbilt University. We wrote a book on the subject about a decade ago called Legislative Effectiveness in the United States Congress: The Lawmakers.
In that book, we defined legislative effectiveness as, “the proven ability to advance a member's agenda items through the legislative process and into law.” So the key elements of “legislative effectiveness”—proven ability, the agenda items of the member, advancing into law—are in there.
Kevin Kosar:
So as the title of the book indicates, it really does focus on the lawmaking function of an elected official.
Craig Volden:
That's right.
And here, Alan and I founded the Center for Effective Lawmaking. And we like to stay in our lane—it is not the “Center for Effective Oversight” or “Center for Effective Communication with Constituents.” The Center is about lawmaking: what it takes to move those bills into law in the Congress and increasingly now in the state legislatures.
Kevin Kosar:
So you mentioned there was a book about a decade ago. In my intro of you, I mentioned the website, thelawmakers.org.
When did that launch, and what was the...

The topic of this episode is, What is the State of the Union Address, and Why Does Congress Host It?
Once per year, the President of the United States comes to the U.S. Capitol to deliver a speech known as the State of the Union Address. Usually this happens in late January or early February, but it has occurred as late as March 1.
Both members of the House of Representatives and Senators assemble for this speech, along with nearly all members of the president’s cabinet. Justices of the Supreme Court also are there, as are some other individuals. In modern times it has become quite a spectacle—with television cameras beaming the event to millions of homes.
To discuss this grand affair, I have with me Matt Glassman. He is a senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute, where he studies Congress. Prior to joining the Institute, Matt worked with me at the Congressional  Research Service for ten years. There he wrote about congressional operations, separation of powers, appropriations, judicial administration, agency design, and congressional history.
Kevin Kosar:
Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our republic. It’s a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be, and that is why we are here to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I’m your host, Kevin Kosar, and I’m a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington D.C.
Matt, welcome to the podcast.
Matt Glassman:
Thanks for having me.
Kevin Kosar:
Let’s start with the why. Why does Congress host a state of the union address? Does the U.S. Constitution require it?
Matt Glassman:
The Constitution doesn't require, per se, the State of the Union Address as we know it now, but Article 2, Section 3 does sort of contemplate the idea of a State of the Union message. It says the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”
So this idea of the president reporting back to Congress on what's going on in the administration and what he would like to see happen in the legislature is contemplated in the Constitution. So, yes, it is there. It's not required to happen every year; it says from time to time. That's been interpreted as annually, but we don't have a State of the Union message every year.
Sometimes presidents don't do it in their last year in office. Sometimes presidents don't do it right after they're inaugurated—they just deliver a different message to Congress. But the idea is rooted in the Constitution and in Anglo-American tradition. It was very traditional for the monarchy to go speak to Parliament as it opened in English history as well.
Kevin Kosar:
So it's discretionary, which means Congress could—if it chooses—refuse to hold a State of the Union address. One could imagine— in these high partisanship times—a House with a Democratic majority that might have refused to allow President Trump

The topic of this episode is, “What is congressional capacity, and why does it matter?”
As regular listeners know, almost inevitably I have a guest on my show. But this episode, you get just me. The reason is simple: I have been working on congressional capacity for years, and I would like to share my thoughts and hear your feedback.
Kevin Kosar:
Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our republic. It’s a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be, and that is why we are here to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I’m your host, Kevin Kosar, and I’m a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington D.C.
It is probably not news to you that the American public is not pleased with Congress. According to Gallup, fewer than 8 in 10 Americans approve of the job Congress is doing.
For sure, part of the dourness is not really about Congress. People are annoyed because what media they see on Congress focuses heavily on conflict and crazy behavior by legislators. The news rarely covers instances of Congress doing good things.
That said, it is still fair to say that Congress is not doing well. Most obviously, it has failed to tackle some of the biggest problems facing the nation, like immigration, and often sits back and lets the executive branch and courts wade into these issues. Which is not how our system is supposed to work.
So what is wrong with Congress?
Many scholars, media, and members of the public diagnose the ills of Congress think in terms of the Three P’s: People, parties, and polarization.
It’s Kevin McCarthy’s fault; it’s Chuck Schumer’s fault. If we had better people, we would have a better Congress.
Others point to the parties. The Democrats are out-of-touch liberals. The Republicans are proto-authoritarians. The Democrats and Republicans have sorted into ideologically conformist enterprises. Gone are the days when we had liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats.
Still others emphasize polarization as the cause for Congress’ failures. We are a nation of red and blue voters and states, so Congress itself is polarized. Gridlock and fighting is the result of Americans being grossly in disagreement with one another.
There is some truth to all these contentions. But these explanations have their own shortcomings.
Critically, the Three P’s ignore an important unit of analysis: the institution itself.
The U.S. Congress is an organization—a firm. Like any firm—a business firm, a school, or a music band, Congress’ performance is greatly affected by its capacity. It can only do as much as it is capable of doing.
In the congressional context, capacity can be defined as “the human and physical infrastructure Congress needs to resolve public problems through legislating, budgeting, holding hearings, and conducting oversight.”  Some specific aspects of congressional capacity are its funding, its processes for executing tasks (e.g., how bills go to the floor), its technology for completing its work, how it internally organizes itself, its leadership structure, and its people.
So that is the framework I and my coeditors and coauthors adopted. And this lens for looking at Congress has proven illuminating. What you see is an institution that has experienced escalating demands upon it...

The topic of this episode is, “Delegates to the House of Representatives: who are they and what do they do?”
My guest is Elliot Mamet. He is a Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Previously, he served as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow. Elliot holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Duke University.
Also important to note is that Dr. Mamet spent time working in the office of Washington, D.C. delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton. All of which makes him a great person to ask the question, "Delegates to the House of Representatives: who are they and what do they do?"
Kevin Kosar:
Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our republic. It’s a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be, and that is why we are here to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I’m your host, Kevin Kosar, and I’m a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington D.C.
Welcome to the podcast.
Elliot Mamet:
Thank you, Kevin. It's great to be here.
Kevin Kosar:
Let's start with a really simple question. Listeners are all too familiar with the fact that the House typically has 435 members. But they also have delegates. How many delegates are there to the House of Representatives?
Elliot Mamet:
Currently, there are five delegates to the House of Representatives. They serve from Washington, D.C., Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. There's also a Resident Commissioner—a non-voting member—from Puerto Rico. So there're six total non-voting members in the House.
Kevin Kosar:
Representatives in the House come from districts these days. Where and who do these delegates and non-voting members represent? And is represent even the correct term for what their role is?
Elliot Mamet:
The non-voting members of Congress represent Americans who live outside the several states. Throughout their entire history, they've represented people who don't live in states—whether that's in the federal enclave of the District of Columbia or in territories either on the path to statehood or not on the path to statehood. Today, they represent 4 million Americans. Of that group, 3.5 million live in the United States territories—those people are 98% racial and ethnic minorities—and the remainder are the residents of the District of Columbia who are majority black or Hispanic. So the delegates represent overwhelmingly non-white constituents, and they represent a group of Americans who lack the same citizen rights and lack political equality to those people living in the several states.
Kevin Kosar:
Now, on this program, there's been a number of episodes where I and a guest have talked about earlier Congresses—the Congresses at the founding, early 20th century, etc.—and non-voting representatives just didn't come up in the conversation. Are they a recent development, or have they always been with us?
Elliot Mamet:
Great question. The non-voting representative has been a feature since the earliest Congresses. The institution dates back at least to 1784 when a committee chaired by Thomas Jefferson suggested that territories prior to becoming a state would be able to send a delegate to Congress with the