The news coming from Capitol Hill over the past couple of weeks has left much to be desired. Congress has had difficulty discharging its lawmaking duties.
The Senate’s appropriations committee is at loggerheads over how much spending to authorize. The impasse is hindering Congress’s ability to pass the dozen spending bills and avert a government shutdown on Oct. 1. Additionally, the CIA and other national security authorities have lost the power to conduct warrantless searches of foreign persons. Legislators could not agree to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The House of Representatives, for its part, was out of session the week of June 15 and only conducted work on three days the previous week. The time off further reduces the odds that Congress will finalize a lengthy list of legislation before legislators flee Washington, D.C., to campaign for reelection. These bills include ones that would set clear standards for the taxation of cryptocurrency, extend the existing highway and transit programs, and a revised farm bill, which was last updated in 2018.
And that is to say nothing of the looming insolvency of Social Security. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) recently lamented the sorry state of the program’s finances. Some of his GOP colleagues seconded his sentiments and bemoaned the absence of congressional action. Retirees will see their benefits cut in 2032, and the longer Congress takes to act, the tougher it will be to right the program’s finances.
(Examiner illustration; Getty Images; AP Photos)
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Certainly, voters give no signs that they are impressed. Public approval of Congress slid to 12% from 18% since January, according to Gallup. Voters’ sour feelings toward our national legislature are not a recent phenomenon. Public approval of Congress has not been more than 40% since December 2024.
Voters have expressed their discontent by throwing the bums out. Both the House and Senate have seen party control switch four times since 2004. They might assign Republicans to minority status this autumn, but there is little reason to expect the quality of congressional governance to improve.
Congress is mired in underperformance because it is “overburdened, under-resourced, and gridlocked,” according to a recent report from the Brennan Center.
Congress, particularly the House of Representatives, lacks sufficient staff to do all the work. “Since 1975, each House member has been limited to 18 permanent staff members, even as the United States has grown by more than 100,000 million people,” note report authors Maya Kornberg and Emily Whitehead. Many, if not most, of these staff members are kept busy responding to requests from voters, leaving few staff to help a legislator make policy and oversee the executive branch.
Congress’s committee systems are also antiquated. The economy and world have changed, yet the old division of labor in the chambers has changed little since the 1970s. Issues, such as national technology policy, cannot be clearly assigned to one committee or another. This can lead to important matters not being addressed or having too many legislative cooks in the kitchen.
Populists may find the report’s concerns with representation of particular interest. One problem is that “working-class people have long been underrepresented in Congress.” One reason Congress skews rich, Kornberg and Whitehead suggest, is that legislators’ pay ($174,000) is too low to enable regular individuals to serve. Anyone elected to Congress must pay double housing costs for lodging in pricy Washington, D.C., and one for maintaining their domiciles in their home states. The average one-bedroom apartment in the district runs $2,776 per month (not including utilities) according to Apartments.com.
Congress may be increasingly out of touch with the average voter because the ratio of legislators to voters has become severely distorted. The House of Representatives has had 435 members since 1913. Back then, there were 97.2 million Americans, and each legislator represented about 223,500 of them. Today, there are 341 million Americans, and the average member of the House represents 750,000 constituents. The report advises increasing the House to 600 members.
Kornberg and Whitehead also point out that Congress’s functioning is not helped by the advanced age of many of its members. A not insignificant number of legislators have died or been hospitalized with age-related afflictions. They suggest Congress limit the maximum age of senators and representatives, which would require a constitutional amendment.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, 56 members of the Continental Congress were aggrieved by the state of the government. It was supposed to serve the people and advance their happiness. It wasn’t.
RESTORING AMERICA: COLLINS HAS FLAWS. PLATNER HAS A TOTENKOPF
So, they put quill to paper. “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,” their Declaration of Independence boldly announced. It took more than a decade, but they birthed a new government.
Today’s legislators surveying the sorry state of the first branch of government do not need to take nearly as momentous action. They should, however, take inspiration from their political forebears and summon the courage to reform Congress to meet the needs of 21st-century Americans.
Kevin R. Kosar (@kevinrkosar) is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and edits UnderstandingCongress.org.
