As I’m sure you can tell from the name-calling and the hair-pulling that has ensued in the Capitol-turned-playground, Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Sen. Ted Cruz R-Texas and the rest of the schoolyard gang chose to shut down the federal government Monday night. As a result, 800,000 federal employees were sent home.
When the GOP leadership didn’t blow the whistle to end recess, I was outraged like every other Democrat and many Republicans both in and out of Congress. Having achieved the wisdom that accompanies a high school diploma, I understand that it’s reckless to gamble with the economic health and the financial standing of the nation, especially over a law that will allow millions of Americans to buy health insurance. This is the same law that has been affirmed by every branch of government. Call me intelligent, but I think everyone must realize something went horribly awry with the GOP tactic when enrollment in the health care exchanges began Tuesday morning while the federal government remained closed. Now, your question might be why the Republican Party hasn’t hired me as a political strategist (It may seem bamboozling now, but you’ll understand as you read). However, my chief concern is how the hell did Congress get so messed up anyhow, and how can we restore order among the children? The answer to the former question that’s on all of our minds is that Congress is too extreme. A recent study released by DW-DOMINATE, the standard-bearer of measuring congressional ideology, confirmed what we already knew: The Republican Party is the most conservative it’s ever been and there is virtually nothing that the parties have in common. This obviously helps to explain why the two houses of Congress couldn’t forge an agreement despite the months-long pleas from Democrats to go to conference over their separate budget bills.
Cleaning up this mess won’t be easy. Start with the fact that these people are the rule makers and they get to choose the rules under which they operate. If they benefit under the system, like they do now, they have zero incentive to remedy the problem. So perhaps that is the most serious concern. Since that’s the ball game, you might stop reading now and save the next 120 seconds of your life because nothing I’m about to suggest is actually going to happen. However, let’s pretend for just a moment that the creatures of Washington really care about good governance and not only their re-election campaigns. If that were the case, we’d expect to see the implementation of several commonsense solutions. For one, the practice of gerrymandering would come to an end. Partisan state Legislatures have mastered the art of drawing district lines to their electoral advantage, allowing more extreme candidates, who essentially represent the will of primary voters, to win seats. Instead, magical nonpartisan bodies, like those in Iowa, would draw fair boundaries to create competitive districts.
We might also see dare I say it: term limits. The career politicians who compose the Congressional leadership spend so much of their life in Washington that they have stronger ties with special interests and party officials than they do with the people they represent. Term limits, as opposed to politicians’ eventual deaths, would allow new ideas and leadership to cycle through Congress and resolve some accountability issues. Within the institution itself, here’s a simple one: no budget, no paycheck. When we don’t do our jobs, we get fired. Unfortunately, until we fix the problem with electioneering, we can’t rely on members to lose elections, so the least they should be required to do is forfeit their meager $174,000 annual salary like the rest of federal employees. Similarly, mandating representatives to show up for work would force our leaders to take the necessary time to, you know, run the country. The work week for members of Congress is Tuesday through Thursday; the rest of their time is spent in their districts in fear that if they don’t spend time with their constituents, angry, deranged mobs will stage coups that some of us call failed re-election campaigns. And while members should be accountable to the voters in their districts, there has to be a more feasible schedule that allows them to accomplish the business of the nation. So, I offer these ideas before you not as serious considerations because there is no reason for our leaders to change the status quo but merely as aspirations for a more perfect union. For that, I suppose, we will just have to wait for another revolution to happen.
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