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one manifestation of this is
how little original work
gets done in Congress
the most important work
in my opinion
exposing the things that are going on that shouldn't be doing on watching how our government
agencies are doing what they're supposed to be doing
it's sort it's a lost art almost a very little oversight compared to the old incident
it's a big loss
it is true that very few of the bills
passed by the congress
are written
by members of congress few may be none
sometimes by outsiders often by the executive branch
they are almost the congressman himself or
herself
life of a member of the house senate today
it's so
scattered so disorganized
0:01:20.860,0:01:23.670 it's very hard to master the subjects
0:01:28.370,0:01:29.550
you're traveling on every weekend 0:01:33.280,0:01:38.579 thats the way to get reelected
0:01:43.690,0:01:46.720 so actually doing the hard choices
is increasingly rare for members
now that is left to the states to do more
some important things are like health care debate in Washington right now
health care reform
you've got
Chris Dodd sitting in for the ailing Senator Kennedy
is the is the acting chair of the senate committee on hopefully so on
you got max baucus chairman of the finance committee
they both have jurisdiction
they're both negotiating extremely complicated matters
they talk to each other
but I know I've seen this happen again and again and again
when they get to a hard part where they can't work out the details of something
they'll both turn to the staff and say you guys get together and work this out
and they do
the real negotiation the real compromise the drafting
the important critical
part of the function, writing the bill
is done by the staff