It is no secret that the men and women of the United States Congress are not my favorite people in the world. I spend more time complaining about them than any other branch of government, and it doesn’t take much to launch me into a twenty minute rant about all the things our legislative branch does to piss me off. The problem with my impassioned distaste for Congress is that sometimes people think I am kidding. I am not. So here are the reasons I hate Congress, and the reasons you should too.
I’m Rubber You’re Glue
In a recent and much-publicized study on Congressional behavior, Harvard University professor Gary King determined that members of Congress spend 27 percent of their time taunting the opposition. Whether this is name-calling or accusing the other side of not caring about the American people, it comes to the same thing. These people, who we all assume to be educated, professional leaders, have still not moved beyond basic insults as a way to deal with their problems.
As a taxpayer, I am more than a little annoyed that the people whose salaries I pay can’t get it together to have constructive conversations. As a person who pays attention to politics, I am almost constantly infuriated that the people who we have elected to find solutions to our problems spend so much time creating new ones, and veering further and further away from meaningful political discourse.
All Politics, All The Time
It may seem silly to accuse government of being too political because, after all, that is sort of the point. But I have always been put off by the fact that neither house of Congress seems to be able to do anything just because it is the right thing to do. It has to have a political motivation. For example: the filibuster. Whichever party is in the minority in the Senate is usually trying to change the rules about when votes can be blocked. Of course, since they are in the minority those motions never go anywhere because the majority party feels pretty good about its position of power. Here’s the thing though. The filibuster rules as they stand waste a lot of time and foster partisan divisions. This is true no matter which party is in power, but no one will admit that changing the rules is the right thing to do because they are afraid of losing political ground.
What Do You Call An Election When You Don’t Have A Choice?
This November was my first chance to vote in any election. I was excited to read up on all the candidates and make informed political choices, but the more I read the clearer it became that my only real choice was in the race for governor. Those of you who voted, as I did, from your Boston University address, will have noticed that no one ran against current representative Mike Capuano in the race for Congress.
This is all thanks to Gerrymandering – the process by which Congressional districts are drawn to make seats safe for one party. The Congressman in my home district has never had a serious challenger that I can recall, despite the fact that said Congressman is a complete goon. As long as someone can get elected to Congress once, they can keep on getting elected for as long as they want. When they have no fear of retribution from the electorate, they are not as worried about getting things done. If we had meaningful choices in our elections, it might force Congress to be a little less useless, but as it stands the people making crucial decisions about our economy, education, and infrastructure have little incentive to do the right thing and a lot of incentive to do the thing that wins them the most points politically.
Of course this list could go on and on, but then I would risk falling into another Congressional trap — talking for longer than anyone cares to listen.
Awesome article Annie!
But if the U.S. Congress is really doing so awful and not allowing you to actually participate democratically (à la, I’d say, both the election processes you described and troubles with making “representative” democracy itself truly democratic), what can be done about it?
Especially when the acts of U.S. Congress affect not just the U.S. population (in pretty ungreat ways) but also populations worldwide (in way more ungreat ways, aka hundreds of thousands of casualties via the Iraq War, the effects of NAFTA on Mexican farmers etc), this becomes an incredibly important question.
I’m wondering what you think!