A Broken Congress
Great news – the federal government won’t run out of money this week! Rejoice!
That is literally what qualifies as tremendous news out of Congress today. Speaker Michael Johnson has managed to squeeze a funding resolution through his narrow to nonexistent majority with the help of a host of Democrats. The same handful of conservatives who ousted Kevin McCarthy are now plotting their revenge.
Keep in mind that this resolution doesn’t last long – it merely kicks the can down the road until January when different spending levels are to be hashed out.
As a sign of the times, former speaker Kevin McCarthy elbowed Tim Burchett, one of his ousters, in the hallways of Congress this week. I guess he’s not over it.
If you understood what is happening – or not happening - in Congress today you’d be appalled. There’s a rule called the Hastert Rule that says nothing gets brought to the floor unless a majority of the majority party supports it. That means that every member of the minority party can’t bring meaningful bills to the floor. One member said to me, “If you’re in the minority party and don’t have an important committee assignment, you might as well be a piece of furniture.”
The days of legislators from both parties wrangling a bipartisan agreement are long gone. Instead, members are often presented with legislation with minutes or hours to review it before being asked to vote for it – with the expectation that of course they won’t vote for it. Worse yet, that even happens to majority members sometimes, where they too will be asked to vote for laws they’ve barely had time to review, and the expectation is that they’ll sign off.
The parties are more concerned with scoring points on each other than delivering good policy. 2 members wrote, “Why is our status as members of different political parties seemingly more potent than our shared love for America, our many areas of agreement, and our shared responsibility to solve problems and get results? Why are we more often opponents than colleagues? . . . Because the system is built to tear us apart. In American politics, winning isn’t winning unless the other side is losing . . . “
Presidential candidate and third-term Congressman Dean Phillips said, “Members spend 10,000 hours a week dialing for dollars. It’s insane. I’m the only member who has declined to fundraise, which means I have a lot more time on my hands to serve my constituents instead of asking people for money.” Many Congressmen spend more time on fundraising than legislating.
This week on the podcast, I interview Kevin Kosar, who worked at Congress on the policy side for years before joining a thinktank and penning the book, “Congress Overwhelmed: The Decline in Congressional Capacity and Prospects for Reform.”
“Congress has been reducing its policymaking capacities for decades, just as they’ve needed to do the opposite,” Kevin says. “They got rid of the Office of Technology Assessment in the 90s, just before technology started to take off.” Kevin’s concerns began years ago. “I started seeing hearings degenerate into theatre and posturing instead of fact-finding, and said ‘uh-oh.’ And it’s gotten much worse since then.”
What can be done to improve things? Here, Kevin offers some hope. “What is crazy is that it’s totally up to Congress how to run itself. There’s nothing in the Constitution about how Congress operates; the rules have just developed over time and now they’re making everyone miserable. They can be changed at any time by Congress itself.”
Meanwhile, expect more tension and drama in January as the fragile Republican majority gets put to the test again. Hopefully no more elbows get thrown.
For my interview with political scientist Kevin Kosar about how to fix Congress click here. To see how Forward is working on improving our politics, click here. To check out the Dean Phillips presidential campaign, click here – I think Dean may be our best chance to avoid a Biden – Trump rematch.
