In Praise of Deadlock

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.''Lee Rawls has written a book that elected officials and legislative practitioners can relate to. His fresh, contrarian approach offers a range of insights not found in the conventional wisdom on the lawmaking powers of Congress.'' -- Senator Pete V. Domenici, former Chairman of the Senate Budget and Senate Energy Committees''Lee Rawls shows the institutional tools that are central to a Congressional balance of power. This book is the perfect primer to understand the major rules, structures, and procedures partisans use to slug it out -- and how those can drive the compromises serving the interests of our country.'' -- John Hilley, Legislative Affairs Director in the Clinton White House''In Praise of Deadlock is presented from the practitioner's point of view, leavened with an understanding of both history and contemporary scholarship on Congress. Playing these perspectives against one another, it makes an original contribution.'' -- Donald Wolfensberger, Congress Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and author of Congress and the People: Deliberative Democracy on Trial