How to fix Congress? Change the rules

While Members of Congress and the leaderships of both parties and chambers are focused on the elections and which party will control the majority in the House and Senate, there is another critical question that is equally important: What can Congress do to restore its effectiveness and earn back the confidence of the American people?

Over the past few decades, legislative power has been systematically taken away from committees and individual members and transferred to party leaders to centralize power, promote party discipline and ensure all decisions reflect partisan and leadership interests. The result has been a more top-down Congress that promotes partisanship and incivility, reduces the input of individual members and fails to serve the people. Congress needs to fix this and the most direct way of doing so is to change the House and Senate rules.

{mosads}By better sharing legislative power across the institution, Congress can generate more innovative thinking by members and committees, promote greater debate of the issues, require more bipartisan negotiations and collaboration, enhance the morale of the members and reduce the hyper-partisanship that has been emblematic of Congress in recent years.

Possible changes that could be considered in a new and constructive rules package should include:

1. Changing how the Speaker and Senate majority leader are elected to require that both leaders have bipartisan support or even electing an independent Speaker or leader – responsible for the institution and not beholding to either party.
2. Reorganizing the jurisdiction and membership of House committees to more evenly distribute the most important issues and duties across a wider spectrum of committees and members. For example, in the House, the Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce committees cover far too many complex and important issues for a relatively small handful of members to manage. More equitably distributing the jurisdictions of House committees would better utilize the talents of more members in the legislative process, more efficiently share the workload of the House and create better overall legislation.  
3. Restoring “regular order” so bills again move through committees with meaningful hearings, amendments from both sides, and later opportunities for floor amendments.
4. Eliminating or reducing Senate holds on legislation.
5. Establishing an iron clad 72-hour rule to ensure time to read legislation, breakable only by a vote of three quarters of the members.

Two things must be emphasized about these or other needed rule changes. First, the most important question to ask about any rule or procedure, either the existing rules or proposed changes is, “What is good for the country and the institution, not what is good for my party or my own career self- interest?”   Second, even if individual members are focused on self-interest, the fact is these proposed reforms are actually much more beneficial to more members than sticking with the imbalanced and ineffective status quo. Far too many members of Congress today, from both sides of the aisle, feel left out of the process and are deeply frustrated.  

During the next four months, and prior to the elections, members from both parties and both chambers should take on the task of developing changes to the current House and Senate rules designed to promote greater innovation and bipartisan problem-solving. If leadership will not take the initiative to do this, then bipartisan groups of members should take on the task themselves and pledge to support an alternative rules package for the 116^th Congress, regardless of which side holds the majority. Candidates for Congress from both parties should also pledge their commitment to repairing the Congress by changing the rules.

Why do this now and not after the mid-term elections? Right now everyone is at some risk of serving in the minority in 2019, which means all members now have a strong incentive to create a more equitable, bipartisan and functional Congress that protects the rights of the minority and reduces partisan gridlock. This sense of fairness will dissipate greatly right after the elections.

The American people want and deserve more from their Congress and the truth is members of Congress want that too. Rules and structural changes that make sense and are fair can make that happen, but only if those who are elected have courage and vision and put the country and the Congress itself ahead of personal or partisan interests. If they do that, our nation will be far better served, and the Congress will become a far better place in which to serve.

Rick Shapiro and Brian Baird are both currently Senior Fellows at the Democracy Fund, a bipartisan foundation committed to strengthening democratic institutions in the U.S. Rick is a former Executive Director of the Congressional Management Foundation. Brian is a former member of the House of Representatives from the state of Washington, serving from 1999-2011.