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Look For Gridlock, Partisanship, In New Session of Congress WASHINGTON, D.C. — The second session of the 106th Congress will be characterized by even more partisan rancor and gridlock than was the first session which began with the attempted Impeachment of President Clinton and went downhill from there. On the eve of this session, all parties are pledging
to get along better than they did last year, but since the entire House
and one third of the Senate is up for re-election, it is unlikely there
will be any amity on Capitol Hill.
As the year unfolds, it will be easy to keep tabs
on President Clinton, a Lame Duck, who operates in the full glare of the
national press corps and television networks. But it is more difficult
to find out what the 535 members of the House and Senate are up to because
most rank-and-file members receive little press coverage.
A good place to get basic information about the
435 members of the House and the 100 Senators are the websites maintained
by the Senate and House at these locations:
Each site will give you biographical data, the mailing address and phone number of members, the E-Mail address and sebsites of congressmen who have embraced Cyberspace. Most of them have. Once Congress actually goes to work and begins
to debate and vote on legislation, the place to check-up on members of
Congress is “Thomas”, a server operated by the Library of Congress. There
you can track legislation and read floor debate in the on-line version
of the Congressional Record. Committee information can also be accessed
through Thomas.
A small army of print and electronic journalists swarm over Capitol Hill to cover Congress and much of their work finds its way to the Internet. Roll Call is a twice weekly newspaper with a good
reputation which is published on Capitol Hill and covers Congress like
a blanket.
Currently the page has a collection of “Policy Briefings” which discuss the probable agenda for the new session. Take a look at the papers submitted by House and Senate leaders of both parties to get an idea of the gulf separating them. Another weekly newspaper covering Congress is
called simply The Hill and does a good job of keeping tabs on the fractious
lawmakers. You can find out there about open seats which are up for grabs
because the member is retiring, staff members who wield a lot of power,
and spot news stories about action in the House and Senate. Address of
The Hill is:
Congressional Quarterly is a weekly magazine which
has an excellent reputation for its congressional coverage. It’s pricey,
however, costing about $1,000 for an annual subscription and puts very
little of its material online.
National Journal, another serious weekly magazine
which covers Washington, does put some of its lengthy articles on the Intrernet.
Address of the articles site is:
The ever-reliable Yahoo! has recently inaugurated
a Washington page which is chock full of useful information about the city,
the federal government and the Congress. Clicking on Capitol Hill brings
up links to House and Senate servers, to the committees, to member E-Mail
addresses, and to a dozen other congressional watching groups
Your nation’s capital is also a place which plays host to numerous “Think Tanks”, which is the nickname given research and lobbying organizations whose major product are papers containing speeches and publications by their resident scholars. Think tanks provide the journalist and researcher with a useful perspective. The Brookings Institution is the oldest think
tank in town, has a general liberal and Democratic reputation. Brookings
scholars churn out policy papers and studies on a wide variety of topics,
generally those which are in the news or about to move into the limelight.
The American Enterprise Institute is another well-regarded
Washington think tank. It tends to occupy a middle-right political position,
and is often associated with Republican policy positions. Current research
work runs the gamut, from foreign policy to tax reform.
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