Fixing Congress

I have thought for some time that we will need a constitutional amendment to fix Congress. Here, Lawrence Lessig gives a good account of why this is so...Congresspeople are more interested in raising money to campaign than anything else. The recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United made the need for an Amendment clearer, although I think we can trace the problem back to Buckley v. Valeo, after Congress had been shamed by Watergate to curb abuse, and then had half of the solution declared unconstitutional. Lessig blames Obama, and maybe that is fair, but the bottom line for those who thought there was going to be radical change is that they are bound to be disappointed.

A recent poll indicates that the public does not see the corruption of Congress by money as being an important issue. Ezra Klein provides a link in this article, and a response. In order to have a Constitutional Amendment based on 38 states voting for a constitutional convention, you would have to have overwhelming public support. If people haven't come to the conclusion that we need structural change by now, I seriously wonder if it will ever happen. Both writers seem to favor the Fair Elections Act, although Lessig says the Supreme Court would declare it unconstitutional. But will the populace ever favor public financing of candidates who opt out of the traditional funding sources? In these days of raging budget deficits? I don't think so. Campaign contributions need to be limited in amount and limited to citizens (corporations are not citizens). The government can require debates in return for use of the airwaves; attack ads do nothing to further reasonable debate. But again, that is a constitutional amendment.

Campaign contributions aside, we still have the issue of lobbying. Obama has been making attempts to limit its effectiveness, but this article indicates that we need something stronger. And I don't think just keeping former legislators from lobbying for seven years will do it, as Lessig suggests.

Is this country so on the brink that some radical change is necessary? Let's hope not, for I don't see it happening in the near future.

As much as I like Obama more than either political party, his first year has involved some missteps. He opted not to follow Clinton's method of proposing a crafted change to health care of his own. Instead, he let Congress create it, albeit with pressure from the White House for certain principles. Rather than adopt as a structure a bipartisan idea like the Wyden-Bennett bill, they started from scratch. The drawn-out process of Max Baucus' committee eventually killed public support. Once again, leaving it to the old Senate bulls prevented change. I think the reason the public became so disenchanted was that it began seeing the legislative process more clearly, with all the horsetrading going on for votes with special perks going to certain states, like Nebraska. They don't understand the bill and who can blame them, at the length the bill took to get in all the various favors. I thought the bill was actually a good step forward, but at this point I am ready to start over. Or do something less massive and get some real research going on health care costs because the experts do not agree what to do or even how many different problems there are.

The one potential positive major item that could receive strong public backing is reform of the financial industry. I believe that this is also going to be very disappointing because Congress cannot get it through its head that business-as-usual is no longer acceptable. And there is a lot of money flying around here. But perhaps the continued failure of such measures will finally convince more members of the public that there needs to be structural change. The law evolves slowly. It is made by Congress with the Court making Constitutional interpretations. We had a terrible situation regarding corruption in the late 1800's and early 1900's. The Supreme Court was behind the ball but eventually changed, during the Great Depression. Let's hope we don't require such a catastrophe this time.

The recent polls show that most people are worried about the economy and jobs. This is always the way it is. When economic times are bad that is what most people care about more than anything else. So when we get past this recession maybe we can hope for better. It is also getting clearer that the Republicans are going to gain back many seats in the fall election. A lot of Democrats see this as a reason to get what they can done now. However, I think that they would be looking at a backlash from the public who is fed up with the way things get done in D.C. And Republicans at some point have to stop the delay tactics and start to help govern again. Don't they? Maybe that will happen after the fall election.

But I don't realistically hope for much. Social changes usually happen slowly. Evolution vs. revolution. There is no reason to think things will be different this time.