The dysfunction of today’s federal government is not simply the product of political division or individual leaders; it is rooted in the internal rules of Congress itself. The Founders, in one of their few major oversights, granted Congress the authority to make its own procedural rules (Article I, Section 5) without establishing any framework for how it should operate. Over time, this blank check has produced a legislative process built to serve partisan power, not public representation.
The result is a Congress that often rewards obstruction and gridlock over compromise and action. The Founders imagined representatives closely tied to their constituents—one member for every 30,000 to 50,000 citizens. Today, that ratio has ballooned to one for every 765,000 in the House, and in the Senate, each member can represent tens of millions (e.g., California). As the population has grown, representation has become distant and impersonal, while procedural rules have tightened the grip of party leadership. Major issues can no longer reach the floor unless the majority party permits it. The link between citizens and decisions has nearly vanished.
The dysfunction is widely recognized. Even within the political establishment, there is growing acknowledgment that the system is failing to serve the people it represents. As Vice President Kamala Harris recently reflected, the traditional approach of working “within the system” has become inadequate. Her call to reconnect directly with the public echoes the Founders’ original intent: a government responsive to the collective will of its citizens, not the machinery of political parties.
The problem is not ideology; it is structure. Congress has evolved rules that consolidate control in the hands of a slim majority. In an era when the margin between parties is often a handful of seats, this is both illogical and dangerous. Granting one faction total control over legislative scheduling, staffing, and debate when the electorate is nearly evenly divided guarantees instability. When majorities are razor-thin, genuine bipartisanship is not a luxury but a necessity for governance. Yet the current structure makes cooperation almost impossible.
It's time to bring the system into the 21st century – a new system that can function in today’s world of the Internet, cell phones, social media, artificial intelligence, and the challenges of rapid dissemination of misinformation. Thomas Jefferson said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time...” It’s definitely time for a revolution in Congressional decision-making.
The clearest evidence lies in the committee system—the engine of legislative work. Committees decide which bills advance, which witnesses are heard, and what information is considered. But they operate under rules that favor the majority party in every respect: it sets the agenda, controls the staff, and can block bills without a vote. The result is predictable: a Congress trapped in a cycle of “messaging bills” designed to inflame and dictate rather than solve, and hearings more theatrical than substantive.
A rational first step toward reform would be to redesign the committee structure around parity and professionalism. The model already exists and has been operational for years. The House and Senate Ethics Committees—unlike all others—operate with equal party representation and nonpartisan professional staff. Their rules are specifically written to ensure fairness and procedural balance. Extending that model across all standing committees would address one of the deepest sources of dysfunction.
Under a parity model, committees would be evenly split between parties and co-chaired by members from each side. Staff would be nonpartisan and jointly directed. Committee funding would also be divided equally, ending the current two-thirds majority advantage. Such a structure would not paralyze Congress; it would compel negotiation. No bill could enter a committee or leave a committee without at least one vote from the opposing party. Consensus, not dominance, would once again become the mechanism of lawmaking.
Professional, nonpartisan staffing is central to this concept. Current staff structures are political extensions of the majority, focused on messaging and advantage rather than policy. Nonpartisan staff—retained within Committees—would shift the focus to expertise and institutional memory. When co-chairs reach an impasse, staff could propose technically sound, compromise solutions that allow both sides to move forward without appearing to capitulate. This small structural change would replace perpetual partisanship with a functioning negotiation process.
To prevent committees from degenerating into stalemate, additional mechanisms would be necessary. One such safeguard could be an “anti-gridlock” rule: if a bill meeting bipartisan co-sponsorship standards fails twice in committee due to a tie vote, it would automatically advance to the Floor. However, it would do so without amendment, forcing members to confront the imperfect text they refused to negotiate. The threat of losing control over the final wording would push committees to compromise rather than deadlock.
Transparency would serve as the second major safeguard. Every step of the committee process—hearings, testimony, communications, and drafts—should be instantly accessible to the public through an AI-managed database. Artificial intelligence could compile and index all public submissions, expert testimony, and legislative correspondence, creating a comprehensive, searchable record. This “transparency engine” would make obstruction, manipulation, or misinformation far more difficult to hide. When a co-chair blocks an amendment or suppresses a witness, the record would make that decision visible. The political cost of obstruction would rise, while the reward for cooperation would grow.
Restoring public trust also requires dismantling the leadership’s stranglehold on the floor schedule. Under current practice, the majority leadership determines which bills receive a vote, allowing them to bury legislation even when it commands broad bipartisan or public support. A mandatory floor-vote rule would end this gatekeeping. Any bill reported out of committee—or advanced by the anti-gridlock provision—would automatically receive a vote by the full chamber within a fixed period. The Speaker and majority leader would no longer have the power to unilaterally block legislation supported by a bipartisan committee majority.
Once a bill reaches the floor, amendments should be subject to a bipartisan filter: approval by both committee co-chairs. This simple rule would deter “poison-pill” amendments meant solely to sabotage or embarrass. Debate would focus on refining legislation, not posturing. Together, these changes would transform the legislative process from one of partisan control to one of shared governance, reflecting the narrow political balance of the country itself.
Such structural reforms would represent a genuine revolution in congressional decision-making—not through new ideology but through new architecture. Equal representation in committees, professional staff, mandatory transparency, and guaranteed floor votes would replace manipulation with accountability. Congress would again serve as a deliberative body capable of governing, not merely performing.
The challenge, of course, lies in implementation. How can Congress be persuaded to reform rules that remove power and control from its leadership? The problem is self-reinforcing: only Congress can change its own procedures, and those who benefit from the existing system are the least likely to do so. But history suggests that external pressure can drive internal reform.
Several pathways exist. Constitutional convention efforts, though theoretically possible, are unlikely to succeed in a polarized nation where 38 states must ratify any change. State-level ballot initiatives could be coordinated to demand congressional rule reform, but partisan divisions make uniform adoption improbable. Presidential leadership could provide a stronger avenue. A future administration might adopt congressional reform as a national cause, framing it as a prerequisite for solving major issues—from fiscal stability to national security—that are now paralyzed by legislative dysfunction.
Most promising, however, would be a unified citizens’ campaign led by the nation’s many good-government organizations, policy institutes, and reform-minded leaders. Think of a massive, Earth Day-type movement armed today with the Internet, email, cell phones, and AI-assisted data and communications capabilities.
Thousands of groups already work independently on transparency, ethics, and institutional reform. A coordinated national movement could press candidates and incumbents alike to publicly commit to specific congressional rule changes, treating structural reform as a condition of political legitimacy. The strategy would not require new law but public insistence—using elections, media, and civic networks—to make congressional modernization a central national issue.
Rebuilding trust in Congress requires more than rhetoric; it demands that the institution itself function differently. Equal representation in committees, nonpartisan expertise, guaranteed transparency, and enforced accountability together would transform the incentives of governance. Members would once again be rewarded for cooperation rather than obstruction, for building solutions rather than constructing roadblocks.
When political divisions are narrow, power must be shared or governance collapses. The Founders expected conflict, but they also expected reason and structure to mediate it. The reforms proposed here are consistent with that vision. By aligning congressional procedures with the realities of a closely divided electorate, Congress could once again fulfill its constitutional purpose: to deliberate, to compromise, and to govern in the interest of the nation.
A reformed Congress would not end partisanship—it would channel it productively. Decisions would emerge from negotiation rather than control, from debate rather than stalemate. Such a transformation would not require rewriting the Constitution, only rewriting the rules by which Congress governs itself. Doing so would mark a true renewal of American democracy: a modern revolution in the way a representative government makes its decisions, grounded not in ideology but in the restoration of respectable function and trust.
Jeff Dauphin, aka J.P. McJefferson, is retired. Blogging on the "Underpinnings of a Broken Government." Founded and ran two environmental information & newsletter businesses for 36 years. Facilitated enactment of major environmental legislation in Michigan in the 70s. Community planning and engineering. BSCE Michigan Technological University.
