Fix Congress, Fix America
Our broken Legislative Branch is the root cause of nearly all our country's problems. To fix America, fix Congress.
Every year, more and more Americans feel that our country is falling apart. Public trust in our institutions and our leaders has fallen to historic lows. Across the political spectrum, most Americans predict more division, dysfunction, and decline in our future. Despair is in the air, and the last 2 years of Covid chaos haven’t helped.
However, this popular pessimism stands in sharp contrast to the optimism of oligarchs. The stock market — the avatar for corporate confidence — continues to skyrocket despite recessions, pandemics, and wars. Billionaires got $2 trillion richer during a pandemic that curb-stomped the average worker. Corporate America often gets the exact results it wants from the very same government that most people feel totally ignored by.
Why does this happen? How can our government work so well for the rich and powerful but so badly for the rest of us? Some on the left blame “activist courts” that have obliterated virtually all limits on political bribery, allowing corporate lobbyists and big donors to buy politicians wholesale. Some on the right blame an “imperial presidency” that rules by tyrannical executive orders, unmoored from the Rule of Law and democratic accountability. There is truth in both these critiques, but there’s an even deeper truth at play: our politicized Judicial Branch and our medieval Executive Branch are both the direct result of our broken Legislative Branch.
There’s a reason our Founding Fathers sculpted our Legislative Branch before the other 2 in our Constitution — even though all 3 branches are coequal in power, they recognized the importance of Congress as the branch answering directly to the will of the people and entrusted it with the duty to legislate. It is Congress, not the President and not the Courts, that bears the responsibility and the authority to make and change laws in America’s best interests.
Thus, it is no accident that Congress has become so dysfunctional. Nowadays, it seems like Congress couldn’t even pass a kidney stone. Its ability to override judicial activism and counterbalance executive power has deteriorated alongside its legislative decay. The less lawmaking Congress can do, the more of its “legislative slack” gets picked up by the other 2 less-democratic branches. And it’s much easier for corporations and elites to corrupt the “imperial presidency” and capture the “activist courts” than it is for them to control a pesky democratic institution like Congress. So it makes sense for the rich and powerful to drown our Legislative Branch (in a toxic stew of partisan polarization, culture wars, and corruption) while they manipulate the other 2 branches to gatekeep their money and power.
So how do we fix this? How can we revitalize Congress and restore its ability to accomplish its one main job — lawmaking? Let’s consider 4 powerful reforms that could be enacted at either the state or federal level, and then one ambitious constitutional amendment:
Multimember Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV). Lucky for us, there is already a simple, potent reform gaining steam; with the power to make Congress work again. Both Maine and Alaska now use it for all their elections, along with dozens of cities from New York to San Francisco. It’s called ranked-choice voting, or RCV. The difference between RCV and conventional voting is simple: instead of being forced to pick only one candidate during an election, RCV gives each voter the power to rank their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choices. This freedom of choice breaks through the 2-party duopoly and transfers power from special interests and corrupt party machines directly to us voters. (That’s why both the Republican and Democratic machines hate it.) Basically, RCV is gatekeeper kryptonite — by making diverse 3rd-party candidates viable, it makes elections more competitive and representative. It unravels polarization and avoids fears of vote-splitting and spoiler candidates. It incentivizes politicians to work together to get things done. It makes gerrymandering irrelevant. Oh, and voters love it. Any state in our Union has the power to switch all its elections to RCV right now, but why wait: let’s pass it nationwide with the Fair Representation Act. A Congress elected through RCV — ideally multimember RCV — is a Congress less controlled by party machines and special interests, and more accountable to We The People.
“Drain the swamp” with an Anti-Bribery Tax tied directly to Democracy Dollars. Unfortunately, our corporate-dominated Supreme Court has obliterated virtually all limits on political bribery over the last few decades, and it will probably rub more salt in the wound later this year. (Update: it did.) But even though we can’t directly stop the rich and powerful from buying our politicians, we can outmaneuver and redirect that bribery by aggressively taxing it and using that revenue to fund Democracy Dollars (aka public-matching funds) that average voters can channel to any candidates of their choice. A 50% tax on all political donations above $100 should fund an equal-but-opposite Democracy Dollar program empowering every voter to balance-out special interest bribery. This creates a 1-to-1 counterbalance between big money and democracy — when special interests funnel ungodly sums of cash into an election, average voters can push back against that corruption with an equal amount of money. Exploit bribery to fight bribery. Perfectly balanced, as all things should be…
Protect our Right to Vote like our Right to Bear Arms. Our Constitution’s 15th, 19th, and 26th Amendments enshrine our right to vote even more absolutely than the 2nd Amendment enshrines our right to bear arms. However, politicians and party machines often treat our voting rights more like an annoying privilege than a Constitutional right. Politicians want voting to be a hassle because that gives them more power over us. But we’re supposed to choose them — not the other way around. Voting is the birthright of every single American citizen age 18 and above — no matter our sex, race, religion, or background. Whether you were born a citizen or became one through naturalization; your right to vote is absolute and politicians must get with the program or get out of the way. We need Automatic Voter Registration for every 18+ citizen who interacts with state agencies like the DMV. We need safe, secure Universal Vote-By-Mail so that our busy lives don’t obstruct our voting rights. We need Open Primaries so that party machines can’t lock voters out. And last but not least, we need to turn Columbus Day into Election Day by pushing it back to the Tuesday after November’s first Monday. These 4 reforms will “politely” remind politicians who they work for: us.
Remote Legislating. Politicians spend too much time away from the constituents they’re elected to serve, yet too little time actually working. This is partly due to the strict (and outdated) rules that demand lawmakers be physically present in the capitol during hearings and votes. One of the few silver linings born from Covid was the realization that so much professional work can be conducted remotely, and legislating was no exception. Multiple state legislatures temporarily switched to remote legislating during the pandemic. Moving forward, we should continue to allow “remote legislating” at both the state and federal levels. Any legislators who want to remotely attend their capitol hearings and vote remotely should have the option too. This enables legislators to spend more time in the communities they’re elected to represent, and less time conveniently clustered with high-octane lobbyists in the capitol. Given current technology, there is no reason why remote legislating can’t be securely and transparently conducted. This will help local communities claw back some representation from centers of cultural and economic power.
Bicameral Fusion. This final reform will require a constitutional amendment, but I believe it will be essential to maintaining the long-term stability of our federal government. Basically, any bill that passes a floor vote in either the House or the Senate must receive a floor vote in the other chamber before the end of that legislative cycle. Furthermore, if 60% or more of the total legislators in Congress vote yes on that bill (321+ out of 535) then the bill has been passed by Congress and is sent to the President’s desk for signature or veto. Let’s call this bicameral fusion. This would prevent either chamber of Congress from quietly ignoring bills passed by the other chamber until they die. Instead, any legislation popular enough to pass in one chamber would be guaranteed a fair up-or-down vote in the other chamber. Crucially, this would also prevent an undemocratic minority in one chamber from killing overwhelmingly popular legislation in the other chamber, while undercutting those who argue that the Senate is too undemocratic to exist.
Through ranked-choice voting, democracy dollars, voting protections, remote legislating, and bicameral fusion; Congress can reclaim its lawmaking power and become a coequal branch again. No longer would activist courts and rogue executive orders be de-facto legislative playgrounds for the rich and powerful. Freed from the partisan warfare, gridlock, and corruption that currently strangle it — Congress would once again be a living, breathing, lawmaking body able to legislate dynamically in the best interest of the American people. Fix Congress; fix America.