Congressional Representatives Research Articles

Coverage of Congenital Anomalies: Ensuring Lasting Smiles Act (ELSA) in Legislation.

The Ensuring Lasting Smiles Act (ELSA) is a federal bill which would require all health federally regulated insurance products to cover the full treatment of a congenital anomaly or birth defect until complete restoration of normal function or appearance. ELSA has been a key federal priority for the Legislative Advocacy Committee of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) since the 115 th Congress in 2018. Although it has gained momentum, particularly in the 117 th Congress, the bill remains stalled. Congressional Budget Office review, conducted in March 2022, appears to have overestimated this bill's cost for the private sector, secondary to an alleged lack of data on the prevalence of the conditions, extent of treatments and their costs, and the current extent of private sector coverage. The present review highlights the progress of the ELSA bill and serves to illustrate the hurdles involved in passing significant healthcare bills. This review emphasizes the need for healthcare professionals to provide their congressional representatives with accurate information on realistic cost of currently covered treatments of congenital defects, the necessary treatments not currently covered by insurance, and additional out-of-pocket costs covered by patients. A concerted effort by plastic surgeons should provide tools for ELSA legislative champions to re-introduce and pass the bill during the 118th Congress. This process highlights the essential role of organized medicine in advocating for the successful passage of healthcare legislation.

Inequalities in Online Representation: Who Follows Their Own Member of Congress on Twitter?

Members of Congress increasingly rely on social media to communicate with their constituents and other members of the public in real time. However, despite their increased use, little is known about the composition of members' audiences in these online spaces. We address these questions using a panel of Twitter users linked to their congressional district of residence through administrative data. We provide evidence that Twitter users who followed their own representative in the 115th, 116th, and 117th Congresses were generally older and more partisan, and live in wealthier areas of those districts, compared to those who did not. We further find that shared partisanship and shared membership in historically marginalized groups are associated with an increased probability of a constituent following their congressional representative. These results suggest that the efficiency of communication offered by social media reproduces, rather than alters, patterns of political polarization and class inequalities in representation observed offline.

Politicians, Pundits, and Platform Migration: A Comparison of Political Polarization on Parler and Twitter

Parler, a self-proclaimed free speech social media platform founded in 2018, attracted a large influx of new members in 2020 as the result of a highly visible platform migration campaign. Parler usage was linked to the planning of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol building, leading to a shutdown of the Parler platform. Parler, which is now back online, offers an important lens through which to examine the broader attempts at platform migration in response to changing content moderation and platform governance policies and their impact on political polarization. We begin by examining the network connections between US Congressional Representatives on both Twitter and Parler. We find that Parler has a homogenous population of users, consisting of a single isolated group, where polarization seems irrelevant, while Twitter demonstrates two clearly polarized groups. We compare how politicians and political pundits use Parler differently. Finally, we examine the evolution of Parler including comparing Parler’s own policies before and after the shutdown and reflecting on the future of platforms like Parler and similar platform migration experiments.

Politicians, Pundits, and Platform Migration: A Comparison of Political Polarization on Parler and Twitter

Parler, a self-proclaimed free speech social media platform founded in 2018, attracted a large influx of new members in 2020 as the result of a highly visible platform migration campaign. Parler usage was linked to the planning of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol building, leading to a shutdown of the Parler platform. Parler, which is now back online, offers an important lens through which to examine the broader attempts at platform migration in response to changing content moderation and platform governance policies and their impact on political polarization. We begin by examining the network connections between US Congressional Representatives on both Twitter and Parler. We find that Parler has a homogenous population of users, consisting of a single isolated group, where polarization seems irrelevant, while Twitter demonstrates two clearly polarized groups. We compare how politicians and political pundits use Parler differently. Finally, we examine the evolution of Parler including comparing Parler’s own policies before and after the shutdown and reflecting on the future of platforms like Parler and similar platform migration experiments.

Lost on the Freedom Trail: The National Park Service and Urban Renewal in Postwar Boston

Lost on the Freedom Trail: The National Park Service and Urban Renewal in Postwar Boston

Advocating for the Vulnerable: The Clinical Nurse Specialist and Nursing Home Reform.

Nursing homes have been disproportionally affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly because of resident vulnerability, inadequate staffing, and poor quality of care. Despite billions of dollars in funding, nursing homes often do not meet minimum federal staffing requirements and are frequently cited for infection prevention and control deficiencies. These factors significantly contributed to resident and staff deaths. For-profit nursing homes were associated with more COVID-19 infections and deaths. Nearly 70% of US nursing homes are for-profit ownership, where quality measures and staffing levels are often lower than their nonprofit counterparts. Nursing home reform is urgently needed to improve staffing and care quality in these facilities. Some states, such as Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York, have made legislative progress in establishing standards for nursing home spending. The Biden Administration has also announced initiatives, through the Special Focus Facilities Program, to improve nursing home quality and the safety of residents and staff. Concurrently, the "National Imperative to Improve Nursing Home Quality" report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine made specific staffing recommendations, including an increase in direct care registered nurse coverage. There is an urgent need to advocate for nursing home reform by partnering with congressional representatives or supporting nursing home legislation to improve care for this vulnerable patient population. Adult-gerontology clinical nurse specialists have an opportunity to leverage their advanced knowledge and unique skill set to lead and facilitate change to improve quality of care and patient outcomes.

Science and Public Engagement in National Parks: Examples and Advice from Young Scientists

Science and Public Engagement in National Parks: Examples and Advice from Young Scientists

State-Level COVID-19 Symptom Searches and Case Data: a Quantitative Analysis of Political Affiliation as a Predictor for Lag Time Using Google Trends and CDC Data.

Across each state. the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States was marked by policies and rhetoric that often correspond to the political party in power. These diverging responses have sparked broad ongoing discussion about how the political leadership of a state may affect not only the COVID-19 case numbers in a given state, but also the subjective individual experience of the pandemic. This study leverages state-level data from Google Search Trends and CDC daily case data in order to investigate the temporal relationship between increases in relative search volume for COVID-19 symptoms and corresponding increases in case data. I aimed to identify whether there are state-level differences in patterns of lag time across each of the four spikes in the data (RQ1) and whether the political climate in a given state is associated with these differences (RQ2). Using publicly available data from Google Trends and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, linear mixed modeling was utilized to account for random state-level intercepts. Lag time was operationalized as number of days between a peak (a sustained increase before a sustained decline) in symptom search data and a corresponding spike in case data and was calculated manually for each of the four spikes in individual states. Google offers a dataset that tracks the relative search incidence of more than 400 potential COVID-19 symptoms, which is normalized on a 0-100 scale. I used the CDC's definition of the eleven most common COVID-19 symptoms and created a single construct variable that operationalizes symptom searches. To measure political climate, I considered the proportion of 2020 Trump popular votes in a state as well as a dummy variable for the political party that controls the governorship and a continuous variable measuring proportional party control of federal Congressional representatives. The strongest overall fit was for a linear mixed model that included proportion of 2020 Trump votes as the predictive variable of interest and included controls for mean daily cases and deaths as well as population. Additional political climate variables were discarded for lack of model fit. Findings indicated evidence that there are statistically-significant differences in lag time by state but that no individual variable measuring political climate was a statistically-significant predictor of these differences. Given that there will likely be future pandemics within this political climate, it is important to understand how political leadership affects perceptions of and corresponding responses to public health crises. Although this study did not fully model this relationship, I believe that future research can build on the state-level differences that I identified by approaching the analysis with a different theoretical model, method for calculating lag time, and/or level of geographic modeling.

Top Policy Issues: A Powerful, Passionate Journey

Top Policy Issues: A Powerful, Passionate Journey

Mobilizing the White: White Nationalism and Congressional Politics in the American South

To what extent do white nationalists influence Congressional representative conservatism? Although ethnocentrism, out-group prejudice, and racial threats strongly predict American political attitudes and voter behavior, how social movements predicated on these beliefs shape political outcomes is rarely considered. We argue that white nationalist activities significantly contribute to the radicalization of Congressional representatives’ policy agendas in a manner non-reducible to demographic or socioeconomic conditions. By mobilizing white voters against racial status threats, they indirectly compel politicians to adopt more radically conservative agendas. We quantitatively test these propositions by examining distributions of white nationalist groups in the American South against Congressional representative conservatism from 2010–2017. Analyses reveal that white nationalists indeed appear to significantly impact representative radical conservatism, even controlling for numerous factors commonly theorized to explain their rise. In doing so, we contribute to emerging insights on the political influence of the radical right on the contemporary American conservative “mainstream.”

Varied Institutional Responses to COVID-19: An Investigation of U.S. Colleges’ and Universities’ Reopening Plans for Fall 2020

The authors investigate coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) risk factors, suitability of online instruction, politics, and institutions’ finances as rationales guiding instructional delivery decisions for fall 2020, after COVID-19’s emergence. Contributions include estimating multinomial logit regressions with mode of delivery as a categorical variable, integrating resource dependence and crisis response as theoretical frames, and introducing new predictor variables, including a measure of local residential access to broadband Internet. Findings suggest that county populations, local political preferences, and the percentage of revenue derived from auxiliary enterprises were consistent predictors of delivery mode. Political parties of an institution’s governor and congressional representative were predictive of delivery mode for institutions in the lowest tercile of endowment per student but not for institutions in the highest tercile. Bottom-tercile institutions substituted from online to in-person reopening as reliance on revenue from auxiliary enterprises increased, but top-tercile institutions appeared only to substitute from hybrid to in-person or from online to hybrid delivery as revenue from auxiliary enterprises or tuition and fees increased.

Writing Rights to Right Wrongs: A Critical Analysis of Young Children Composing Nationalist Narratives as Part of the Larger Body Politic

Many researchers have considered recent and intergenerational immigrant children’s perspectives on immigration policies. Fewer have investigated nonimmigrant children’s views despite children’s sociopolitical identities forming long before they can vote. Drawing from data generated in spring 2017, the author illustrates how young children at an urban, midwestern school argued against the Republican administration’s (anti-)immigration policies. Framed as an ethnographic case study, the author focuses on how third graders enacted justice-oriented identities as they wrote to congressional representatives about contemporary immigration policies. By attuning to how children embedded multiple institutional and political contexts in their written rationale, the author explicates the tensions and possibilities for nonimmigrant children in writing policies and possibilities for tomorrow. Ultimately, the author argues adults must intentionally sustain children’s civic participation in ways beyond the niceties that plague early years classrooms.

US CONGRESS AND AMERICAN ASSISTANCE TO THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF KAZAKHSTAN IN THE 1990 S

In the first years after the collapse of the USSR, the government of the Republic of Kazakhstan sought to implement in its country the mechanisms characteristic of a market type of economy. At the beginning of the formation of the state, own resources for such a transformation were not enough. The government of the republic counted on foreign assistance, including from the nominal world leader of that time - the United States. The main state body of the United States capable of assisting and promoting the economic development of the Republic of Kazakhstan was the US Congress. However, American lawmakers, although aware of the importance of this undertaking, treated this issue peculiarly. Assisting to Kazakhstan, they pursued their interests and did not allocate significant amounts from the federal budget. The purpose of this work is to identify the priorities of congressional representatives in the issue of promoting the economic development of Kazakhstan in the 1990s. Because of the study, it was concluded that for congressional representatives a sufficient level of economic development of the Central Asian republic was a level capable of ensuring its existence as an independent state. Washington also did not miss the opportunity to get the most benefits from the process of Kazakhstan's transition to capitalism.

The Forest Ranger (and the Legislator): How Local Congressional Politics Shape Policy Implementation in Agency Field Offices

Abstract Research on political control over government bureaucracy has primarily focused on direct exercises of power such as appointments, funding, agency design, and procedural rules. In this analysis, we extend this literature to consider politicians who leverage their institutional standing to influence the decisions of local field officials over whom they have no explicit authority. Using the case of the US Forest Service (USFS), we investigate whether field-level decisions are associated with the political preferences of individual congressional representatives. Our sample encompasses 7,681 resource extraction actions initiated and analyzed by 107 USFS field offices between 2005 and 2018. Using hierarchical Bayesian regression, we show that under periods of economic growth and stability, field offices situated in the districts of congressional representatives who oppose environmental regulation initiate more extractive actions (timber harvest, oil and gas drilling, grazing) and conduct less rigorous environmental reviews than field offices in the districts of representatives who favor environmental regulation. By extending existing theories about interactions between politicians and bureaucrats to consider informal means of influence, this work speaks to (1) the role of local political interests in shaping agency-wide policy outcomes and (2) the importance of considering informal and implicit means of influence that operate in concert with explicit control mechanisms to shape bureaucratic behavior.

More Reward Than Punishment: Labor Resilience at Midcentury

More Reward Than Punishment: Labor Resilience at Midcentury

In Case You Haven't Heard…

States have one year to facilitate 988, the country's first mental health crisis line. Yet, 47 states haven't passed legislation needed to support the new line by the July 16, 2022, deadline set by Congress. A new analysis by The Kennedy Forum shows only three states have passed adequate legislation to facilitate 988, the nation's first three‐digit number for people experiencing a mental health crisis. Last year, Congress unanimously passed the bipartisan National Suicide Hotline Designation Act of 2020, which created 988 as the universal number for the National Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Crisis Hotline System, as an alternative to 911. States are running out of time to fund and implement important components of the system: 24/7 call centers staffed by mental health professionals, mobile response teams and crisis stabilization services that connect people to follow‐up care. According to The Kennedy Forum, constituents in states that have no 988 legislation in the works can contact their state representatives and ask them to introduce or pass a bill that includes 988 user fees. They can also contact their congressional representatives to ask them to support the state's response.

A democracia representativa no Brasil: uma análise da atuação dos deputados federais frente aos índices de desenvolvimento de seus estados e a região geográfica que ocupam

Purpose – This study seeks to verify whether the performance of Brazilian Congressional Representatives is related to MHDI and GDP per capita indices and the regions they represent. Methodology – Regarding the performance of the parliamentarians, the data used were those made available by the Transparência Brasil portal and analyzed using the multivariate exploratory non-hierarchical cluster analysis technique K-means. Federative Units were divided into clusters according to the similarities they presented with respect to the variables that made up the analysis. Findings – After the analyses, we were able to determine that there is no relation of equivalence between the performance of representatives in Congress and the observed research development indices (MHDI and GDP per capita) with states of different regions and quite distinct conditions of development making up the same group of analysis. Originality/value – The researched data, or even the identification of transparency actions demonstrates the wide variety of analysis possibilities that are available in terms of discussions of the performance of political agents and their respective returns for the population. We would suggest that future studies can use other data or other reports displayed in the transparency portals of various spheres of government. Other research possibilities can be developed based on qualitative analyses of the effective representativity of the projects proposed by these representatives of the people.

Suggestive potential of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidential speech ‘Annual Address to the US Congress’

The article deals with suggestive potential in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech devoted to the issues of confronting World War II threats and proposing aid to those European countries where it broke out. The speech was addressed to the United States Congress. The rally of congressional representatives opposed the government to propose assistance to the countries in need having faced the consequences of the Great Depression. Thus, the politicians considered the war on another continent was unlikely to have а detrimental effect on the country’s interests. Suggestive influence is based on the inculcation of information to affect an interlocutor’s uncritical perception to alter their attitudes and actions. Implementation of such a phenomenon in Roosevelt’s speech is realized through variative repetitive information about the potential threat from the aggressor to US liberty and confrontation of the New Order Hitler wants to impose on democratic societies. Moreover, Roosevelt appeals to the congressional representatives’ awareness through the system of images that makes it possible to describe actions and regimes of those who put the world order under threat. It goes in contrast with the USA’s system, order, and democracy. Suggestive influence in Roosevelt’s speech presented by linguistic units at different levels to indicate the potential threat to America. Discourse strategies in the analyzed speech are expressed with the help of tactics of opposition and tactics of sacralization. They are implemented by multilevel linguistic units of evaluative semantics, units that bear sacred meaning, as well as epithets, metaphors, comparisons, and truisms.

Can we detect conditioned variation in political speech? two kinds of discussion and types of conversation.

Previous work has demonstrated that certain speech patterns vary systematically between sociodemographic groups, so that in some cases the way a person speaks is a valid cue to group membership. Our work addresses whether or not participants use these linguistic cues when assessing a speaker's likely political identity. We use a database of speeches by U.S. Congressional representatives to isolate words that are statistically diagnostic of a speaker's party identity. In a series of four studies, we demonstrate that participants' judgments track variation in word usage between the two parties more often than chance, and that this effect persists even when potentially interfering cues such as the meaning of the word are controlled for. Our results are consistent with a body of literature suggesting that humans' language-related judgments reflect the statistical distributions of our environment.

The Other Great Migration: Southern Whites and the New Right

This paper provides a novel perspective on the Great Migration out of the U.S. South. Using a shift-share identification strategy, we show how millions of Southern white migrants transformed the cultural and political landscape across America. Counties with a larger Southern white share by 1940 exhibited growing support for right-wing politics throughout the 20th century and beyond. Racial animus, religious conservatism, and localist attitudes among the Southern white diaspora hastened partisan realignment as the Republican Party found fresh support for the Southern strategy outside the South. Their congressional representatives were more likely to oppose politically liberal legislation, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and to object to the Electoral College count in 2021. These migrants helped shape institutions that reinforced racial inequity and exclusion, they shared ideology through religious organizations and popular media, and they transmitted an array of cultural norms to non-Southern populations. Together, our findings suggest that Southern white migrants may have forever changed the trajectory of American politics. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.