, comparing the house of representatives and the british house of commons. then, prime minister's questions with david cameron. after that, senate minority leader mitch mcconnell at a rally in west virginia. >> this week on "q&a," a comparison look at the u.s. house of representatives and the british house of commons. our guests are william mckay and charles johnson, the authors of the book on the subject. >> charlie johnson and william mckay, you had written a book called "parliament and congress representation and scrutiny in the 21st century." what is it? >> is in part a comparison

between -- and an update on a book written 30 years ago by two clerks, now totally updated, but a comparison as well. we projected into each chapter and wrote as the occasion permitted. for me at least, it is a way after 40 years of being the non- partisan official for the house of representatives to be somewhat judgmental on how the institution has changed. and the impacts of change under house rules and senate rules. i had to become -- more or less

-- an instant expert on the senate. i will always remind myself how much more difficult it would be on the senate side. it was reassuring constantly. but we took on a very ambitious outline. the allied -- bill had great ideas, but it was so ambitious from the organizational aspect of congress and parliament to the operational aspects, not necessarily the personal aspects. in my case, the customer references of change had really emerged in a much more rapid way. for 180 years the house at operated under standing rules. nowadays, the house adopts its

rules every two years but deviates from them, which is unique among parliaments in the war. >> william mckay, what is the biggest difference between parliament and the american government? >> the biggest difference is that at the center of the westminster system, without the separation of powers, you get members elected to the house whose job on the government side is to support the government. their numbers -- their job as -- this is our riding of two horses. it is always there. of the past 150 years government has dominated the house.

brittany and screwed in -- criticism and scrutiny has been very muted. [unintelligible] the house is beginning to recover its role a critic of the government. how far they can go, how far government members subscribe to report that government is getting it completely from -- wrong, i do not know. we will have to wait and see. it is made even more difficult since the last general election

because of the coalition. on top of the similarities with the congress the background going back to the beginning which is very similar, i think the beginning you see the same kind of problems looking at them from different viewpoints. you get pretty much the same kind of problems. >> how many members of the house rare representatives and the senate? >> 435 voting members, and i think six nonvoting delegates. in the senate, there are 100 senators. >> how big are the constituencies of a member of the house on average? >> between 600,700 thousand

persons. >> how members -- how many members out there in the house of commons and the house of lords? >> it varies from election to election. 646, but it may be 648 by now. the house of lords can go up to 1200 or 1300. they are -- they are nearly all hereditaries. but before that change, the house of lords was unique among legislatures in that it worked on the because of the absenteeism of most of its members. what will happen in the future, goodness only knows.

i think we say this in the book -- a membership of about 400, but the pace membership is about right. you do not give them so much legitimacy that they control the house of commons. we would take decades to get the lords right. >> how many members in the constituencies of the members of the house of commons? >> ideally between 60,070 thousand. -- 60,000 and 70,000. but the boundaries are completely impartial. they have the stated aim of equivalent size of constituencies.

the considerations which you have to take into account we are drawing legislative boundaries, associations, shopping, in the worst-case the smallest scottish electorate is about 26,000. the largest english is about 104,000. those totals are arrived at from the same principles, do not split up an island community. the western isles off the coast of scotland cannot split up. >> how did you to me? >> i think i first went to london in 1998 to begin an exchange. bill had been here quite earlier than that.

our office had been notoriously not visiting foreign countries. but it became apparent that he understands -- the understanding of comparative forms was to our benefit. i arrived on their doorstep with no fanfare, but with wonderful warm reception. >> you are saying clark. >> clerk and the chief administrative office. >> give us your background. >> i was born in mount vernon, new york. i lived there most of my youth. i went to an hearse college and university of virginia law school. i'm a remember of the district of columbia bar. >> how long have you been attached to the house of representatives?

>> on may 20, 1964, brian, i signed the contract and began working there as a legal assistant to the parliamentarian who had been there for 46 years. 40 years later today, may 20, 2004, i resigned. my resignation was read to the house. since then i have been a consultant to the speaker and the parliamentarians on procedural president. from 1994, when speaker foley. -- when speaker foley appointed me, speaker gingrich retain my services, although he was inclined to have a clean house. i think that benefit the house, and the nonpartisan ship of the

procedural arm of the house was maintained. >> mr. mckay, where did you come from? >> i was born in edinburgh i do not know why i decided to apply to the house of commons. the way of getting the post was to set the normal civil service combination. it was whether your mind fitted by the heads of the department. i went along to a nomination interview. i can remember for most of the time we spoke about the prospects of the next read the season. and i thought this was to be a nomination to be.

-- interview. i've now spent 41 years and ended up as the clerk of the house, which is a nomination by the crown on the recommendation of the prime minister. >> if someone is going to become the secretary of defense or the secretary of state, they have to be confirmed by the senate. what happens with a similar such a question -- a defense minister in great britain. >> not at all. they have to run the usual allotment of nomination of their adequacy -- conflict -- gaun tlet of their nomination for adequacy. but there is no specific confirmation of them. >> if you could pick one thing that is not in the british

system that is in the u.s. system that you like, what would it be? >> i would think the nonpartisanship of the speaker. -- in the british? >> in the british. his role as a true non-partisan although he comes from a party. that day to day selection of amendments, and in comparison to the evolution of the speaker's role, which has always been a hybrid role. , the nomination of an institutional non-partisan speaker together with party fund raiser leads to characteristics of the speaker here to overcome the initial notion that the speaker shall be above the fray. it is difficult for a speaker here in the united states now

from time to time to play the institutional role that he or she needs to. there is much more of a delegation to people who are not so qualified. >> how much money as a member of the house of commons make? >> and think it is difficult to say. the salary is about 70,000 pounds. >> would that be about $100,000? " the rest of that? >> all sorts of things which brings them under criticism. you need the existence of allowances. [unintelligible]

about 18 months ago, the routine of a lot of information about members claims came to significant problems. >> can you give us an example? >> one member claims for the duck house in his pawn. that has just been sold at auction as an amusing item of public life. at the time, that type of claim was seen to be ridiculous. even an impartial official, of the say that there been a good deal to many of these claims. >> how much men and in -- money does a member of the house and senate it is from time to time adjusted by the cost of living. but since 1989, congress has avoided the need to vote

affirmatively on merit -- did not give themselves of merit increases. they're considered constitutional that they are not raising their own salaries during their terms of office. the 27th amendment prohibits that. in response your last question, as i think about it, the relative reliance on campaign financing and the time spent in this country reluct -- relative to the relatively short amount of comparison that members of parliament give to fund-raising, that is a huge benefit to the british system. >> how much money in the race in the campaign? >> is virtually unlimited. >> what about in great britain but a month -- in great britain?

>> they have set limits for the contributions which people may make to political parties and individuals. for the amounts which the individuals may spend on campaigning in particular and general elections, it is continuously being refined to be as open and transparent as possible in the receipt of party funds. for example, there was a great controversy a couple of years ago because the bulls did not cover soft loans to parties. it was suspected that some were coming from sources not within the u.k. so they had to be it had to be knocked off.

all the expenditure on campaigning, is an to the seal of the electoral commission. it works quite well. i believe they do a good deal of settling down and monitoring. >> is there any taxpayer money spent on the campaigns were smart >> they do get some money but a lot. the idea of taxpayer money going to parties continually bubbles up under conflict. it would take away many of the opportunities. >> what are the links of terms? >> two-year terms for house and

delegates. there is one four-term -- four- year term under statute. and then senators serve six years. >> why you think the founders decided that the house of representatives would be the only one that absolutely had to be elected? >> when we started this book, i said that i should go to the federalist papers, which our introduction devotes quite a bit of attention to. as part of a compromise between this notion of representation of people and representation of states, because we at 13 states trying to form meaningful union and the articles of confederation had not done that.

it was clear that in order to ratify, they needed 67% of the states -- 75% of the states to ratify, and they needed do you need ratification as states regardless of population. that was the balance between the house -- where each state gets one the minimum representative and it is a population adjustment of continues. >> in both houses, they have a maximum term of the parliament, which is five years. no government wants to go up against the puffers of a five- year term. it conveys a sense of desperation. it sometimes has to happen. just look at the last election.

under the present law, the prime minister can decide and as the queen to dissolve. the present government has introduced legislation to change that. to have a standard five-year term which will be shortened if either the prime minister loses a vote of confidence or 67% of house vote for the solution. -- ford dissolution. it will be to reduce but not eliminate the possibility of a less-than-five-year term. the parliament is then dissolved, the house of lords comes back.

>> the length of the campaign in the united states, is there any date that people start campaigning? >> it is the statutory, but it is usually day one. there is always fund-raising going on. >> can they advertising continue campaigning? >> yes. in what about in the british system? >> we do not have the same imperative of fund-raising from day one. but everybody knows from the politics of that day when the last election must be. you can see imperceptibly the temperature going up just before. >> can they spend money on advertising during that time? >> they do, but the real change

of. comes when everyone sees an election coming. in each of you must have >> i was clerk of the house for five years. >> what will you remember that was the most interesting controversial -- where you had to make a decision and you were that -- and are you the last word? >> one particular difficult moment was in 1985. tip o'neill was speaker, and c- span was directly involved in his order for the cameras to pan the chamber. >> they were not our cameras. >> they are the house cameras. but the speaker had been upset

about the growing rhetorical use of gestures and commentary by backbench republicans, led by new gingrich, who saw a new approach toward gaining majority, to ridicule the then- majority which turned out to have been in the majority for 40 consecutive years, the democratic party. by the mid-1980s, the consolatory notion of -- consolatory -- conciliatory notion was beginning to give way i. as the special order speeches began to proliferate with rhetorical gestures to a member who was 500 miles away, the camera only focusing on the member speaking, it would lead the audience to think that that

member was refusing to engage. his bestll, after friend was sponsoring an amendment on iran-contra, and was characterized as being unwilling to participate when he was on the way, he ordered without notifying to have the cameras pan the chamber. he later said that that was a mistake on his part. recriminations begin immediately. he then took questions of personal privilege and decry the lack of fairness on the part of speaker and nail. hadlly speaker o'neill enough. he took the floor to defend his decision to pan the chamber. he gestured toward mr. gingrich

, and said that it was the lowest thing that he had ever seen done in 35 years of politics. then tried lot jumped up and demanded the speaker's words be ruled out of order. the speaker had installed his close friend from massachusetts and told him that he was going to be on the edge. he had to rule on whether or not saying what another member had done was the lowest thing that he had ever seen. the then-parliamentarians, my dear friend, we advised him that you cannot have member say that about others. nor can you have a double speaker -- a double standard for the speaker. the speaker was ruled out of

order. he was saying that he would not do that. we were very worried about the precedent that would be set. finally we imposed upon him to rule. but he said that he was not going to do because he thought it was true. truth was a defense, and edwards. you cannot establish that as a basis for a ruling, because anyone could be overruled. he finally gaveled the speaker to order. that moment was a watershed. newtcertainly focused on gingrich and at the same time it showed that the parliamentarians's abies was

well he did. -- advise was well heated. >> how long did that conversation take? >> it was 10 or 15 minutes. we had someone there transcribing the word. we showed that there was no direct precedent on st. what that one -- on one member saying that the other thing -- that what someone else did was the lowest thing he had ever seen. only his reluctance. >> what did he not agree with you? >> he had ruled that the speaker was in order, there could of been an appeal, which now is commonplace. the row appeal of the ruling of the presiding officer. it is not a big issue in my mind and i was interviewed on this very question.

the appeal of rulings from the chair, the republicans could appeal the ruling and there would have been a roll call vote. presumably the democrats would have supported the chair by doing so, establishing the that calling someone else the lowest paying is not out of order. that in retrospect prove that the parliamentarians advice was appropriate. as the republicans took the majority in 1995, that was an example -- certainly and mr. gingrich's mind -- that we could give impartial abies. -- advice. when the chair will make an

obviously correct ruling on some obscure rule, only that have -- usually a question of privilege on how the house is running itself -- just last week it was want on whether there should be an active lame duck session. they have a roll call vote, and immediately those votes on the appeal for spawn in various districts as a vote on the merits of the proposition, should there be a lame duck session? that is wrong. >> one moment you remember? >> it was the 1990's. the house was faced with a bill to enact in british law a commission -- i european

commission changing and expanding the basis of the european union. it was beginning to fail, not very quickly, but it was losing and it did not begin with a very big majority. the first thing that happened was a shower of amendments. then a motion against ratification. it was put on the back burner. then the danish mind was changed. that came the bill. 650-odd amendments. in the british system, the speaker has the right to select some amendments for discussion and to pass over others.

the system allows the chair to say this is an important amendment, we will discuss it with that and and that when in doubt and -- with that one in that one in that one. and this one is just silly. and in doing that, the chair advised me -- i have faxed to me all the amendments, and i can remember looking out the window at the fog, and thought what was i going to do now? if this went wrong the government could be in considerable trouble, the house would be in trouble, and the

chair is definitely in trouble. i had to group these 600 amendments into thematic groups, so far as i understood them. i simply could not understand some of them. if you did not understand it, you put it into the yes pile. it began to fall as a result of this performance, not because of the selection that i advised, but under all these amendments. we said to the chairman of the ways and means, you're going to get the motion of censure at the end of this. i am pleased to say that after the motion of censure, one of

the proponents of the censure came to the chair and said, it was only political. >> one of the things this book does not have on that that i can find is the price. it is an oxford book. a sneaking suspicion that this is not cheap. >> the one that you are holding is that gift of our generosity. >> i accepted. >> as a hardback and in that category, a reference text, which the price highly, it retails of $160. on amazon, it is reduced by $28. -- $128.

>> how did you do this? as i read a long, i see you interweaving. >> it was not easy. sometimes the language is the same but the meaning is different. sometimes there is no equivalent in one parliament when you're trying to compare to the other. but we did as much as we could. we simply wrote our section and try to meld them as far as we could. but we were well of biased not to break the sessions we were trying to combine down too far. to make it between the big topics. >> computer, back and forth? how long did it take you to do

this? it in from the time we conceived the idea, which i was driving bill to dulles airport in 2003, i would say five years going back and forth. the creation of the outline, the approval of the outline by oxford and its referees, so- called, was the first year. but it was quite ambitious. to be truthful, rather than. down and make it a different shorter book had felt that i couldn't do justice to all the topics in the outline. my propensity to use more work than are necessary became rather apparent. oxford said a word limit of 100,000. hopefully they realize they had to double the word limit and ultimately they tripled it. that was what emerged.

>> this is close to 600 pages and 300,000 words. none of us would be sitting in this room doing this if it had not been for the house of representatives going on television. excuse me while i read what you say in here about television in the house, and i'll read would you say about the commons. --u righwrite-

how strongly do you feel about this? >> i will stick by that, but the open quite together with" is very important. together with the usual size and of rules that impose -- the rules than impose a limit on the number of amendments, if any can be offered, and in the rules committee gives the universe of permissible amendments, and the members now -- they know that they are going to veto -- if they won a participate in that speech, that prepare a speech and then they find that from the manager how much time he or she will be allocating. they will usually prepare a

speech that consumes all of that time so they do not have to be interrupted and yield to other members. other members cannot seek their own time by pro forma amendments. you have to get a separate five minutes to reply to question. the debate is controlled. i base that more than anything on what i observed before television, the spontaneity with the ability of any member to speak until the house impose time limits, to speak as often as necessary, and the willingness to yield two other members on the other side who are not going to try to embarrass the member who yielded. >> the entry --

>> i think i would stick by that. it is still conversational. i really get the impression that very few if any members talk overheads of their members and colleagues to the cameras. i think in my experience has been we forget that the cameras are there. what really tests with that this

is good or bad is the individual or rhetorical ability to persuade a member. a lot of speeches, the member is not very good at it. i am not sure how many in the mid it -- in the british public watch the challenge -- the channel. >> how many homes in great britain can see it? >> most of them can. few of them will. it was essential as a piece of democratic machinery. but cranked -- great television it ain't. but building preservation in the

west of england? >> week. on sunday nights, the question time. why is there such a big difference between what we see in their debates and what we see in hours? >> i am not sure that what we see in prime minister's question time necessarily reflects this. we do not have question time, and you may remember a resolution in the early 1990's to allow periodic questioning of cabinet officers on the for the house and a plenary session. that received a ruling but it never went anywhere. the whole nation of separation of powers, the government is not in the house or in the senate. they should be witnesses before

committees. it is the committee forum that becomes the forum for questions to the executive branch. >> you have an aside in you that i want to ask you about. and then you talk about reverse doughnutting. >> whenever one person was called to speak, there would be a ring of concern colleagues around him. but then that would disappear.

that would convey that no one in the house believe with he was saying. >> unless i misunderstand in the term. >> which you have a lot of people sitting around the member in a committee? >> the appearance of solidarity on either side of the aisle on television, and clearly the committee staff and the senior members are together and making a collective point during a lot of the debates. i had ever seen the term applied here. the camera will pick up members anywhere in the chamber. >> would we be better off in a country if we did not have television in the house? >> there is no turning back now.

i wrote something strongly felt that when television began. i saw members changing their style. now they're changing their attitude. very often they are personal and they do not want to engage on their time in someone else's attack upon them. the american people have to see that now. it is unfortunately the core of our political operations. they have to see the charts and graphs, even though they realize this is not obeyed. they have to see what the house has become in order to properly judge it. to say that there would be no more television would not work. it would not fly with the american people. and with all the other electronics allowed on the floor, cellphones and black forest -- blackberries and what have you, members have spoken

against this. we had a rule until recently that there would be in electronic devices. -- there would be no electronic devices. the senate was almost destroyed. but they cannot live without the way of communication. i think it would give access to lobbyists and others who have the electronic capability into the chamber, where jefferson was concerned that it was a sanctuary to have a debate among members. >> what about in the house of commons? would they be better off? >> there is no turning back. the impact of televised parliamentary debate is not great on the movement politics.

television will probably do less harm than charlie thinks it might in this country. >> to the british have a constitution? >> yes, not all in one place, you understand. but we of constitutional arrangements rather than the constitution. you and i read here that basically no one has anything to say about what goes on in the house of commons but the house of commons. >> there is a great deal of pressure in the house -- let me give you an example. from the human rights law, the house was taken into the european court of human rights. the toughest human rights are being infringed. -- they thought human-rights were being infringed. it is something that our predecessors could not have

anticipated. it happened. the court of human rights -- we thought that the challenge was so on meritorious, it would not be successful at first page. will have to go to the second stage. before we won a very uncomfortable procedure, one of the judges said we were wrong. we ought to have more recourse against a member speaking in the house. where they will play, i do not know, but it is an open question. we may be attacked from the direction again. in chapter 6 of the book, the power of the purse. i would just read the first

sentence. the power to authorize the raising of taxes -- how was that? >> there is a quarter-step process in the congress, the budget process, the authorization process, the appropriation process, and the revenue-raising process. each in its own right takes an inordinate amount of time, some never gets accomplished. this year there is no budget resolution. there's no appropriation for most of the government. but the complexity of time at issue in each of the stages -- obviously the budget process with as reconciliation

component, and where policy issues can be revisited in the form of limitation amendments -- each of those takes an incredible amount of time. the appropriations process until recently has been the most open as far as individual member presentation. there is no doubt jamming through a budget. -- there is no jamming through a budget in the congress. that is the biggest difference. bill would say in the parliament, there is not much open debate and amendment on budget issues. >> another example is there is no appropriation in westminster. >> what you mean by westminster? >> in the house of commons, you cannot debate the appropriations bill. that is what the rules say.

you come to the central paradox that government expenditure come down from above. the house meddle with them to a limited extent, but no backbench member paper poses an increase in expenditure. jim what about an increase in taxes? >> no. >> who determines the taxes that to pay in great britain? >> the government. the house of commons may shorten the time it may rest on the people, but they cannot either increase the tax or increase the spending under the bill. these are rules which go back to

the 18th-century. so select committees have got to look at the efficacy, the economy of these measures. ed to limite amendmen but not to increase it. the appropriations bill is really the tag on which the national audit office conductus government accounts. >> chapter 11 -- we're running out of time. what happened? >> it was a watershed time. the most important moment would be the clayton powell exclusion which was ruled unconstitutional

by the supreme court. he was found to have improperly diverted funds and made improper tax claims. it was the chairman of the education and labor committee of the time. the recommendation was to censure him, strip him of seniority, find him, but keep him as a member. the house decided that they did not have to seek him and expel him by 67% vote. that was eventually overturned and he was reelected. that was the indication that the house and senate, but bobby baker scandal at the same time, needed to have a code of conduct, disclosure rules come and some restrictions on lobbying, but also needed to

have a bipartisan committee that oversaw ethics complaints in a systematic way, rather than having to create a special one on an ad hoc basis. write -- anything like that in the house of commons? >> yes. it began with an instance of members being accused of taking money to ask questions. from then on, the house paid more and more attention to ethical problems. it always been a code of honor. it could not just carry on in that way. the public wanted to be completely assured that there was no monkey business.

on and on we went until 18 months ago, until the system which had built up in parliament, and in the house of commons in particular, for recording the interests of members, policing them, punishing them, till that system was shown to be unable to cope with the tsunami of complaints about how members had been treating their allowances. it was out of that the very difficult problem was addressed -- how do you devise an independent means of controlling and punishing members of a sovereign parliament? jim and we have only two minutes. this one example that the public had no idea how the congress

operated? >> u.s. me earlier about one example of tension and difficulty in the office. it came to my mind that you only gave me one option. the impeachment process was virtually unknown to the public because richard nixon escape impeachment by resigning. in 1988, that process and the way it was manipulated in the house certainly caught the public's attention. as did our role in advising the chair that the censure motion was not for germain alternative to impeachment. under notion of separation of powers. the british have no confidence, but we do not. >> i think the way that members in all parts of the house in

their bitter moments agree with each other. in select committees, the way that they are able to sit in the morning, to make constructive criticism of the government, and in the afternoon, some of them take a destructive criticism of the government. the camaraderie still in the house of commons and much more in the lords on which rests such progress that we have to make in improving and sharpening the house. >> very different from ours, the camaraderie. and we have a lot more to talk about what our time is up. the name of this book is of an " parliament and congress -- representation in scrutiny in the 21st century." or cassette been clerk of the house of commons, william mckay, and charles johnson, former parliamentarians of the

u.s. house of representatives. thank you, gentlemen. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> for a dvd copy of this program, please call. ford free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q&a.org. we will have a look at the pros and cons of early voting.

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