The Ruling Class: Inside the Imperial Congress

Go buy and read Mr. Felten's book, which is pithy, well-written and more certain than a Stephen King novel to keep you awake at night

In 1981, The Heritage Foundation provided the blueprints for a revolution in the executive branch with Mandate for Leadership. Today, Heritage's new effort, The Ruling Class, shows how and why, even after the 1992 elections, Congress must fundamentally change the way it operates. What's the problem with Congress and why won't 110 new congressmen solve it? Gridlock, deficits, pork, electoral pressures, even the staff is blamed. The Ruling Class takes you inside the Imperial Congress to reveal what legislators prefer to keep hidden. The real problem is a remarkable abdication by Congress of its lawmaking role: The United States Congress is a legislature that has stopped legislating. Instead Congress stages media spectacles and runs a wholesale "constituent service" enterprise which amounts to little more than a protection racket. Congress avoids accountability by handing the dirty work over to regulators while posing itself as a protector of beleaguered citizens. The Ruling Class combines startling new revelations of congressional shenanigans with lucid explanations of the constitutional and philosophical issues at stake. Author Eric Felten explains how congressmen routinely take both sides on an issue or pass controversial legislation with no fingerprints at all. Celebrity testimony has replaced serious discussion. Congressional show trials are staged to shift blame to anyone but Congress, while avoiding real policy decisions, and the resulting vendettas have poisoned American democracy. Felten also explores the secretive machinations of Congressional staffers, some who have become more powerful than the congressmen themselves. And if you wonder where all the money goes, he demonstrateswhy Congress will never control spending on its own. For Congress, it all comes down to reelection so The Ruling Class disassembles the reelection machine. It moves beyond term limits, as necessary as they may be, to limits on sessions, staff, spending, committees, pork, and even constituent service. The Heritage program is designed not to strip Congress of its power, much less to restore an imperial executive, but to restore Congress's legislative functions. Doing so will return accountability and honesty to the legislative process and restore a truly representative legislature. The electoral earthquake of 1992 was only the first tremor. The Ruling Class tells why and how to continue to shake up the Imperial Congress.