>> washington journal continues. host: this is philip wallach of the civil enterprise institute. he is the author of the book "why congress." welcome to the program. the title is posed not like a question but more as a statement. guest: it is an apology for congress. congress is at the center of our constitutional system, and this book is a brief for why we need to evaluate as such, why it is the only place we can bring together the diverse elements from across american society, mix them up and get them to accommodate each other. if we try and run everything through the executive branch, that is too much weight on one person's shoulders. we and up with simmering anger,

and we need to rely more on congress to deal with our nations biggest problems. that said, i know there is a lot as skepticism about congress as an institution these days. that book tries to address that head-on. i have the current problems in congress grown up the way they have? host: let's start there. as far as key problems that may be seen as far as how congress works, what would those be? guest: the thing that pops to everyone's mind is the overwhelming earnest of the partisanship on capitol hill today -- bitterness of the partisanship on capitol hill today. i think that comes from some sources outside of the congress, but it is part of the culture of the place itself. part of this book is a plea for legislators to direct their

energies towards solving the problems that face the american people. closely along without problem is leadership dominance is one of the major themes of the book. right now we are in an era where the leaders in both chambers, the speaker of the house and the senate majority leader are incredibly powerful in determining what is on the agenda in each of their chambers. they have not always been such absolute gatekeepers. there has been more decentralized powerat times -- power at times in congress's past,. it is up to you to determine the structure congress. you can make things more decentralized. host: you write in the book that the w the congress is

cuently structured tends to reduce the complexity -- it opposes coalition building that would force factionto see each other as allies. instead leaders marshall the interests of their 'team'." guest: we do not have to agree on everything to agree on something, but it seems like the message coming from the leaders on capitol hill is we agree on enough with our own team. we always have to stick together with our own team, and we always have to keep the other side away. there is active counsel from the leadership in both chambers, do not do bipartisan deals. that complicates our message at the next election. we want to look at those swing

districts and say how bad it is for the other party to control those districts. they are really prioritizing winning the next election over dealing with the country's problems now. they are sincere in believing that that really is the best course for the future of the country. there really is a lot of mutual suspicion between the two parties today and the sense that somehow everything hinges on the next election. we have to zoom out a little and relies it is not always the end of the world. we just need to sometimes be able to see the commonalities. host: is the debt ceiling debate an example of that? guest: it is a frustrating thing. the debt ceiling forces a centralized negotiation between the president and the

congress. i have always been a skeptic of the efficacy of the debt limit. at the end we have to raise it. we have to not default. that limits the leverage conservatives have as they try to rein in federal spending. i have never thought it was the best venue. the way it played out in 2023, other than the president saying he would not come to the table, which was confusing to me, once they did come to the table it was, fairly constructive. it is not nearly big enough to deal with the magnitude of our fiscal bills, but it is something, and it issued any radical measures that should

have scared off multiple members. we will see both sides of the middle against the extreme coalition pass this bill comfortably. host: you write about how congress works. tell us what you are seeing within the republican and democratic parties. within the republican conference there is a lot of disagreement with the speaker over this. as far as how congress works is that a good thing? guest: we do not need to expect every member of a party to think the same way as every other member of a party. if 100 members of the house have big problems with this bill and want to vote against it, it leaves 345 others. especially on the right, there is a sense that some of these

members will vote no on anything. any kind of deal you would have made with president biden, that is not going to get these members' support. that is standard operating procedure on the hill. their amount of leverage always seemed exaggerated to me. the same is true for some of the hard left progressives. any deal that kevin mccarthy is going to like, they are not going to like. you lose votes on both sides of the spectrum but you will have a whole lot of folks left in the middle. host: our guest is with us until 9:15, if you want to ask him questions about his book, (202) 748-8000 for democratss. (202) 748-8001 for republicans. independents, (202) 748-8002. if you want to text s, you can

do so -- text us, you can do so at (202) 748-8003. guest: if we think back to congress of a couple generations ago, one of the most famous figures is pam rayburn. he is remembered as a towering figure. his model of this beaker ship was different from speaker pelosi. he was the broker -- the speakership ship was different from speaker pelosi. it was a stranger coalition, more historically contingent in many ways, but his mastery of washington was managing to get all of those people to come to the table, directing traffic in that complicated coalition. he is never someone who said "it will be my way or the highway." that is not how washington worked back then. who had a model where committee

chairman were the most important party centers back then. there was a sacred sink to seniority principle, that meant they were going to keep their chairmanships no matter what, and they were not in any danger of being thrown out of their seats. the single party of the solid south. that was a different model that led to different dynamics, forced all of these different factions to work with each other, and republicans were sort of a permanent minority party within that regime, but figured out how to pick their spot and advance their causes within it. . some people think that as long as the parties are as closely matched as they have been, they will continue to focus on butting heads with each other, but i think there is a lot of frustration on capitol hill from lawmakers who feel like their jobs have been reduced to

pulling the lever the way their leaders tell them to. they do not feel like they have the chance to work constructively on legislation. host: is that reorganizing on the committee level, the rank-and-file level? guest: some of what the speakership fight was about in january, you felt the chip roy for action -- chip roy faction was asking for some power from the speaker's office. some of the things they were asking were just to give committee chairs a fair hand and not always have to dance to the speakers tune. i thought that was very constructive. i think it will be interesting today. we will see a rule from the rules committee passed with bipartisan support instead of the conventional thing, one party always slams their rules through.

we will probably not see that today. that creates the possibility of shifting bipartisan coalitions, which are what -- coalitions advancing legislation. host: philip wallach our guest from the american enterprise institute. his book "why congress." from york, maine, independent line, ed, good morning. caller: good morning and thank goodness for c-span. i just believe, we seem to be looking at this from the wrong perspective. if i am wrong in how i am looking at this, please let me know. if you are on a ship, and you are trying to get to a location, and windss thunderstorm are blowing you -- and winds and storms are blowing you off track, you take the ship's wheel

and you get back on track. the ship's wheel on the right-hand side is less government,'s the ship wheel -- government, the ship's wheel to the left-hand side is more government. my getting this wrong? guest: that is a great metaphor. i like that. the issue with the metaphor is that we do not agree on what the problems are. when it comes to this fiscal fight we are having right now, i think there are a lot of folks who are not sure whether our government is too big or too small. certainly most republicans are focused on too much discretionary, nondefense discretionary spending, but that is a small part of the budget,

about 1/6 of our federal spending is in that category. his defense spending too big or too small? we are mostly not touching that today. our entitlements, social security, medicare, medicaid, we are not touching those today for the most part. we have to decide on where we want to get to. that is not as easy as it sounds. if everyone agreed on what the size of the government looked like, it would be easy to steer our way there, but we don't agree. we have profound disagreements. t househe is controlled by republicans after the election of 2022 so we are steering to the right as a result. i think that is an acceptable way for us to make sense of these issues, but it. is not easy host: a viewer on twitter asked about the mechanics of this thing.

"u wouldi not be hard to implement a bipartisant system where the party's caucus decides what is voted on on the house floor." guest: that is not quite right. this beaker does not have a mechanism by which he can decide what wills come up -- what bills come up. what determines what bill comes up is the rules determined by the rules committee. people have come to think that it is all up to the speaker, but that is not right. the committee is stacked heavily in favor of the majority party. there are 9 members of the majority party and only 4 members of the minority party. most of the time in recent years it is basically what the speaker wants has gone. we have members of the rules

committee who are not as close to the speaker, republican members, that is what came out of the speakership fight in january. that is representative chip roy, and representative thomas massie. they are not considered close allies of the speaker. 2 of them voted against this debt limit rule. it passed with 7 republican votes and to six no votes. the rules committee going forward could be somewhat more unpredictable. anytime people want to make some bipartisan coalition, perhaps they can move legislation that the speaker would not have been so eager to see brought to the floor. that is always a live possibility, just because it has not been utilized in recent years does not mean it is there.

host: here is matthew from new york, democrats' line. caller: as a progressive, i am really dismayed with the democrats and joe biden for even taking up this ludicrous idea of having a debate over the debt ceiling limit. a majority of the people who are in congress now or in congress then when all of these issues were passed. now it has come the time to pay for them, and they want to change the rules. if, i would have -- if i had been joe biden, i would have gladly shown then the exit. this is money that has been spent, correct? i think we can all agree on that. i don't know what kind of

economic school a lot of republicans have gone to, but as far as i am concerned, if you are constantly reducing taxes, yet your spending does not go down, how do you manage anything when you are not bringing money in? i go to work all week, i get my paycheck, and i go out, my expenditures and whatnot. if i do not have any money coming in, how do i exist? explain to me how that works. host: thank you for the call. guest: these are good questions. could joe biden have just said "you go figure it out. i am not going to give you anything." i don't think he could have! i think that would have been

tantamount to him saying "i don't believe congress really gets a say in these issues. i so think it matters that republicans won control of the house in the 2022 midterm." he tried that for a while and i don't think people were too sympathetic to his position. the idea that it is unprecedented to organ over the debt ceiling is totally wrong. it has been a familiar feature of the debt limit to have intense, partisan negotiations for many decades. the better part of a century at this point. he had to come to the table. he do not have to give away the store when he did. it is a pretty modest deal i think. the other question matthew asked was isn't this -- how is it that we even have to worry about this at all? the debt limit is a strange

feature of u.s. fiscal policy. it is not like every other developed country does it this way. we could have a law that says the u.s. treasury can have as much debt as they need to to authorize legal obligations. congress would still be the one to authorize debt issuance, but they would leave it to the treasury and it would come down to the appropriations process. we never have done it that way before. it would be a change to do it that way going forward. only so much debt can be issued and the treasury has to respect that law on the books. if we were to come to the x state where the treasury ran out of cash, the executive branch would be put in a difficult position, but the law would still say do not raise any more debt above this limit. host: joe is on our line for

republicans. caller: i think the congressmen and senators themselves spend too much time raising money for their next reelection campaign. i have even heard some senators say they think it would be better if there was some sort of financial reform of campaigns for reelection and election so i was wondering how you would feel about a law that allows federal financing of elections for congressmen and senators? thanks. guest: i am in vehement agreement with you. but i have to say that when i think about it -- usually when people think about money in politics, they think about corruption of one form or another, but i have to say when i think about it, so many

senators' time goes to raising money. it takes attention away from their work, which involves intense relationship building with their colleagues. unconcerned that the fundraising race is dominating people's time on capitol hill, and i would like to see something done to stop that. public financing will not be so easy though. it is a lot of money. i'm not sure a lot of taxpayers would be so eager to see their dollars spent on campaign ads, some of which might the things they disagree with very strongly. not too optimistic about the prospects of solving the problem through public financing, but it is worth thinking about how we can get this financing burden off some members' shoulders. host: our guest is philip

wallach of the american enterprise institute. the book "why congress is wha we are talking about>" you write " commolace descriptions of our cgrs as dysfunctional are hyperbolic." explain what you mean by that. guest: sometimes in media reports you would get the sense that congress really does nothing in recent years that is very wrong. congress continues to do a lot. first of all it passes a lot of laws every year that do not rise to the level of the front page news but they are still important policies. there is a lot more bipartisan cooperation on things that will not be so polymerizing than you might realize. there is a lot of important work going on on the hill. a lot of hard-working members are getting a lot of important things done on a low-profile

basis. then there are high-profile things they're getting past every year. spending and the national defense authorization act are two big examples of that. those are things i get bipartisan enactment every year. it is not always pretty getting to that endpoint but they do get there. finally, there is this sort of crisis dynamic in our government when whenever there have been crises in recent years the leaders of the two parties get together in a hurry and they pass some ambitious legislation covid being the most recent example of that. all those covid spending bills passed with only a few dozen votes against them in the house. congress can get together and get things done on a bipartisan basis but it doesn't tend to be able to do so for long-standing

big problems. immigration is when i talk about in the book. it seems so obvious that we need to do something to reform our system. so many different aspects of it are broken, and it feels like there should be a big partisan coalition willing to do that work host: are there different ways how the house and the senate operate? guest: the senate by its nature has fewer number members is likely to be a more decentralized egalitarian place where the members feel they are important people. in recent years, the majority leader in the senate has become a very dominant figure in terms of having control of the agenda. so much of the senate operates under unanimous consent

agreement. it something went up talk about that often but the way the senate structures its business often relies on every single member agreeing to do it that way. even though you hear these cantankerous senators get up there and complain, they are giving their consent for the senate to operate. we've had senators, all 100 of them, willing to let the senate work in a centralized manner that is reminiscent of how the house is often operated. it's not a historical norm for the senate at all. if one member was determined, they could make things difficult. host: it takes one member to stop things altogether. guest: that's a bit of an overstatement but the rest of the mood have some way of moving things along but it wouldn't always be so procedurally straightforward. host: from john in cleveland, ohio, independent line, good morning. caller: good morning, i'm 87

euros old and i've watched c-span since 1980. you can look back in these last two years, both parties are taking an oath of office, knots of the constitution but for leadership. the problem is money, too much money is there. oil and water don't mix. power and money goes. this is the worst thing that has ever happened. i am 87 years old and not in a nursing home, thank god. it's still the greatest country but we don't even -- we have a debt limit but no other country has that. we don't educate the children's. they know more about sports. it's nothing more than a

loophole. they don't want to raise the limit for the 1099 agents and they say we don't have the money for social security. even though your faces in the mirror, your brain is inside. god gave us common sense, let's use it. host: thank you, caller. guest: i am a fellow clevelander myself so good to have your call and i enjoyed your rent. i think the really is something to be said of your sense that people are sometimes taking their oath to their parties and not to the constitution. i think we really need our members to look beyond the next election and look young their short-term partisan interests and think about the country's interests and what their obligation is to the u.s. constitution. to take that broader view of

things, i think that is really necessary. the question of getting our fiscal house in order, some people look at washington and they can understand how it can be so hard. i think it really is hard. i have some sympathy for the politicians here because you say we should just raise the cap on social security tax wages. that's a big, regressive tax increase that people will get very angry about if in one it is put through. -- if and when it is put through. it's a bit tickly heavy lift. i have some sympathy for the politicians not rushing to do it especially they feel the other party is going to try to blame them for it. they need to hold hands and jump together and our policies have not been conducive to that at

all. i think we are in a bad equilibrium where the two parties are more interested in villain icing each other than figuring out ways they can work together and find their mutual interests. hard to say how we find her way out but we need to. host: does congress have a better track record of republicans and democrats working and building relationships with each other internally before they hash out particular bills? guest: i think the current era which is been going on in the 21st century has been an unusually toxic one. there was more of a sense of camaraderie and mutual respect on capitol hill in earlier generations. of course, i would be a responsible not to note that that came with certain exclusionary norms. it baited difficult for lots of different kinds of americans to have a say at all so that was

helpful but it's a place where the members had a sense they are to be respectful of each other and they ought to see tish take seriously these with the legitimate representatives of our different interests and find out ways they can make things work. and thank there are many members were very suspicious of their colleagues for. that makes it difficult to work with them. host: linda is in new jersey, democrats line, good morning. caller: good morning, it is very difficult to understand where the republicans are coming from but that it's also easy to understand that they are trying to destroy our government. they are just doing part 2, trump to part one and tried to take down our democratic parties, -- policies and they are trying to destroy our economics.

this gives it credibility -- this takes away credibility within the world in the country. the republicans need to be replaced and mccarthy has a future so he should stand on something. that's all i have to say. guest: i flat-out disagree with you. when you look at the republicans and how they depress this debt limit negotiation, i don't think they are trying to destroy our country's credibility. i think they seriously believe we have overspent in recent years and that's been one of the drivers of inflation that has been hitting americans in their pocketbooks. they want to figure it away to get that problem under control and that means tightening our belts on some things. they have their ideas of where makes more sense to tighten that you probably don't agree with.

if you read the news reports about how the negotiations between biden and his team and mccarthy and his team went, i found some of those pretty heartening. they didn't act like people on the others the table were terrible villains trying to tear the country down or destroy it. they said you have your values and we have ours and we will figure out a deal we can both live with. that is compromise and that's how legislation ought to work at some level. i think that's been up for the healthy process and i don't know why there is a sense that republicans are trying to tear down and destroy our country. host: republican line, virginia, this is randy. caller: good morning. guest: good morning. caller: two quick points -- for people who say the debt, this is money we have already spent. unless you have spending caps,

we will have the same debate next year. we have to cut spending. is congressman murray from texas has noted that part of the deal for speaker mccarthy was that every republican on the rules committee had to support legislation to move it, that was part of the deal. i have not read that myself but mr. ralph norman of north carolina and chip roy both voted no on the rule. my point in support occur 30 that's my point. guest: thanks for those questions. let me take the second one first. this question about the rules

committee what representative chip roy has said. he thought the understanding was that republicans would have to stay unanimous to be able to push things through the rules committee. that was never actually reported as part of the deal. i think it would've been kind of strange in that case. when i give all nine seats on the rules committee to the freedom caucus types? they could literally have a veto over it. instead of these folks who were thought of as insurgents, not close to mccarthy. matthew voted for speaker to be house or -- house speaker through that process and voted with kevin mccarthy.

you would think having three seats on the committee is its own kind of power rather than imagining anyone of those members gets a veto. the other part of your question was aren't we going to keep going back to this every year if we don't have some kind of cap in place? the truth is, we will have to keep worrying about this fiscal problem all the time until we somehow get a grip on it. that doesn't seem too likely in the near term. we will worry about the stuff every year we do that in part through the appropriations process but the appropriations are only about one third of the federal budget and the rest is mandatory spending.the congressional budget process is supposed to be the tool where we take stock of everything and get a grip on our nation's finances as a whole. the debt limit really is not an interval part of that. unfortunately, the budget processes fall apart.

nobody takes presidential budgets all that seriously anymore and congress doesn't even bother to pass legislation which the time. that's a real problem. the congressional budget process sounds boring but it's really at the heart of whether we are able to get a hold of our nation's finances and make the hard decisions we need to make. we need to focus on getting that process working. the idea that the debt limit somehow is going to facilitate the negotiations is not well borne out by the spirit's best ticket. there is the idea of regular order. when do we walk away from that process? guest: it's a term that doesn't have a precise definition. the idea is that things should happen in a schoolhouse rock kind of way where you have a

committee which is the people who specialize in the policies. they work on it and they hold hearings and they work something up and debate legislation. they consider amendments and they report something and eventually that will get floor consideration on the floor, the folks who weren't on the committee will have a chance to debate it and vote for final passage. there is a lot of steps in that process and a lot of them have a lot of skin in recent years s and actually work up a little in the industry is interest from the date is understood the leadership office is doing the heavy lifting on regular order of class really very few lively florida dates on this topic. we will rules are sort of the norm.es

this rule means we're not on a hero so what can promised as a way of the speaker was we would return a little bit more regular order is processes have made similar promises in recent weyears the house did believe that end of january was first in many years mostly not broken the rules so we want to see more than a on the floor before will always be in the place always want to see the work they be considered on the floor that would be a part of their work c1 what roles you moderate plays in today's? >> guest: i'm a political whscientist and the waiver is his voters will ultimately get to decide policy in a

dynamic system for all are the ones right in the middle, is the use should be well it doesn't always seem to work out that way at the end of the day mom is 80, willing to get together and with the opposition and not bombing them so i stay out of power and i will look at our political system and say why are we getting a body experience so much. the loss in the so is a lot of risk for that in the primary process. you are seeing a lot of s members more afraid of gaining primary and a few losing in the general election. this is no longer on the median voter on the is on the median primary voters was a different person primary elections are often very small and very most canadian

partisans so that's part of what drives us only part of this is how we decide to organize these institutions and median voter better if members are determined. let's hear it from cedric cedric in louisiana, independent line class as an independent i was looking the democrats would have put on the issue in the deal have included attacks is because i think that would save a lot of money. and the other comments and i had the about the median voters, the biggest problem we had people not being served as our as the media is concerned is the way we gerrymander the voters

gerrymandering does not meet the median criteria because it's only a small majority of people who want to basically control that area as far as who the owners are going to the second comment but that's my class before the question gerrymandering is something that could distort each member's office on average only from the median voter and worse on more partisan i think that is a serious thing and four volts and center themselves moderates wish must and politics were designed for them probably our right to be concerned about gerrymandering and elastase in the other hand the senate is not gerrymandered and is on

advanced problems so as not all gerrymandering. >> you also asked whetheryou supported a tax cut . i think people have to come to terms with the fact is sold moment has changed. we were in the slave tends not used to the fact that the bottle all three and the inflation was just a thing of the distant past where in the world anymore. the had a high inflation in recent years and have a sense that we needto reduce the deficit . that causes us to and asked to the mindset taxes or something along (not on the o day because his dollar plus deficit every year on a single sounds. i think we paid access.

>> more call home in orlando, >> i think a lot of the problems we face now is based on a lack of understanding. >> .hopefully this program at this point. watch all our programs online if you those sex c-span.org the senate is returning from their office solutions. lawmakers will take up a plan and efficient loan this rule and this week the senate is expected to federal legislation that is my name now live coverage here on c-span2. >> i rise today in opposition to an effort to walk president loan debt relief program extends the payments extension and opens the lives

of