This episode of Next Gen Voter explores how Congress has become less focused on doing the people's business and more focused on winning elections. How do we give the power back to the people?
This episode of Next Gen Voter focuses on how Congress is supposed to work for the people and instead the people have no voice.
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Welcome to the next gen voter podcast-the only podcast of the next gen, by the next gen, for the next gen. I’m your host Riley Daniel, and today we’ll be discussing congress, not its purpose but rather its procedure. More specifically, I’ll look at how congress is supposed to work, how it works now, why we got to this point, and some steps we can take to fix it. How did the hallowed halls of the US capitol, the building that represents the direct voice of citizens in their self-government come to represent such institutionalized power.
This issue of consolidated congressional power is very hard to understand, and even harder to explain, so I will use a real-life example to help. Last week, there was controversy, as after the combined government funding/ stimulus bill, which, despite being negotiated by his own advisors, Trump hated, was reluctantly signed by the president, he tweeted out a call for a stand-alone bill to provide direct payments of $2,000 to every American, an increase from the $600 allocated in the stimulus. Immediately, this proposal got near-universal support across the country, and even managed to become a rare spot of common ground in congress, with it being endorsed by senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, one of the most conservative members of the senate, and independent Bernie Sanders, quite possibly the most liberal member of the senate. In addition to the vocal endorsements from those two senators, it was supported by the vast majority of the democratic caucus, and a not-insignificant minority of the republican caucus, to the point where it had the support of the majority of the senate. So, after being supported by the republican president, passed by the democrat-controlled house with a bipartisan ⅔ majority and with the support of the majority of the senate, it would surely be in the mail by now right? Wrong. Multiple attempts to bring the bill to the floor for a vote were denied by Mitch McConnell, out of fear that it might divide his republican caucus before Tuesday’s Georgia runoff elections. So despite the fact it had the support of at least a majority of the senate, this proposal to help millions of Americans was blocked by one man’s decision because it was politically expedient. What?
This immediately triggered my anger, so I went to do more research and quickly found that not only is this not a rarity, it has become status quo for congress in the last decade. In the US House, individual members of congress have not been able to bring their bills to the floor w/o leadership’s approval for three terms now. Important climate, criminal justice, healthcare and government regulation bills that could have helped communities and saved lives were denied a vote. The whole point of democracy is that the people elect leaders who represent them, create bills to help their community and vote on the issues. But now, party leaders refuse to allow bills on the floor that have the possibility of being politically risky for their incumbents, or even worse, because it might help the other party. I mean, just last month, Majority leader Mitch McConnell said that he will likely block votes on issues that are broadly popular while Joe Biden is still in his first two years, in order to prevent Biden from getting wins that could threaten the GOP majority. I’m sorry if this offends someone, but there is no other word to describe that mentality but obstructionism, a phenomenon that congress has truly perfected over the last couple of terms,. A good example of this would be how the republican-controlled senate refused to give a hearing to President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, because they thought that holding the supreme court hostage would incentivize their base to turn out for a historically unpopular nominee, a hypothesis that was accurate, unfortunately for the proponents of legislative procedure. I think one of the things that this increased power in the hands of congressional leadership has done has increased the polarization of our elected officials, because those who might be afraid of being too extreme are able to duck and dodge difficult votes, and can instead run to the extreme to avoid primary challenges. It has also prevented bipartisanship, as those who used to be known as dealmakers, people like John McCain, Bob Menendez, Jeff Flake and Henry Cuellar have either left congress, often due to fear of going down in a brutal primary, or have seen their political powers taken from them to the point where they are nothing more than a number in the pocket of their caucus leader. Deals such as the DREAM ACT, the clean water act and major entitlement reforms that were passed with bipartisan support and were written by legislators that were no different than their peers would be impossible. Nowadays, everything is written by the lawyers for the majority in one body, put in a thousand page packet and given to legislators with only hours to read. In fact, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez best described it when she said “this isn’t governance. It’s hostage-taking”. Well said
So, it’s very clear that congress does not work as a beacon of legislative initiative, but rather as a way to hold onto power for very powerful party members. So how do we fix it? One solution would be to enact term limits. This would force leadership teams to change over the course of years, not decades, which would prevent the stymining of new voices and ideas, and encourage members to work bipartisanly in order to create lasting change. My solution is a little less radical. Votes. I believe that every senator or representative should have the right to get a vote on a piece of legislation that they propose, within a reasonable amount of time after it was proposed. Same with any executive appointments and confirmations. What? That would take too much time. Great. Then we can have the senate spend more than 173 days a year in session. They get paid a lot of money specifically to vote to represent their communities. I’m not paying them to dodge votes that might be politically inconvenient. We the people deserve to know where our representatives on the issues, not that they’re too afraid to take a stand. It’s time to hold our government accountable to the American people. It’s time to make our voice heard.