Conversation Cafe

Muftiah McCartin

 

Designing legislation in a democratic legislative body is the art of compromise.  It is created out the tension among competing ideas, politics, and interests that spring from competing forces seeking such fundamentals as safety and protection, civil and other rights, well-being, prosperity, power, and knowledge.  The design of legislation is often painful and frustrating, and can distort one’s usual sense of design, but it is a process that can work.  Muftiah McCartin, who worked in U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years before becoming a lobbyist in a major Washington, D.C. law firm, will touch on the various components of the political/legislative process AND a window into the painful, frustrating, and sometimes quite crazy design of legislation under the American legislative system and spark an interesting discussion on why, for example, the United States is unable to pass immigration reform when a majority of the Americans, and a majority of Members of the U.S. Congress, support it.