Jeff Bergner: The Vanishing Congress

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2019

⏱️ 88 minutes

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Summary

Why is today's Congress so dysfunctional? Are today’s legislators worse? What reforms could improve Congress? Jeff Bergner has had a distinguished career in government, having served as Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs (2005 – 2008), Chief of Staff to Senator Richard Lugar, and Staff Director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Drawing on his new book "The Vanishing Congress," Bergner shares his perspective on why Congress has increasingly ceded its Constitutional authority. Many have proposed fixes like campaign finance reform or term limits to solve these problems. But Bergner asserts that Congress has encumbered itself with many unhelpful practices. Bergner suggests reforms that might strengthen Congress, including trimming down Congressional staff and eliminating the Senate filibuster. Finally, Bill Kristol and Bergner discuss how the executive branch and legislative branch interact with one another, and how this relationship might be improved.

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome to Conversations. I'm pleased to be joined today by my friend Jeff
0:19.5	Berger, a veteran of the Academy, capital hill, the private sector, now back teaching again.
0:27.0	Work came to Washington in what 1978?
0:30.0	To work for Senator Lugar, became his Chief of Staff, Staff Director of Senate Foreign Relations
0:34.3	Committee, which is a major job in Congress and that an important government relations firm.
0:39.1	So we're going to talk about Congress.
0:41.1	Okay.
0:42.1	We're going to explain what's right and what's wrong with Congress.
0:45.8	And you've written a book recently, which I highly recommend, The Vanishing Congress,
0:50.4	Reflections on Politics in Washington, which has wonderful stories and
0:54.0	anecdotes for your time there as well as serious reflection about
0:57.8	Congress's role in the scheme of the regime so so why is it vanishing? What's wrong? What's the problem? What's what's
1:06.2	well where it started it's the problem? I think Congress has been in a very bad
1:11.8	place for the last four or five decades more so now than ever probably
1:17.2	and it's interesting a lot of people come up with different schemes for how to fix
1:21.4	Congress.
1:23.0	Some of them are schemes like we need more transparency in campaign fundraising.
1:28.0	We need to fix a gerrymandering problem.
1:31.0	We need to have public financing of elections. We need the rank preference
1:36.6	voting the latest fad. I just heard someone talking about that in the car on the way
1:40.6	over here. There are term limits proposals.
1:44.0	Huge numbers of listeners on the driving.
	...

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