Two Cheers for Congress: Speaking up for the Legislative Branch

Frances Lee (professor of political science at Princeton, author of Insecure Majorities, co-author of In Covid's Wake) challenges the common narrative that the United States Congress is a hopelessly dysfunctional institution. While popular opinion often benchmarks the current legislature against a "golden age" of the legislatively productive past, Lee presents a data-driven "two cheers" case for the Congress we actually have. The conversation explores how Congress successfully mirrors a divided electorate through proportional representation, maintains a surprisingly bipartisan lawmaking process, and serves as a vital public sphere for executive accountability. By shifting focus from what is broken to what is working, this episode invites a reconsideration of the essential role of the legislature in upholding the rule of law and building consensus in a polarized era.

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Transcript

Michael Lee : [00:00:00] When we disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. When someone bumps into you, do you assume it was accidental or intentional? People with hostile attribution bias consistently assume malicious intent, even in ambiguous situations.

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Your boss assigned you extra work. Clearly they're trying to make you quit. Your friend didn't text you back. Obviously, they're giving you the silent treatment. Every ambiguous action gets interpreted through a lens of assumed hostility. What might an accident? An oversight or incompetence [00:01:00] becomes an enemy action in family dynamics.

Hostile attribution bias creates cycles of conflict. A parent's concern gets interpreted as criticism or a sibling's joke becomes a deliberate. Even a partner's distraction becomes intentional neglect. Once someone develops hostile attribution bias towards family members, every interaction can become a potential combat zone.

The family can be a battlefield where everyone's actions hide aggressive intent. Understanding hostile attribution bias helps us pause before assuming intent when something negative happens. Consider multiple explanations before settling on malice. Ask clarifying questions rather than launching counter attacks.

First and most importantly, recognize that your interpretation of intent might say more about your mindset than their motivation. I'm Michael Lee, professor of Communication and Director of the Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston. Our guest today on When We Disagree is Francis Lee. [00:02:00] Frances is jointly appointed in the Department of Politics in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, where she is Professor of Politics and Public Affairs.

She's the author of Insecure Majorities Beyond Ideology, and she's also the co-author of In COVID v's Wake. Her forthcoming book is called A Case for Congress. Francis, tell us an argument story. 

Frances Lee : Hi, Mike. I'm glad to be on this your podcast. In terms of something to debate or that we can hash out together the argument of my new book a Case for Congress is that Congress is underrated and that the case that Congress is dysfunctional is far from ironclad.

That there's a lot to be said for what Congress today contributes to American national Government. And the whole time I've been a a scholar in this field Congress has been the whipping boy of American government. And so I wanted to take a step back and think about [00:03:00] what is congress good for?

What does the Congress, we have not some Congress that we might. Create, if we reformed the institution, but the Congress that we actually have, what does it do that is a value and to think through the value added that it brings. 

Michael Lee : This book sounds like it was very much a response to critics of Congress.

And so just so our audience is familiar let's make the anti Congress case first and then give you, set you up to make the case that you make in your book. What are the best arguments against Congress's efficacy or relevancy in other current or historic American public life? I 

Frances Lee : mean, once these Congress referred to as a dysfunctional institution, routinely, you even see it in the scholarly literature.

They don't even it's as though it's not even necessary to offer reasons. It's it's treated as a matter of common knowledge, but if we try to break it down and diagnose what people are talking about when they say Congress, it's dysfunctional. They, they mean that it is intensely.

[00:04:00] Fiercely partisan. They mean that it is difficult to get it to move, to take policy action to coalesce around policy change, that it has a proclivity towards gridlock or deadlock, that it's unable to address the problems that we face as a country. Sometimes people mean that it's captured by narrow interests, too much special interest influence.

Sometimes they mean that all members care about is self-promotion and their quest for reelection and their quest for fame and visibility. So those are the kinds of things that people often are referencing when they refer to Congress as a dysfunctional institution.

But there's so much. Comfort with the claim that it's all, you often see that when people make it, they don't feel any need to back it up at all. 

Michael Lee : Just Congress is bad. We all know that. That's true. Moving right along. 

Frances Lee : Yeah. 

Michael Lee : We can all stipulate the truth of that claim. One, one that strikes me too, as a [00:05:00] catchall for the incivility in Congress or the grandstanding in Congress or the lack of getting, quote, anything done in Congress and all of the arguments are just listed.

Is perhaps, and I wonder to what extent this is true and that you're responding to this in the book, is some nostalgia for a Congress that used to be better, a Congress that used to get things done. Is that something you run into as well? 

Frances Lee : Yes. That, so Congress has long been a punching bag and that it that complaints about Congress are often benchmarked against a golden age that was located sometime in the past when Congress was better.

So if you go back to the 1960s, a political scientists pundits would describe the congresses. Congress is dysfunctional. They would look back to the great triumvirate, the, the the period where, you know of Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster the congress of that.

Era the mid 19th century. 

So the [00:06:00] golden age always recedes in time, the further back you go. We, we've been consistent the whole time I've been in this profession in describing Congress as dysfunctional. What's the benchmark people are matching the current Congress up against?

It varies over time. Sometimes you'll see the contemporary Congress compared to the mid 20th century Congress. The Congress that was less partisan where committees were played. Played a bigger role in negotiating legislation and holding the executive branch accountable regardless of party.

So you think about the Truman Committee which investigated the handling of the war effort in World War ii. So it's not President Truman. This was Senator Truman. And even though he was a Democrat and it was a Democratic administration, he could still hold the, government accountable for war profiteering and fraud and other problems in the war effort.

Those are the kinds of comparisons that often come to mind today when people are complaining about [00:07:00] how partisan the contemporary Congress is. But the the specific. Golden age varies over time. But there's usually some frame of reference that people are turning to, to make that comparison with the present.

Michael Lee : We've given your critics lots of time. Let's to set up your argument of your book. Take us through the big grand case and then if you want to respond to a few of those criticisms one by one, feel free. 

Frances Lee : I think about the purposes of Congress as threefold or purpose of a a legislative assembly as threefold representation, lawmaking and executive accountability.

So these are three different functions, and then I consider in, in three, the three parts of the book. W how the Con Contemporary Congress performs on those three dimensions. So we can walk through each of those. Can begin with representation one. The contemporary Congress [00:08:00] mirrors the partisan.

Division that exists in the national electorate in a surprisingly effective way. There's a lot of fidelity in representation on that dimension. This is a 50 50 country. You can see that in the outcome of presidential elections, which are highly unpredictable and consistently close, and they've been close all through the polarized era.

Congress has also been narrowly divided all through the con, the polarized era. And it, the outcomes of presidential elections are mirrored rather closely by the the division of seats. Between the two parties in Congress, in both House and Senate. So even though there's gerrymandering and even though there, there are problems are often problems with proportional representation in systems like the US where we have single member districts in theory of a party that could win 51% in every state, or every congressional district could get a hundred percent of the seats.

So [00:09:00] we don't have any guarantees of proportional representation, but. Congress has represented the parties proportionately to a very admirable degree through the polarized air, which is very, it's very important in a country that's as divided as ours to have fair representation in party terms, which we have.

Another, 

Michael Lee : lemme pause on that one for just a second. Two counter arguments I've heard that I'm curious to hear your responses to O one is structural, which is that representation as a percentage of the population is too minuscule. In other words, there just aren't enough people in Congress to fairly represent people.

And take a representative in a district in California, that person's representing so many millions of people. And then that's true in many districts around the country. So that's one argument. There's just not enough representation and that's a structural issue. And the second one is, and this is to your point about to what extent the Congress represents a divided country.

One of the things the country seems to be divided on is that routine majorities of [00:10:00] Americans seem to really dislike the parties in general, but there is no representation for those people, the anti-party, independence. What's your response to both of those things? 

Frances Lee : So on the second point on the anti-party sentiment, 

Michael Lee : right.

Frances Lee : I, I think it's a fair point that there aren't it many independent members of Congress. 

There aren't many members of Congress who are uncommitted even those who to call themselves independent, aligning with one of the parties. Now what I would say in defense of that is that's also true of social science has shown that's also true of most voters who call themselves independent, that they are not actually neutral between the parties.

That in fact, if we look at them being behavioral terms, most people who call themselves independent have a party alignment that makes them in their, in, in behavioral terms, indistinguishable from partisans. That if we are looking at the the share of the electorate that are, they're truly swing voters, it's a, [00:11:00] that's a, that's less than 10%.

So I would say that Congress reflects that the behavior of the American electorate in, in that regard. Even though many Americans call themselves independents and not many members of Congress. Not many members of Congress do. Now, it's true that as the country has on your first que on your first point, it's true that as the country has grown, congressional districts encompass larger populations.

Same thing is true in the Senate, but it's a little bit more variable. We have some mega states and we have some states that are the same size as a congressional district. In fact. It's even possible and it sometimes happens that you'll have a state that's smaller than your average congressional district.

Wyoming is smaller than a congressional district right now. But so it's true they en encompass more people. But it's hard for me to figure out what is being missed in substantive terms that this is. There's, there are trade-offs between having a body where [00:12:00] people know each other and can negotiate and have sufficient trust that they can work together.

And a body that in in growing in accord with the nation's population always maintains the same proportion so that we always have one member for every 30,000 people or whatever, that if we did that, if we were to follow a rule like that was re There was a, initially, when the constitution was being negotiated.

That's right. They thought that this would be a reasonable approach that they would set a th that they would set a proportion, and that was thankfully not adopted because you create an unworkable body. 

Michael Lee : Yeah, I, that's where my question came from. And in fact, if that same standard would you use today?

Per my most recent recollection, the House of Representatives would be in the high four thousands or low five thousands if memory serves. But in any case, you get the idea you were making three arguments for the best function of a legislative body or a Congress. We got through one of 'em, which was representation.

The other two are lawmaking and executive accountability. Take us through two and three there. [00:13:00] 

Frances Lee : Okay, let me just say that there are more there are more dimensions of representation that I cover in the book. I treat party as the most important because it is the, it's the single best summary of what people want out of government, both at the individual level and and in among elected officials.

Party, is the most salient. But we can also look at other things like race, like gender occupation. And the bottom line there is that congress, the con contemporary Congress is more diverse than it's ever been. So it's even if it's falls short of a equal representation of that, women are not 50% of the Congress.

Even though it's falls short of an equal mirroring the contemporary Congress measures better by that standard than previous congresses did. So that, that's the, a nutshell, my representation case that Got you. In partisan terms it's very strong and if we look at the other dimensions, it's better than it ever was.

Michael Lee : And what I'm hearing in this, and we'll move on to two and three, lawmaking and executive [00:14:00] accountability is not so much that you've written Congress's awesome book, but you've written a book that says Congress is better than most people think it is. Book. 

Frances Lee : That's right. It's a kind of a two cheers for Congress book.

It's not free. Two, cheers. That's 

Michael Lee : right. There you go. 

Frances Lee : It's it's that it's being underestimated. 

And that we should have more respect for what it contributes to American government. I think, we've spent so much time critiquing the institution that we've lost sight of what positive values it brings.

So I don't wanna overpraise but I do think we know, we need to look at what it, what's getting, what is what is it getting right. On lawmaking, the key thing to know about Congress is that very few bills pass narrowly which also means very few bills pass become law on narrow party line votes.

That's unusual. So even as Congress has become more partisan, and even as the country has grown more polarized, congress [00:15:00] still legislates. With broad support. What that means is that legislation that only appeals to one party doesn't very often get elect get, get enacted. So Congress operates primarily as a roadblock for the parties.

Now. That's I think fundamentally why Congress is continually being criticized, because the people who are most engaged with public affairs, the most attentive audiences for Congress are people who have strong partisan commitments. And the Congress is continually frustrating to them. It's hard to move the body, it's hard to pass something through the House and the Senate an identical.

With in with identical language. And when Congress succeeds at doing that, it rarely does so narrowly. Most legislation that passes with two third support both House [00:16:00] and Senate. And that's true of routine legislation as well as of important bills. So if we only look at the dozen or so most important bills or most important laws that get enacted in any given congress I, in the book I rely on David Mayhew lists, he's a Yale political scientist who spend offering these roundups of Congress going back to the middle of the 20th century, when he begins his data series.

So it's an, a nice, incredible list of the most important laws that Congress passes. So I do that and I bring it all the way up to the present. 

And it, that hasn't changed even as Congress is polarized and the meaning that Congress casts a lot more votes that divide 90% of Republicans from 90% of Democrats, these par, this partisan block voting.

Lawmaking hasn't changed. Lawmaking is just as bipartisan today as it was in the 1990s, 1980s, 1970s, 1960s. So when Congress [00:17:00] actually succeeds in legislating, it reflects a broad consensus of opinion most of the time. I think that's value added in a country that's closely divided and where both parties are unpopular, as you already mentioned that to hold Congress to a standard of not passing things unless you can get some consensus around it.

It's frustrating. People are always annoyed with that, but I think that in terms of it, it's a role in American life and society that, that's a, that's helpful. And the, and how does it do it? How does it manage to achieve. This broad agreement in general. The answer to the question, when you do we trace this the legislative histories of bills that become law, which I report on in the book, is that the majority party has to back down.

Majority party has ambitions. It has to dial them back in order to get some buy-in from the other [00:18:00] party. And so that's normally what Congress doing and it's, we can talk about this in in more detail in a few minutes, but, the evidence that Congress is doing less is not there.

That tho those who talk about Congress' gridlock are usually pointing to the number of laws that Congress passes. They ha that is lower. It's true. Congress passes fewer laws. 

But the laws that Congress passes are vastly longer so that the actual amount of legislation that Congress passes in any two year period is not less than it was in the 1980s, 1990s.

It's, and it's more than it was in the 1960s and 1970s. So Congress does a lot, just does it a lot in a few big packages. 

Michael Lee : Let's go through that third argument for Congress, or at least that third line of inquiry related to Congress's functioning. And I'm wondering if your rationale is similar as we begin to talk about executive accountability as it relates to Congress.

Frances Lee : So on executive accountability, what I [00:19:00] emphasize there is Congress' Congress has a public sphere where Congress reviews and criticizes. What the executive branch is doing that's continuous. Even though, there, of course there's a lot of anxiety today about whether Congress has given up too much power to the executive branch.

There is a lot of, there has been a lot of delegation and the executive branch not just the current occupant of the White House, but also recent presidents have been pretty bold in their interpretations of his existing statutes asserting a line of authority. But Congress is a public sphere where those.

Actions are debated and it raises public understanding. That, and congress still holds hearings that require the executive branch to account for itself. And when it does it tends to drive down presidential approval. And you, we can see that it's true recently. It was true in the [00:20:00] past. That hasn't changed even though presidents have been pretty unpopular lately.

When congress musters. The musters itself to question what the executive branch is doing. The executive branch pays a price the president pays a price. And so it, so what happens in Congress is important. To President's self-interest and presidents need to take that input that they're receiving from the executive branch on board.

And so I place a lot of emphasis in that analysis on the informal powers of Congress, the powers of debate and discussion and hearings rather. You don't often see Congress defunding something they've president wants. There, in other words, seeing a showdown between the two branches that Congress wins.

But you are missing out on a lot of Congress's influence. If that's your benchmark. You need to take a look at Congress as this arena where executives are held to account before the public. And when you [00:21:00] do that, you can see that's an ongoing process that puts some restraints on the executive branch.

Michael Lee : Per my most recent investigation of some of the polling data about public approval of Congress, it's pretty dismal. Some putting it into the high single digits. Eight 9% of Americans support Congress and even if it's 15, that's got awful. You've written a book that is essentially two tiers for Congress.

The public seems to be giving Congress two thumbs down if we can start really mixing these metaphors. My question is, as we stack up the arguments you've made and the arguments that we let your critics make at the top of the show, are they seeing something that you're not seeing or are they just not seeing what you're seeing?

Frances Lee : I guess one way to think about it is that the newspapers don't report on when when the planes land. You know that when things are going okay there's not news, not newsworthy. And so what [00:22:00] people. Hear about Congress what narratives that get produced for them are typically critical in nature.

And this has been a longstanding feature of Congress that members of Congress don't stand up for the institution that they're part of. They stand up for themselves. They say, I'm going there to fight for you against all those other crazy folks, they put the institution down.

And they burnish their own credentials in contrast to the rest of the institution. So nobody speaks up for the institution. 

Not the new news media, which is, tends to take a critical stance and reports on when things are going wrong and even members of Congress themselves. So it's not surprising in that sense that the public would have a dim view because they never hear.

An alternative perspective. 

And so I, I, so always you might say, I'm going back to the, civics 1 0 1 and thinking about, what do we want a legislature for? We want for representation, law and executive accountability, [00:23:00] so what can we say? And so if you take it, take that.

Perspective, thinking about what is the legislature for and what does the current Congress do on those different dimensions? You can see that it does a lot of things that people actually do want. They it's not to say that the public is wrong to be frustrated. I wouldn't make that claim.

There's a lot of reasons to be frustrated with American government, and we need people who wanna make change and who who have a view about what needs to be done. That's also a key role that we need citizens to play. But, if we're trying to be objective about the institution and think about, think about it from a constitutional design perspective.

Then we can consider, if you know what it is, the contemporary Congress it's doing in each of those three areas. And you can make a, you can make a case for it. 

And I think that this can cut against the despair that people have a tendency to feel when they think about that. Everything that's wrong with American government.

The book is coming out in [00:24:00] the context of our 250th. Anniversary 

As a country. And so maybe it's time just to, think about it from that, v very big picture perspective, e even if there's things that we could make many things we could make improvements on, let's not take for granted.

What is working? That's the spirit in which I wrote the book. 

Michael Lee : Last question is a big one, and it asks you to talk about the case for Congress, both generally, perhaps in a democracy, but also right now. And and not just in the sense of cheering on Congress, but a data driven research heavy to cheers for Congress.

So let's just say we have spent several decades now really wallowing in the argument that Congress is dysfunctional. Approval ratings are in the toilet. Why is an argument for two cheers for Congress important generally in a democracy and especially important now? 

Frances Lee : After all, what we're talking [00:25:00] about here is a legislature and what does a legislature do?

It writes laws. I, it does that among other things, but that's one of its most important functions. And so it's core to the rule of law. And so what can we set on behalf of the rule of law? As opposed to say, pure executive discretion. There's deliberation there's consensus building. There's some degree of stability of the law, which allows for reliance interests.

Con this, it invites us to consider the value of the rule of. Without a legislature, we, you don't have the law. You don't have the law. And so I I think that, as we reflect on presidents that have been very bold in asserting there discretionary power where, the current occupant of the White House claims, the ability to raise and lower tariff rates day on a day by day [00:26:00] basis.

That if you've trying to operate in an economy where your inputs can change, the cost of them can change on drastically from one day to the next. Maybe you can appreciate a process that requires hearing from the various points of view of people affected as policy is made and having some stability.

In that policy that those are the kinds of things that a legislature brings to policymaking. 

Michael Lee : Francis Lee, thank you so much for being on when We Disagree. 

Frances Lee : Thank you, Mike. 

Michael Lee : When we Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse k and Lance LayLaw.

Reach out to us at When We disagree@gmail.com.