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The Lawfare Podcast

Tony Mills on Congress's Institutional Limitations in Responding to the Coronavirus

The Lawfare Podcast

The Lawfare Institute

Law, Terrorism, History, Politics, News, National Security, Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Diplomacy, International Law, International Relations, Constitutional Law, Rule Of Law, Current Events, Government, Military

4.76.4K Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2020

⏱️ 38 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Margaret Taylor sat down with Tony Mills, director of science policy at the R Street Institute, to talk about an article he recently wrote with Robert Cook-Deegan titled, "Where's Congress? Don't Just Blame Trump for the Coronavirus Catastrophe." They talked about the limited role of Congress in responding to the current crisis, and more broadly, its diminished institutional capacity to absorb and respond to developments in science, technology and medicine.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:14.7

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0:18.2

Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair

0:25.6

no bull and the aftermath.

0:34.2

With these staffing trends, you can also see staff increases in the leadership offices in

0:39.2

Congress.

0:41.0

And so the picture you get is a kind of an overall decline in resources, I would say, but

0:46.6

a shifting of resources away from what you might think of as sort of substance toward politics

0:53.2

within the institution of Congress.

0:55.7

And the agencies are really illustrative of that.

0:58.7

So when you think about congressional expertise, where do they get their expertise on certain

1:05.2

subject areas?

1:06.2

Well, they get them from committee staff and from the in-house congressional agencies,

1:10.4

agencies like the government accountability office, the congressional research service,

1:15.1

and the office of technology assessment.

1:16.8

The latter doesn't exist anymore.

1:19.7

Now see over time, all of those agencies have declined.

1:23.7

OTA was zeroed out in 96.

1:27.5

It still exists in statute.

1:28.9

It was just defunded.

1:31.8

And what's interesting about OTA is that its express purpose was supplying Congress with

...

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