Every January 1st, many Americans face their failings and resolve to do better by making New Year’s Resolutions. Wouldn’t it be delightful if Congress would do the same? According to Gallup, half of all Americans currently have very little confidence in Congress. And while confidence in our government institutions is shrinking across the board, Congress is near rock bottom. With that in mind, here is a list of resolutions Congress could make and keep, which would help to rebuild public trust in Congress and our government institutions. Let’s start with:
1 – Working for the American people. We elect our senators and representatives to work on our behalf – not on their behalf or on behalf of the wealthiest donors, but on our behalf. There are many issues on which a large majority of Americans agree but Congress can’t. Congress should resolve to address those issues.
2 – Working together. No institution works well when the members of that institution pick sides and refuse to work with the other side. This is true in companies, in laboratories, in houses of worship, and in the arts. Collaboration is essential to a quality work product. Members of Congress should resolve to work with each other – to listen to each other – to stop attacking each other. According to Public Agenda, 93% of Americans want to reduce political divisiveness. And two-thirds of Americans believe doing so is “very important.” One way to begin to do this in Congress could be for members to direct their staffs to work together – to have them jointly identify issues, seek facts, and select and interview witnesses. Another way is for members to visit the districts and states of members of the opposite party – with those members. They can try to see issues through another member’s eyes – and the needs of another member’s constituents.
3 – Returning to the normal legislative process, something we call Regular Order. It’s been years – even decades – since Congress followed the regular order in passing legislation and appropriations. No school, company, house of worship, small business, PTA – no organization could survive long if it fails to address its budget and prepare for the coming year’s finances. Board members would be derelict in their duty if that were to happen, but Congress routinely lets the established order of the budget process and appropriations process slip so that, in the end, either all the bills are bunched together by the leadership at the last minute, and no one knows everything that’s in them, or the government shuts down. As they say – “that’s no way to run a government.” Congress should resolve to follow the normal budget and appropriations process — hold hearings, take public and expert testimony, have committee mark-ups (where bills are considered and possibly amended), issue committee reports explaining the contents of the bills, and allow for full Senate and House consideration in a timely and inclusive manner. This would be a big one.
4 – Balancing the budget or at least bringing the deficit within range. Again, no company, social organization, or religious community could survive under the mountain of debt that Congress has allowed the nation to accumulate. To achieve fiscal sustainability, tough decisions have to be made. The discrepancy in wealth that has been allowed and that grows each year is intolerable. And Congress must – based on facts and not partisanship -- direct its attention to separating the wheat from the chaff in our federal programs.
5 – Supporting government watchdogs. Agency inspectors general and the Government Accountability Office were established by Congress to help identify and address waste, fraud, and abuse. They should be fully funded, kept out of political influence, and have their budget-saving recommendations adopted. That’s called being responsible.
6 – Stopping the name-calling. There was a popular book many years ago titled “Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” One such “thing” is to be polite and not call people names. It’s embarrassing for our grandchildren to hear the words some of our leaders use to describe a fellow human being. Decency and respect go a long way to building trust, and trust can yield accommodation and accomplishment. Congress should resolve to follow decorum and speak with decency and respect.
This is just a start – but how different our country would be if Congress would adopt these resolutions and stick to them!
Linda Gustitus served for 24 years (from 1979 to 2013) as Staff Director and Chief Counsel for Senator Carl Levin (D-MI).
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.