President Obama stated in his latest State of the Union address in 2016 that “for better politics we have to change the system”. While President Obama’s argument was referring to elections and campaigning, updating the US political system has been topical more generally in recent years. One aspect of this debate has dealt with expectations about the functioning of the Congress and particularly with claims concerning the “return to regular order”. The deliberative character of the US political system and the Congress in particular is central to this debate. The purpose of this paper is to consider deliberation from a conceptual and rhetorical perspective within Congress. Rather than relying on the existing body of literature on deliberation in US Congress, the focus will be on congressional debates with the aim of analyzing the kinds of meanings for deliberation are given in them.
