No Way to Run a Government

I watch a lot of news during the day. I became curious lately, hearing about this caucus or that caucus, as to what these numerous groups have to do with actually governing. You know, making laws and compromising with The Loyal Opposition to get things done. Governing.

I recently counted and the 435 members of Congress are involved in 220 caucuses. I did, I counted them. Let's see, let's do the math. Four hundred thirty five members divided by 220, carry the 1 (I know, mixed math) means that each member is a member of 1.97 caucuses. Presumably, we can round up and make it an even 2. Caucuses have way more than 2 members each so members of Congress are probably involved in way more than 2 apiece.

There is, I kid you not, a Cement Caucus. (It's true...look it up.) A Bike Caucus (presumably bicycles, though one can never tell. Perhaps they are bipartisan enough to include motorcycles). Does this include only members of Congress who bike to work? Doubtful. They mostly get to work being driven individually in limos. If we have another gas crisis like in the '70's, could they at least carpool? Again, doubtful.

                              - Editor's Note: The above is a rare example of what happens
                                 when the joint committee on Printing gets its teeth into a
                                                project... trains start to run upside down.

 What with caucuses and committee meetings, one wonders how they ever get ANYTHING done. It is a miracle, really. I didn't have the courage to look up the caucuses in the Senate at this time. I'm guessing here, but I doubt there is a Black Caucus in the Senate, since there's only one black senator and who's he going to caucus with, really?

It is easy to imagine that some caucuses overlap in their mission statements. The Cement Caucus might be a subset of the Construction Caucus. There is no caucus for skateboards, which might be included in the Bike Caucus. Or perhaps there could be a Recreational Vehicles Caucus or even a Things That Go on Two/Four Wheels Caucus. Of course then we'd need a caucus for unicycles and tricycles.

Then there are committees. (Not to mention "Joint" Committees where members of both bodies meet together, held for the really important stuff like Printing and the Library.) Several committees have similar names...Homeland Security in the House vs. Homeland Security and Government Affairs in the Senate, Small Business in the House vs. Small Business and Entrepreneurship in the Senate. I guess those topics aren't important enough to have Joint Committees. One can excuse the Rules and Administration Committee in the Senate and the Rules Committee in the House--commonly known as the Speaker's committee--as those two bodies have vastly different ways of conducting their affairs, more's the pity.

Don't get me started on informal groups, like the Tuesday Morning group in the Senate.

In an era of division, perhaps there should be fewer caucuses and committees. More talking to people you disagree with, and finding common purpose. But I ain't holding my breath.

Broken Government

Sadly, the current debacle in Washington, while serious, is just a symptom of an even larger problem...our totally broken government.

I've written my Congressman and Senators until I'm blue in the face on this issue of raising the debt ceiling and dealing with our deficit, but I'm convinced that their minds are made up and my lone voice won't be heard. I'm just trying to counterbalance all those voices, very vocal, who have spoken out against conpromise. I have no illusions about the votes, however. They are what they are.

Maybe we can come up with a few simple and many complex suggestions for patches to this system...patches allowed by the Founding Fathers in the form of Constitutional amendments. So, here goes (in no particular order):

1) Reduce the deficit with both spending cuts and raising taxes. We just woke up in Vegas and have to go home now, pockets empty. It's time to pay the piper and face up to our profligate ways. It doesn't matter if we agree or disagree with the spending that got us here. It won't be easy. It won't be pretty. But we have to do it.

2) Impose term limits. The President is subject to term limits. Why not Congress? Some of them (Strom Thurman comes to mind) would like to die in their seats, clinging to IV poles. But we can't let them.

3) Lengthen terms for the House to four years and have half of them run every two years. The current two-year terms make it so that they are always in campaign mode. My guess is that new Representatives take a year to find the loo and then they are in campaign mode again. Four-year terms might give them a couple of years to actually work.

4) Get rid of the Electoral College. It might have made some sense in the days of yore, when vote counts had to travel by horseback to Washington. It makes no sense now, when frequently the popular vote is thrown in the toilet and electors can vote any old way they want, regardless of how the citizens of their state voted.

5) Increase the number of members of the House. Someone recently proposed a House of 10,000 members. That's ridiculous, of course, but there surely should be more. I think it was back in the 1930's or some such that the current number of members was set at 435. We have a few more people than we did back then, whenever it was.

6) Make the elementary assumption that a majority is a majority. We don't need a "super" majority of 60 senators. Fifty-one percent of the vote, last time I was in math class, is a majority, as it was at the time of our founding when they invented "majority rule." (see item #4)

7) Return to the idea, as stated in our Constitution, that church and state should be separate. When Catholic bishops "approved" the anti-abortion language in the House version of the health reform bill and no one even blinked, I was appalled. We have gone way too far down that slippery slope.

8) Make voting mandatory. Not how one votes but that one does vote. I have no earthly idea how this could be implemented, but a relative few voters are having a huge impact on our government simply because they show up. All of us should show up.

9) Reform campaign financing. The Supremes just undid decades of campaign financing reform by allowing corporations and unions and foreigners unlimited donations and therefore access to our Senators and Representatives. No one, no one organization or industry, even the Boy Scouts, should have that kind of control.

10) Make it illegal for any of our Congressional delegates to sign "pledges" to any organization right or left. One of the current candidates for President has stated that the only pledge he'll make is the Pledge of Allegiance. One of the reason that compromise has become such a dirty word is that some in Congress have signed pledges to a political PAC that they will, under no circumstances, raise taxes. And they define even tax reform as "raising taxes"! I should send them a Webster's Dictionary.

And so, Dear Reader, these are my ideas, the Dirty Decade of Government Patches, if you will. Some of them appear to be really insane (some of them seem out there even to me!). Some would require Constitutional amendments.

It has been said that we get the government that we deserve. I disagree. I don't think we deserve this mess at all. Let's fix this.