Can this government be fixed? Three steps that might help
WASHINGTON -- The third threatened government shutdown this year was narrowly averted. Congress' deficit supercommittee is apparently on a track to nowhere. And there's been contentious debate but little action on the proposals to help the jobless.
Can this government be fixed?
Americans are increasingly frustrated by the disconnect between what they say they want in their government, and what they see happening in Washington. A majority want compromise; they see polarization. They want economic and other problems addressed; they see gridlock and a series of perils-of-Pauline cliffhangers. By a record 4- 1 ratio in a new Gallup Poll, they express dissatisfaction with the way the country is being governed.
"We are in this period of great anxiety because of economic uncertainty, … and that has people worried about their future," says Dan Glickman, a former Democratic congressman and Cabinet secretary affiliated with the Bipartisan Policy Center. "What they need is confidence building, and what I don't think they sense from our government system is confidencebuilding. Everything they see is division."
The result, he says, has "got people either nervous as hell or disengaged."
While President Obama and congressional leaders wrestle over immediate crises — a stopgap deal approved by the Senate late Monday has put off the latest budget showdown until Nov. 18 — a growing number of think tanks and advocacy groups with such names as No Labels, Americans Elect, Third Way and Ruck.us are trying to address underlying factors that fuel Washington's partisan stalemate.
They note three "wave" elections in a row shifted political power but failed to fundamentally change the way Washington works, or doesn't work. They have some ideas for steps that could help.
Perhaps the most significant would change the way congressional lines are drawn, making more districts competitive and increasing the odds that centrist candidates could prevail. Revising the rules for Senate filibusters could prevent a few senators from routinely blocking action supported by a majority. And changing the congressional calendar could encourage legislators to build personal relationships with colleagues from the other party.
"No one of them would turn the world upside down," William Galston, a former White House adviser now at the Brookings Institution, says of a laundry list of ideas collected in a joint study by Brookings and the Hoover Institution. "But if you did a few of them, you would probably see some changes in a relatively short period of time."
Below, three measures some experts say could make a government that often seems dysfunctional work better.
1
Drawing the lines
The center aisle that divides Republicans and Democrats in Congress has become a chasm.
There was a time when the Democratic caucus included Southern conservatives and the Republican caucus included New England moderates, making it easier to forge bipartisan coalitions.
No more.
These days, the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, is more liberal than the most moderate Republican, Susan Collins of Maine. A National Journal study concluded political polarization is the highest in the three decades it has analyzed congressional voting patterns. The Brookings-Hoover study concluded it was the worst since the 1890s.
