Donald R. Wolfensberger is a congressional fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a resident scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center. He served as director of the Congress Project at the Wilson Center from 1999 to 2012. He writes a twice-monthly column, “Procedural Politics,” for Roll Call. He is the author of Congress and the People: Deliberative Democracy on Trial (Johns Hopkins University Press, April 2000). Mr. Wolfensberger worked for 28 years as a staff member in the House of Representatives, rising to the position of chief-of-staff of the House Rules Committee in the 104th Congress (1995–96)—the first Congress in which Republicans controlled the House majority in 40-years. He is an expert on parliamentary rules and procedures and played a key role in developing House reform proposals for the Republican leadership over the years, culminating in their adoption as House rules when the GOP won majority control in 1995. He also is a former radio news reporter and newscaster and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tanzania, East Africa in 1967–68.
