Protesters rally in the Hart Senate Office Building atrium in support of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford as she testifies on the sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Thursday Sept. 27, 2018. (Photo By Sarah Silbiger/CQ Roll Call)
The partial government shutdown is already casting a dark shadow for prospects of what Congress might accomplish in 2019. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)
Washington tends to work best when one party controls both Congress and the White House. It’s most gridlocked, usually, when control of Congress is split.
The Congress of the past two years demonstrated the first principle. By any honest measure, President Donald Trump and his Republican colleagues in the House and Senate got a lot done in 2017 and 2018.
Sen. Tim Kaine speaks during a National Head Start Association rally in 2015. Support for the program is still going strong, even as partisan rancor overtakes other policy issues, the authors write. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Cal file photo)
OPINION — The intensity of this fall’s midterm election campaigns could make it easy to forget that there is one priority both political parties have consistently come together to support: early childhood education.
Despite the growing partisan divide, which seems to be worsening by the day and has left Washington unable to reach consensus on even routine items, lawmakers from across the political spectrum in Congress and the 50 states still view advancing early childhood education as a critical objective.
With voters embracing divided government in last month’s elections, congressional leaders have an obligation to work toward a meaningful and realistic policy agenda next Congress, Grumet writes. Above, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi at a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony in October 2017. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call file photo)
OPINION — Over the past several election cycles, political parties, pundits and activists have proclaimed governing “mandates” based on the support of only a slim majority of voters who represent just a small fraction of the actual population. The mandate hyperbole has fueled careening and brittle policy agendas that have undermined economic progress and national cohesion.
In the recent midterms, our divided country has forcefully deprived both parties of the fantasy that they can govern without compromise. The question now is whether congressional leaders can develop a pragmatic agenda to lead a divided nation.
That Dan Crenshaw survived his injuries to eventually run for Congress must feel like a miracle, Patricia Murphy writes. (Courtesy Crenshaw for Congress)
OPINION — As a political columnist, the hardest part isn’t finding something to write about, it’s narrowing your focus to just one topic. For today’s column, I could have written about the election mess in Florida, President Trump’s non-attendance at a Veterans Day parade in France, the fact that Nancy Pelosi could soon be second-in-line to the presidency (it could happen), or my complaint that 2020 speculation is the new Christmas decorating (too much too soon).
But after I saw Dan Crenshaw on Saturday Night Live, everything else seemed small in comparison. If you don’t know his name, you will. If you don’t know the story, here it is.
Mourners leave roses next to one of the many plaques detailing transports of Berlin Jews to concentration camps in Berlin, Germany. (Carsten Koall/Getty Images file photo)
A bipartisan duo of New York lawmakers asked Wednesday for the House Committee on Education and the Workforce to hold hearings on their bill that would provide resources to public and private schools to more adequately teach students about the Holocaust in World War II in Nazi Germany.
The request from Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney and GOP Rep. Dan Donovan comes less than a week after a gunman entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and killed 11 Jews celebrating Shabbat.
A Chicago teacher works with kids as part of an early childhood education program. The “Opportunity Zones” incentive could help expand such programs across the country, Smith and Shaw write. (Tim Boyle/Getty Images file photo)
OPINION — America faces a mounting child care crisis. Too many families lack access to safe, affordable and high-quality care for their infants and toddlers. But a small but important provision in last year’s tax law, designed to spur investment in under-resourced communities, could provide an unlikely solution.
That solution comes in the form of a new economic development incentive known as Opportunity Zones. Under the tax law, investors will receive a steep reduction in taxes on their capital gains in exchange for substantial and long-term investment in low-income communities designated as Opportunity Zones. This tax incentive could be combined with others in the economic development toolkit, such as the New Markets Tax Credit and historic building preservation tax credits, to support a wide variety of investments in real estate and businesses.
A little girl and a man look through the windows of the Capitol dome miniature model in the Capitol Visitors Center Monday afternoon Sept. 10, 2018. (Sarah Silbiger/CQ Roll Call)
House and Senate lawmakers made a deal to give the Pentagon a huge spending boost and defy President Donald Trump's call to cut various health, education and labor programs. CQ Defense reporter John M. Donnelly and Health reporter Andrew Siddons unpack the mammoth spending package now making its way through Congress.
Show Notes:
House and Senate leaders like to brag about their respective chambers' progress on passing spending bills but not one has won final passage, CQ budget and appropriations reporter Kellie Mejdrich says. She unpacks the reasons behind the bottleneck that now includes a new hurdle:President Trump's freeze on federal workers' wages.
Show Notes:
Sen. Patty Murray is leading the Democrats in opposition to arming teachers with public funding. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call file photo)
Almost all of the Senate Democrats are asking the Education Department to abandon any plans to provide public funding to give firearms to schoolteachers.
The letter to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos from 44 members of the Democratic caucus was led by Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the both the authorizing committee and the appropriations subcommittee overseeing the department.
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