Kyle Mathews shares eight steps he believes would produce a more functional congress at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen. It is an interesting list including ideas I’ve heard before and a few new ideas. There is also some good discussion in the comments. I thought it would be worth sharing here in the order that he presented the ideas.
Resolve the electoral status of D.C.
I’ve made my position on this issue clear in the past. Kyle agrees with me that it is important and that the current legislation is the wrong route.
Limit campaign contributions to those who will be represented in the election.
Again, I’ve already shared my thoughts on that (multiple times) and I agree with this idea. I like the term Kyle uses – electoral carpetbaggery.
Water down the filibuster.
This is one I don’t think I have written about. I agree that the filibuster is overused but I also agree with one of the comments which said that placing a time-limit on filibusters would effectively remove them completely. As one who believes that the filibuster mechanism provides an important check on the system I think I would rather put up with its overuse, than do away with it entirely.
Eliminate anonymous holds.
I had not considered this before either, but as a believer in transparency and accountability I agree that holds should not be anonymous. If I put a hold on a bill I should be willing to admit it and explain my reasons.
Increase the size of both houses.
Once again, I have made my position on this quite clear, and once again I agree. I had never considered increasing the size of the Senate, but the way that he presents it – three senators per state – would be workable and would still allow the Senate to function in the same capacity that it was originally designed to function. I especially like the way the three senators per state idea would give each state a chance to bring a fresh face to the Senate in each cycle.
Increase the capacity and role of the Congressional Research Service.
This was another idea that was new to me, but it sounds like a good one. One comment argues that members of congress only use the CBO information if it benefits them. That argument is fairly weak because whatever hurts one side of the debate will benefit the other so the information will almost always be used. More information is almost never a bad thing for the governing process.
Restructure the committee system.
This is another idea I have never addressed, but I agree that the committee system is broken. Committees tend to turn committee members into industry insiders (if they weren’t already) and thus minimize any objectivity that should exist between government and industry. One other idea I once heard related to this was random committee assignments and regular rotation. I think there are lots of ways the committee system could be altered and most of them would be improvements over the current system.
Make all elections non-partisan.
Once upon a time I might have agreed with this, but I now believe that this would actually make it more difficult for voters to get truly informed about candidates and would further discourage voter participation in the political system. I could be wrong about that, but that is what I would expect to happen.
Out of the eight ideas I had addressed three directly in the past and I agree with six of the ideas in principle – some details would still need to be worked out on some of those. If I had to choose all or nothing I think that making all eight reforms would be a positive change overall in our system despite the drawbacks of the two ideas that I disagree with.
Nice analysis. I hadn’t thought of expanding the Senate either. On the one hand, I really hate the idea of adding more members of the elite ruling class. On the other hand, I like the idea of each state being able to vote on a senator every two years. Hopefully it would make achieving agreement much more difficult.
A lot of people are tired of the political bickering that happens in Washington. They claim to want a federal legislature that works smoothly. I’d rather have a federal legislature that is continuously in an uproar and where agreement on most issues is extremely difficult to achieve. Maybe increasing the Senate by a half would aid in that.
Of course, increasing the House quite a bit would be tremendously valuable. If we couldn’t get campaign contributions to be limited to actual constituents, at least having more representatives in the House would make lobbying a far more expensive affair. Maybe big business would even conclude that it’s cheaper and more effective to really compete in the market than to lobby Congress.
One of the things that I have learned to dread the most is an efficient Congress, meaning a congress that passes legislation efficiently – without fail that legislation is destructive in the long run. (Patriot Act, TARP, ARRA – to name a few)
I’m also very surprised at the very idea that companies would compete in the market – that’s just not an efficient way to make money anymore 😉