Why congress doesnt work

Moreover, detailed academic studies have shown that the number of competitive House elections is virtually unaffected by redistricting. Surprisingly, partisan redistricting results in more competitive elections than bipartisan or non-partisan redistricting. To understand why, consider two adjoining House districts, one a suburban district that is 70 percent Republican, the other an urban district that is 60 percent Democratic.

If Republican legislators were in control of redistricting, what would they do? They would try to shift 10 percent of GOP voters from the suburban to the urban district. This would leave the suburban district with a safe point advantage and put the urban district in play.

As a result, both districts would become more competitive. This outcome is due to the natural incentive partisans have to increase the potential number of House seats for their party at the cost of the margin of safety. So why since the s have incumbents enjoyed re-election rates of about 90 percent?

Alan Abramowitz and his colleagues at Emory University, who have written on the shift toward uncompetitive elections in the House, came to the following conclusion:.

This shift has not been caused by redistricting but by demographic change and ideological realignment within the electorate. Moreover, even in the remaining marginal districts most challengers lack the financial resources needed to wage competitive campaigns.

The increasing correlation among district partisanship, incumbency, and campaign spending means that the effects of these variables tend to reinforce each other to a greater extent than in the past. The result is a pattern of reinforcing advantages that leads to extraordinarily uncompetitive elections.

Enlarge the House. Among functioning democracies, our legislature is the least representative body. For members of the German Bundestag, the ratio is 1 to , For the French Assembly, 1 to , After the census, the House of Representatives for the first time refused to enlarge itself to accommodate a larger population. In , it formally fixed its membership at the current number.

The population has tripled since. Clearly that would be impractical. Various proposals have been made to enlarge the House to 1, members, reducing the average size of a district to around , There is just one problem: only Congress can make this change, and it has no incentive to do so.

If the House would not consent to its enlargement in , why should it in ? The perks, the power, and the money have only increased since then. Why risk diluting those benefits?

The only recourse is a constitutional amendment. But constitutional amendments do not cause political change; they are a consequence of political change. Arguing today for an amendment to reduce congressional power would be akin to arguing in for an amendment to free the slaves. Slavery ended because of the abolitionist movement and the Civil War, not the Reconstruction Amendments.

The war is first won, and then the victors codify the result. Institute term limits. From to , the term-limit movement won many battles, with 23 states imposing limited terms of office on their elected representatives, including members of Congress. But by a vote, the Supreme Court ruled that only Congress could limit its own terms.

Skeptics can now offer a one-word rebuttal to term-limits enthusiasts: California. Although there are many reasons for the Mess in the West, 20 years of term limits for state legislators have not kept California from hurtling toward fiscal disaster.

Reform campaign finance. This is a very popular idea among progressives, who see the corruption within the system and view shutting off the cash flow as the obvious solution.

There are several reasons why this will not work. And since the current finance system favors them, there is no reason to believe they will make the kinds of changes to funding rules that would increase electoral competition. Second, the Supreme Court has been very clear that political spending is a form of political speech and is therefore protected by the Constitution. You might disagree with their jurisprudence, but unless and until the justices change their minds, money will continue to flow into super PACs and other independent-expenditure entities.

Finally, given how much money Congress appropriates, it is practically impossible to eliminate the money others spend to influence lawmakers. These extremists pressure legislators to accept no compromise, but without any compromise, we are left with gridlock. This story has a certain internal logic.

But it is not the best explanation for the failures that have left Congress with a lower approval rating than polygamy. An alternative narrative goes something like this: There is a broad bipartisan consensus in Washington, D. Both parties agree that Congress should decide, and they cooperate to protect and expand this power. By arrogating these decisions to themselves, lawmakers are tackling problems they cannot solve and pre-empting the search for diverse local solutions by others.

There is gridlock because Congress tries to force a single solution on the entire country, when no politically acceptable solution exists. Consider the increased share of federal and state spending and decreased share of local government spending over the past years as shown in the above figure.

The American public has spoken and it has almost zero confidence in their lawmakers' ability to solve problems. And this is no secret, not even to those who walk the halls of power.

Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat from Missouri, once joked that Satan is more popular than Congress, and he's probably not too far off. So why does Congress so irk the American public? Here are five reasons. There are members of the House of Representatives and members of the Senate. Lots of people think Congress is way too big and expensive, especially when you consider it appears to accomplish very little. Congress has let the federal government shut down , on average, once every two years over the past 37 years because lawmakers could not reach accord on a spending deal.

In other words: Government shutdowns are as frequent as House elections, which occur every two years. There have been 18 government shutdowns in modern U.

Of course, not everyone feels that way. The House of Representatives has averaged "legislative days" a year since , according to records kept by the Library of Congress.

That's about one day of work every three days, or fewer than three days a week. The perception is that members of Congress don't work a whole lot, but is that a fair assessment?

I appreciate your views on this important issue and welcome the opportunity to respond. Gage Skidmore. The House finished its last official business of the year Thursday and many lawmakers quickly fled Washington, after spending only days in session for all of Next year, House members are scheduled to be in Washington even less—just days.

It's nothing new the House was in session for days in , and legislative indolence is a favorite topic of everyone from late-night talk-show hosts to your neighborhood barber. It's one of the few ways to discuss politics with strangers or near-strangers in this polarized society and not worry about offending anyone.

It's a safe, lightly populist, nonpartisan political criticism that your bigoted uncle and hippie college-student cousin can equally appreciate at Christmas dinner. It requires no serious analysis or understanding of how Congress works, nor of the individual human beings who walk its halls.

It's the lowest common denominator of political discourse. And it's also dead wrong. Congress's laziness is so taken for granted that it's never really challenged. In reality, while there are lots of nice perks, members of Congress have a grueling job, whether in Washington or at home in their states and districts. Ex-surgeon admits to throwing wife's body out of plane 35 years after killing her Oct 21, AM. Siberia's rapidly melting permafrost is changing the landscape Oct 25, PM.

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