Politics Without Winners: Can Either Party Build a Majority Coalition?Key Points

• The American party system is in an unusual extended deadlock, with two minority parties, neither capable of sustaining a durable winning coalition.
• Both parties have plausible avenues to build a lasting majority coalition, but to do so, they must understand their 21st-century failures.
• The party system’s history and new data from AEI’s Survey Center on American Life show how the parties might do this.
• Durable majority parties are not only possible; they are the norm in American politics. But they require self-conscious coalition building.

Read the full pdf.

Medicare Is Central to Fixing Health Care and the Federal Budget
James C. Capretta | Hill
If the program changed to encourage cost reduction through competition and consumer choice, the entire system would benefit from a renewed focus on efficiency in the provision of service to patients.
Full Story

Wasteful Local Stimulus Funding Could Mark The End Of Competitive Federalism
by Paul E. Peterson, Carlos Lastra-Anadon via The Hill
A fiscal flood of biblical proportions — $1.3 trillion — is descending upon state and local governments via four pieces of congressional legislation enacted in the name of COVID relief. No less than $738 billion is scheduled to be spent in the current fiscal year. The Biden administration and congressional progressives are promising trillions more. The vast transfer of funds to lower tiers of government threatens the U. S. federal system as we know it.

​Congress Overwhelmed: The Decline in Congressional Capacity and Prospects for Reform
 Congress today is falling short. Fewer bills, worse oversight, and more dysfunction. But why? In a new volume of essays, the contributors investigate an underappreciated reason Congress is struggling: It doesn’t have the internal capacity to do what our constitutional system requires of it. Leading scholars chronicle the institutional decline of Congress and the decades-long neglect of its own internal investments in the knowledge and expertise necessary to perform as a first-rate legislature. Today’s legislators and congressional committees have fewer — and less expert and experienced — staff than the executive branch or K Street. This leaves them at the mercy of lobbyists and the administrative bureaucracy.  READ MORE
Our overwhelmed Congress
Do we need Congress?
House must take the first step to modernize how Congress works

China Has a Few Things to Teach the U.S. Economy 
– Noah Smith, Bloomberg

In search of responsible republican government, part 2: The parties as a solution
 
Jay Cost | September 2019 
 

• Although political parties have long been in disrepute, they can help make our government more responsive to the public interest.
  
  
• A party’s purpose is to win elections for its members, but depending on how party rules are structured, parties can advance or hinder republican government.
  
  
• Changes to nominating procedures, campaign finance, and internal party rules could make the parties work more effectively for the national good.

In search of responsible republican government, part 1: The institutional problem
 Jay Cost | AEI | August 6, 2019

Restoring Congress: The parties are a solution
 Jay Cost | NationalReview.com | June 17, 2019

Updates To The Budget Calculator
via Budget Matters, America Off Balance
We are happy to announce we have updated the America Off Balance Budget Calculator to reflect the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) recent update to their 10-year budget and economic projections.