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Main navigation

  • The Presidency
    • U.S. Presidents
      • George Washington
      • John Adams
      • Thomas Jefferson
      • James Madison
      • James Monroe
      • John Quincy Adams
      • Andrew Jackson
      • Martin Van Buren
      • William Harrison
      • John Tyler
      • James K. Polk
      • Zachary Taylor
      • Millard Fillmore
      • Franklin Pierce
      • James Buchanan
      • Abraham Lincoln
      • Andrew Johnson
      • Ulysses S. Grant
      • Rutherford B. Hayes
      • James A. Garfield
      • Chester A. Arthur
      • Grover Cleveland
      • Benjamin Harrison
      • William McKinley
      • Theodore Roosevelt
      • William Taft
      • Woodrow Wilson
      • Warren G. Harding
      • Calvin Coolidge
      • Herbert Hoover
      • Franklin D. Roosevelt
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Congressional Dysfunction

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Congressional Dysfunction

Congressional Dysfunction

Congress has increasingly struggled to perform its basic functions

About Congressional dysfunction

Research

congressional dysfunction on blue background
About 'Congressional Dysfunction'

Congressional gridlock encourages executive overreach

Image of Constitution in front of American flag
Shared powers: Anatomy of our present discontents

Sidney Milkis writes that it's time for reforms that would revive Congress as a co-equal branch of government

congress split in half
The 'ratchet effect': Emergency powers and the crisis of institutional faith

The expanding use of presidential emergency powers is an effect of declining public faith in core democratic institutions, warns Allan Stam

Shipping containers with American flags
Will Congress rise if IEEPA fails?

With billions of dollars and future trade policy on the line, Congress cannot play bystander on the tariff question, writes Everett Eissenstat

Video highlights

screenshot showing Shalanda Young speaking at the Miller Center in 2025
The presidency and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)

A former OMB director discusses the 'power of the purse,' federal funding implementation, and executive-legislative relations in a panel discussion moderated by PBS correspondent John Yang

Louisa Terrell speaks at the Miller Center in 2025
Congress and the president

Former White House directors of legislative affairs discuss bipartisan best practices to clarify shared responsibilities between the legislative and executive branches with a panel of Miller Center experts and Mike Emanuel, chief Washington correspondent at Fox News

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Miller Center

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