Congressional staffers, the people who make Capitol Hill run, believe the legislative branch isn’t doing its job and blame polarization for the problems.
That’s the takeaway from “State of the Congress 2022,” a report issued last week by the Congressional Management Foundation and the Partnership for Public Service, featuring the opinions of a bipartisan collection of “institutionalists” working on Capitol Hill.
While staffers were critical of Congress, the goal of the report wasn’t to find fault but to assess the capacity, functionality and effectiveness in hopes of finding a path toward a more functional legislative branch.
The report was generated to “capture the snapshot of the state of Congress now, not for the purposes of embarrassing the institution, but rather to be a benchmark that can be used to measure improvement,” said CMF President and CEO Brad Fitch.
New polling data released by Gallup last week found that only 7 percent of Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress – down 5 points from 2021. That’s the lowest of 16 public- and private-sector institutions covered in the survey. But, according to the “State of the Congress” report, “80% of Americans also believe that an effective Congress is essential to running the country.”
But the congressional aides surveyed for the report – 128 “exemplars,” most with at least a decade of experience and representing a variety of demographics and positions – believe Congress is a long way from being effective.
One-quarter believe “Congress currently functions as a democratic legislature should,” with Democrats a bit more pessimistic than Republicans. Both sides believe lawmakers and staff must have an understanding of Congress’ role in democracy. Only 4 percent said that they were “very satisfied” with Congress’ current state.
And the lack of effectiveness is at last partly rooted in increased partisanship, in the view of the exemplars.
According to Fitch, “there have been increasing levels of dysfunction and a greater amount of polarization in the institution in the last three decades.”
More Democrats than Republicans believe that members of Congress are not adequately held accountable by the institution for their actions. Nearly equal numbers of Democrats (66 percent) and Republicans (70 percent) believe that congressional leadership should enforce the rules of decorum and civility. Moreover, two-thirds of Democrats (66 percent) and slightly more than half of Republicans (54 percent) “strongly agree” that noncontroversial legislation is likely to fail due to polarization among lawmakers.
Further, Democratic and Republican exemplars believe lawmakers’ primary role should be solving constituents’ problems but 54 percent say Congress lacks the means for understanding citizens’ concerns. (However, that answer is weighted heavily by party, with 68 percent of Democrats agreeing with the statement, compared to just 36 percent of Republicans.
And the parties are split on the next highest priority, with 24 percent of Republicans selecting “supporting political party policy” and 22 percent of Democrats saying “law-making.”
Overwhelming numbers of Democrats and Republicans believe that civility among lawmakers is “very important” but only 1 percent of those surveyed were “very satisfied” on that front. “Not civility, for ... civility’s sake, but civility towards an end, which is to make our democracy work better,” Fitch said.
While not as high a priority as civility, bipartisanship is also seen as a key element of a functioning Congress.
The survey found that 59 percent of participants believe bipartisanship is “very important” but, again, only 1 percent are “very satisfied” with that aspect of Congress.
Along the same lines, 93 percent of both Democrats and Republicans believe that collaboration between party lines is necessary to best serve the nation’s needs, but very few believed that building a relationship would be easy.
“My sense is that most staff would generally welcome greater collaboration across the aisle, but that the political dynamics on both sides present a chilling effect on efforts to do so,” one Senate staffer said.
Despite their concern about Congress ability to do its job, the exemplars suggested areas where there are opportunities for improvement. They general agreed that four areas are “very important”:
- “reclaiming Congress’ constitutionally-defined duties” (75 percent) .
- “improving staff recruitment, diversity, retention, compensation, and benefits” (69 percent).
- “reforming the budget and appropriations process” (61 percent).
- “ensuring continuity of congressional operations in emergencies” (61 percent).
But to achieve any of these goals, the staffers believe Congress must build capacity and infrastructure because they believe there are large gaps between what is required and what is in place now.
For example, 80 percent said it is very important that “Congress have adequate capacity and support to perform its role in American democracy” but only 5 percent said they are “very satisfied” with what’s in place now. And 74 percent said it’s very important that Congress have sufficient technological infrastructure to support members’ duties. Again, just 4 percent were “very satisfied” with the current technological infrastructure.
Despite the seemingly dire data contained in the report, Fitch is optimistic that Congress has the capacity to improve and is already set on a positive path. However, he emphasized that “one of the sources of either instability or hyper-partisanship is not the rank and file but the leadership” and the leaders will need to push for change.
“I think there are some guideposts embedded in this report that will give current and future reformers both inside and outside the institution ideas and a bit of a roadmap on how to improve the Congress,” Fitch explained. He stressed the importance of the Modernization Committee that will hopefully assess Congress’ path and suggest changes for improvement if needed.
The report points to the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, which has achieved bipartisan support for nearly 150 recommendations to improve the legislative branch’s operations.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.