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The topic of this episode is, \u201cWhat is wrong and right with the House of Representatives?\u201d

My guest is Dan Lipinski, who is uniquely positioned to answer this question. He was a member of Congress, and represented Illinois\u2019 third district from 2005 to 2021. He also is a political scientist \u2014 he got his doctorate from Duke University in 1998. And if that is not enough, Dan is a former congressional staffer and a socially conservative Democrat. You don\u2019t find many of those anymore. You can see Dan\u2019s recent writings on his website, DanLipinski.com, which includes an essay for The Atlantic titled \u201cThe House of Representatives is failing American democracy.\u201d

Kevin Kosar:

Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution, and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our republic. It\u2019s a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be. And that is why we are here: to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation.

I\u2019m your host, Kevin Kosar, and I\u2019m a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC.

Sir, welcome to the program.

Dan Lipinski:

It's good to be with you, Kevin.

Kevin Kosar:

Let's start this conversation on a positive note. You served in the House of Representatives for 16 years. What accomplishments are you most proud of?

Dan Lipinski:

Well, if I had to pick out one bill most proud of \u2014 I actually was able to pass about 17 bills in my 16 years in Congress \u2014 but the one that I spent the most time on, maybe the longest lasting impact, is the American Manufacturing Competitiveness Act. The requirement of that bill is every four years, the administration needs to create a strategy to promote American manufacturing. We could do a whole podcast on just what it took through five years to get this bill passed. We finally changed it to go to a different committee. In the end, after we spent five years working very hard, first it got attached to one bill, which we strategized to do, and then that bill unexpectedly got attached to an omnibus bill at the end of the year. After five long years of working on it, I was actually shocked when I saw it show up in an omnibus bill. Like I said, we could do a whole podcast on that and the strategy, and all the pitfalls, and what it took to get it through the House and finally get it through the Senate, get the president on board. It took a long time. But the first one was done in the second year of President Trump, and the second one now needs to be done early next year by the Biden Administration. So it's a plan to promote American manufacturing, kind of like the Quadrennial Defense Review, which the Department of Defense every four years needs to look at the defense department and put out a plan for the next four years.

Kevin Kosar:

So, you're a legislator who got things done. But as you just mentioned, it sure wasn't easy, and it sure didn't follow the script that many of us learned in Schoolhouse Rock all those years ago about how a bill becomes a law. This gets us to my next question. Let's talk about what's wrong with the House of Representatives \u2014 why it's so hard to get things done. In an <a...