I. ROADMAP FOR RENEWAL  Strengthen Congress’s Capacity to Fulfill its Constitutional Role    Restore  Congressional  capacity  to  legislate  and  appropriate  money  effectively    The Constitution assigns Congress the power and responsibility to make laws and decide  how money is spent. It’s time for Congress to take back that role and restore its central  place in our constitutional system.    We recommend:   ● Building capacity to legislate effectively and oversee the federal government;   ● Reforming the budget and appropriations process;  ● Reclaiming power from the Executive Branch; and   ● Returning deliberation to both chambers by allowing majorities to bypass  leadership.    The Problem    In recent years, Congress has failed to fulfill its constitutional role of legislating and  controlling spending, creating a vacuum at the center of our democracy. In a ​2017 survey of  Congressional staff​ by the Congressional Management Foundation and the Resilient  Democracy Coalition, only 11% of senior Congressional staffers were very satisfied in  Congress’s ability to “perform its role in our democracy.”1 There are several reasons for this.    Shortage of expertise and capacity​. The staff survey also found that 81% of staff believed  that access to non-partisan, high-quality expertise was important to perform their jobs, but  only 24% believed that they had that access. In recent decades, Congress has either cut or  failed to keep constant funding for committee staff and other legislative agencies with  non-partisan expertise. The last major effort to increase Congressional capacity was the  1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act (CBA). The Congressional  Budget Office (CBO) was created to structurally give Congress more analytic power, while  the impoundment procedures were specifically a response to President Nixon’s abuses. This  legislation, which shifted budget process power to Congress, was passed just weeks before  President Nixon resigned. Congress relinquished some of this power in 1995 with new  Congressional rules that reduced Congressional staff and ended the Office of Technology  Assessment (OTA). Today, Congress simply does not have the tools to do its job.    1 Congressional Management Foundation, ​State of the Congress: Staff Perspectives on Institutional Capacity in  the House and Senate (​ August 7, 2018), Available at:  http://congressfoundation.org/projects/resilient-democracy-coalition/state-of-the-congress​.   1  Failed budget process​. It is widely understood that the Congressional  budget process has completely failed, relying more and more on Continuing Resolutions  (and the sequester) to set levels of spending, but rarely with the specificity that the CBA  imagined. In 2018, Congress created the Joint Select Committee on Appropriations and  Budget Process Reform. It is not yet clear if this will have meaningful results in time for a  new Congress to be seated in 2019.    Abdication of policy-making to the executive branch​. Congress has failed to respond to an  increasingly complicated economy, resulting in the Executive branch regulating on top of  increasingly out of date legislation, such as the Telecommunications Act of 1996, etc.  Congress needs to reclaim authority by simultaneously increasing its analytic capacity and  legislating more responsively to a changing economy.     Breakdown in deliberation​. ​Finally, deliberation has ended in Congress. Votes are  increasingly party-line, and are intended to protect the parties, including the President,  from embarrassment. While there were many flaws in previous periods of bipartisanship,  they allowed coalitions to regularly legislate against the preferences of party leadership.     Proposed Solutions    Build capacity to legislate effectively and oversee the federal government    ● Increase funding for committee staff and legislative agencies (like CBO, the  Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT)  and the Congressional Research Service (CRS)) to increase staff and compensation  levels. Without more human capital and in-house policy expertise, Congress will  always be handicapped vis-a-vis both the Executive and non-governmental  pressures.   ● Restore the OTA either as a stand-alone entity or within an existing legislative  agency such as GAO or CRS.    Reform the budget and appropriations process    ● Adopt ​proposals from Bipartisan Policy Center​ and others coming out of the Joint  Select Committee on Appropriations Budget Process.2 Key elements include biennial  budgeting in the first session of Congress which would set the stage for  authorization and oversight work in the second sesion, and ending the debt ceiling to  prevent hostage-taking in budget negotiations.    2 Jason Grumet, ​BPC Proposals for the Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform  (March 9, 2018), Bipartisan Policy Center. Available at  https://bipartisanpolicy.org/library/bpc-proposals-for-the-joint-select-committee-on-budget-and-appropriations-pr ocess-reform/​.   2  Reclaim power from the Executive Branch    ● Create a Congressional Regulation Office to increase Congressional understanding  of agency actions and regulations and help strengthen Congress’s legislative and  oversight capacity.  ● Across different areas of legislation, Congress should legislate with more detail and  specificity, using the additional expert capacity described above, thereby limiting the  breadth of Executive branch discretion in regulation and execution.     Return deliberation to both chambers by allowing majorities to bypass leadership    ● In the House, implement the ​No Labels proposal​ that would anonymize signatures  on a discharge petition, weakening leadership’s power to pressure members not to  sign.3   ● In the Senate, adopt ​James Wallner’s third-degree amendment proposal​, allowing  Senators to bypass leadership filling the tree, which would permit floor  consideration of more substantive proposals.4  3 ​The Speaker Project: A No Labels Campaign to Break the Rules and Fix Our Congress (​ June 2016), No Labels.  Available at ​http://www.nolabels.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Speaker-Project_Digital.pdf​.   4 James Wallner, ​In Defense of Third Degree Amendments (​ October 20, 2017). Available at  https://www.rstreet.org/2017/10/20/in-defense-of-third-degree-amendments/​.   3