Now is the time to reform Congress

Members of Congress are returning to Washington to finish the work of the 114th Congress in what’s referred to as a lame-duck session. They do so, however, facing two stark realities. 

First, the public’s faith and trust in Congress remains at a historic low point, and in a democratic republic such as ours, governing without public faith and trust is exceedingly difficult. Approximately, 20 percent of Americans have a positive view of the institution. 

{mosads}Second, the productivity of the last two Congresses is also at an all-time low. Over 1 percent of the bills introduced in the last Congress were signed into law after two years of work, thanks to gridlock and dysfunction.

After a grueling election cycle where it seems the blame game was played out every day in the media, it’s time to look forward. That begins with robust efforts to heal partisan divisions and get Washington back to work.

Fortunately, there’s a bipartisan effort, led by Republican Congressman Darin LaHood and Democratic Congressman Dan Lipinski, to address the need for robust congressional reform and restore Congress to working order.

The two legislators and now 36 others from both parties who have joined them have proposed a little known congressional tool to rehabilitate the legislative branch and make it possible for legislators to actually legislate again. They have introduced H.Con.Res.169, which would create a Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress — an extraordinary mechanism Congress created three times in the last century to make the House and Senate function better.

The mission of the Joint Committee would be to identify and seek passage of changes in rules and in law that would accomplish three objectives: (1) make the House and Senate function better and give members of Congress more ability to address the nation’s problems and find solutions; (2) improve the relationships among the members and between the House and the Senate and, most importantly, between the Congress and the White House; and (3) restore public trust in the institutions of government by giving the public greater access to them and them greater accountability to the public.

The committee would be bipartisan and bicameral, made up of of a total of 24 lawmakers from both parties; 12 members from the House and 12 from the Senate, appointed respectively by the majority and minority leaders of the chambers. The majority and minority leaders would serve as ex-officio members with full voting rights.

There’s precedent for this. The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946, born from the 1945-1946 Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, restructured the committee system, reducing them in number to improve efficiency. 

From the 1965-1966 Joint Committee came the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 which increased transparency in the committee process, opening committees up to the public, forcing them to set regular meetings, and requiring committees to publish roll call votes. Critically, it also amended House rules to compel recorded roll call votes on the House floor. These changes might not have come about if not for the work of Joint Committees.

The need to reform our system isn’t a partisan issue. This isn’t about Republicans or Democrats, or left versus right. It’s about solving a systemic crisis — working to reform the process, not the policy.

Over the years, hundreds of reform proposals have been recommended on both sides of the aisle, but still, nothing concrete has changed. That is because there has not been a mechanism such as the Joint Committee with the authority to singularly focus on reforms to the system — decide which will work and which won’t — and provide leadership toward overhauling legislative rules and procedures, improving the broken budget process and providing a new order for solving problems in both the House and the Senate.

Certainly, change won’t happen overnight, and it will require work and patience. But convening a joint committee is the first step to greater transformational change, and signals to the American public that their elected officials are serious about repairing our broken system.