In Praise of Deadlock by W Lee Rawls
With budget reconciliations, filibusters, and supermajorities making headlines, In Praise of Deadlock explains the legislative process and its checkpoints, while maintaining a noncomformist respect for the hurdles and hang-ups inherent in the American system. As a practitioner who served for 14 years as chief of staff to Senators Bill Frist and Pete Domenici, W. Lee Rawls offers unusual insight into partisan struggle, which he sees as essential to advancing new policy and generating consensus. Such grappling, Rawls concludes, results in a nuanced, durable machine, producing better laws that have benefited from minority input.
Rawls explains the evolution of the filibuster as a vital weapon in the Senate minority's 'tool kit,' and how budget reconciliation procedures have become a powerful weapon for the majority party to circumvent delay tacticsIn contrast to the Senate, which he describes as a chamber that mostly emphasizes 'defensive skills,' Rawls marvels at the power of the House majority, through the Rules Committee. Comparing the panel to the Soviet Politburo under Joseph Stalin, Rawls wrote ,'its real purpose is to ensure victory for the majority party.' CongressDaily 2009
W. Lee Rawls was chief of staff to the director of the FBI and an adjunct professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Public Policy at the College of William and Mary. He was a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in 2007. Mr. Rawls died in 2010.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780801894039 |
| ISBN 10 | 0801894034 |
| Title | In Praise of Deadlock |
| Author | W Lee Rawls |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Johns Hopkins University Press |
| Year published | 2009-10-05 |
| Number of pages | 160 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |