Adam Harris
speaker
1,453 appearances
17 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard 2d ago
Adam Harris’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 16 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 5.
Appearances
His father died in June of that year, and young Bob was selected to finish out his term, and he quickly put his inherited knowledge to action.
He gained national attention of his own during the Great Depression, and he led the congressional committee that investigated the ways that industrialists were violating unionist civil liberties.
By 1943, when he wrote for the magazine, Congress was dealing with issues that the founders could have only dreamed about.
Quote, "...if the control of governmental policy is to remain with the people's elected representatives, as the framers of the Constitution intended it should, and not drift into the hands of a relatively irresponsible bureaucracy, Congress will have to streamline its organization."
His recommendations might seem quaint in our time.
He wanted to make working on the Hill financially sustainable for staff.
He wanted to reorganize committees.
He wanted to create a joint legislative executive council, which would ensure that laws were being enacted as Congress intended.
But it was his reasons for writing that felt most familiar in our time.
Right now, there's a growing sense that Congress is not only irrevocably broken, but subservient to the executive branch.
According to a Marist poll, nearly 70% of Americans believe that the systems of checks and balances is not working well.
Now, LaFollette stressed that his reforms would require, as all human institutions do, cooperation.
But the problem of the modern era isn't so much a lack of cooperation as that Congress does what the president wants.
LaFollette lost his seat to Joseph McCarthy, the man who spearheaded the second Red Scare in 1946.
Quote, Congress has an opportunity now to show what it can do, he wrote in 1943.
He urged the legislative body to once again serve as the voice of the people.
And he warned, quote, if it fails to be constructive, there is no telling how long an impatient people will support Representative Kennedy.
I wonder what he would make of that warning now.
And I wonder what he would make of our politics today.
See you next week.
Showing 741–760 of 1,453 · page 38 of 73
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