thanks again for doing this. dir. young: thank you, this was lovely. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> this afternoon, homeland security secretary alejandra mayorkas british reporters during his visit to the u.s.-mexico reporters. you can see live coverage of that beginning at 5:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, on c-span now , or online at c-span.org. >> wednesday, the first formal hearing of the impeachment of the homeland security sec.. live coverage of the house homeland security committee begins on c-span3, c-span now, or online at c-span.org.

♪ >> since 1979, in partnership with the cable industry, c-span has provided complete coverage of the halls of congress from the house and senate floors to congressional hearings, party briefing and committee meetings. c-span gives you a front row seat to how issues are debated and decided with no commentary, no interruption, and completely unfiltered. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. c-span viewers are familiar with stephen pearlstein , former washington post columnist, currently at george mason university professor, politico concerti writer. this is the headline of his most recent piece. the root causes of congressional dysfunction, capitol hill has forgotten how to make a deal. what do you make of the spending

deal announced last night with this -- was this a sign of dysfunction or breaking dysfunction? guest: it is a sign of dysfunction. first of all, the fiscal year began in october. once again, they did what they normally did and not have a budget. they did not have appropriations bills. they did the continuing resolution. they had known since fall the continuing resolution would be expiring this month. what did they do in anticipation of that? nothing. they dickered around all fall with non-legislative, political theater, like they have done for the last of the 10 years. again, once again, the only way to avoid going over a cliff is to have the leadership negotiate something behind closed doors, bring it at the last minute to the members and say, take it or leave it. the members have very little

input into it. it undermines regular order. it undermines the process by which congress has historically figured out what the country needs and wants. for to put it differently, what the country needs and is willing to accept. that was a process that involved individual members doing whatever they thought was best for their country, for their district, for themselves. interacting with each other on line by line, on bills and committees, then going to the floor and having the ability to amend that further. that is the way the majority was discovered, for what the country wanted and or was willing to accept. now, it is all from the top. every time they do it from the top, it simply undermines regular order, undermines the committees, undermines the original numbers. host: governing by crisis, this

is a complaint we have heard most vocally on the house floor from the freedom caucus and matt gaetz, in particular. do they have a point? guest: the point is valid, but then what happens is they want the republican conference in the rules committee to bring bills to the house and they do not want to let anybody amend them. if they let anybody amend them, a moderate majority of democrats and republicans would vote to amend them in a way that would make them less palatable. in fact, the freedom caucus wants republican leadership to put their bill on the floor and not allow any amendment to it. they are hypocritical in that respect. host: getting through your piece in politico we are focusing on in these 45 minutes about hostagetaking. what is the difference between hostagetaking and dealmaking? guest: hostagetaking is connecting things that do not

belong with each other. if you say that israel a has to be connected -- israel aid has to be connected to ukraine aid and ukraine aid has to be connected to order security -- these are three difficult issues and separate issues. if you say that they have to be done together, then what you are saying is that the same majority that passes one has to pass all three. it is like a rubik's cube. you have to get all three majorities to line up together, which is very difficult, as you can imagine in today's congress. not just in terms of the polarization of the parties, but on issues like ukraine and israel in particular, and border. the issues do not line up strictly partisan. if you force all three, what you are doing is what we just said. you have to have the deal made by leaders at the last moment,

put before them embers and take it or leave it, you can't change it. if they can do that. it is difficulty line all of these things up. take each issue separately. what is the problem with doing it? the problem in the minority of any one issue do not want to accept the or compromise, so they will use another issue to force their view on the majority that does not want it. host: you argue in your piece the problem of doing it is also of the parties. 30 years ago, parties were largely irrelevant to the legislative process for folks who can't imagine at a time like that. explain. guest: i used to work in the congress. i was what you now call a chief of staff to the united states senator as an improbable -- at an improbable age of 24. in those days, the democratic party went from jim allen of alabama on the right, very conservative, to jim avenue arrest, the south dakota

democrat, who was the most liberal. the republicans went from jake javits, who is almost as liberal as any democrat, to a very conservative firm and. the probably -- the parties could not stand for almost anything, because the difference of opinion was so wide. congress was able to legislate, but almost everything went through on a bipartisan basis. for each issue, there was a different majority.within the committees on the full floor, there were always changing. because each of the pieces meaning each of the members was flexible and could go this way or that way on any given issue and within an issue, on various amendments. this part of the bill, that part of the bill, they did everly. that is how they put together bipartisan majorities. that is the only way you could

get things done was a bipartisan basis, because the entire democratic caucus in the house or senate, or the republican caucus, they did not agree on anything. host: was the mindset of members different back then? was it ok to work with the other side? guest: ok to work with the other side? that is all they did. no one took direction from the party caucus, or the party leaders except for the rare occasion when an issue was a party issue. rare. majority leaders in both houses are like air traffic controllers. they simply scheduled things for votes. they sometimes encourage committees to move ahead and do it faster or slower. maybe at the margin exerted influence, but all the power was in the committees and particular, the committee chairs and subcommittee chairs. it came up from the bottom.

it was not dictated from the top. you did not know in my day what mike mansfield thought about an issue. he did not tell you what he thought, because he tried to keep himself neutral on things. for the very reason that he wanted to be trusted by his full caucus. tip o'neill did not impose his will on the house. he is a great leader of the house of representatives, but he did not pose his will on the house. it would not even occur to him to try to do that, except if the president of his party asked him to do something. then, he might twist some arms. there were rare occasions when leaders did that with civil rights bills, having things to do with foreign affairs and wars. in general, they let things come up from the members. host: to break this fever of dysfunction, what is the first step? guest: the first step is to get back to regular order. host: