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Report cites a dozen narrow issues where partisan gridlock could be broken
Dec 11 2020
After an especially contentious election and with the coronavirus pandemic raging, American politics may feel as polarized as ever. A new study makes the case that there's still plenty of hope for bridging the partisan chasm on a dozen top-tier domestic issues.
Making government more transparent and trimming big money's sway over elections are the two good-government reforms on the list.
The 48-page report, released Thursday by three left-leaning advocacy groups focused on environmental policy, aggregates an array of research and polling by others before unveiling "a transpartisan agenda to rebuild trust and tackle America's biggest challenges."
<p>By confining their debates to these areas, the groups say, the incoming Biden administration and the new Congress — which will either remain divided or be controlled by only the narrowest of Democratic majorities — can steer the country over the political divide and toward a healing process after years of political warfare.</p>
<p>"This moment of heightened polarization also contains the seeds of renewal," says the report, by U.S. PIRG, Environment America and Frontier Group. "The good news is that there are a surprising number of public policies on which Republicans, Democrats and independents share common ground."</p>
<p>They see such consensus behind the notion that boosting transparency and accountability are imperative to restoring trust in government, and that for starters deals are within reach to bolster the ethics of federal officials and improve citizen access to information about government spending decisions.</p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>Voters of both parties are comparably "sick and tired of expensive elections bankrolled by wealthy special interests," the report says, asserting it's possible to crack the partisan stalemate over campaign finance with proposals such as tax credits or matching grants for small political contributions.</p>
<p>Two areas are right in the wheelhouse of the groups who produced the report. The growing influence of younger voters is at least "opening the door to forge bipartisan agreement on specific policies around the edges of the climate debate." And tax credits for wind and solar power remain broadly popular, so there should be bipartisan support for their renewal — if only to spur the economy as the pandemic abates.</p>
<p>Other areas for compromise it sees include the establishment of a national lending institution for infrastructure projects, an expansion of national service programs, bolstering public access to broadband internet and revitalizing career and technical education.</p>
<p>Maybe most optimistically of all, the groups see hope for measures "to keep guns out of the hands of potentially dangerous people."</p>
<p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>While there is not necessarily broad bipartisan support for more ambitious proposals on all these areas, the report says "it is precisely by working together to implement change in narrow areas of agreement that our government can begin to get its transpartisan 'muscles' working again."</p>
<p>Previous bipartisan cooperation has led to important policy decisions, including civil rights legislation in the 1960s, environmental laws in the 1970s, tax code simplification in the 1980s, the Americans with Disabilities Act in the 1990s and the campaign finance reform of the 2000s, the report notes.</p>
<p>"Research shows that increasing one's contact with members of another group is a consistently effective way to reduce prejudice and misunderstanding," the report says. "By partnering on a shared agenda, Americans of good faith may come to recognize that politics does not have to be a theater of total war, but can be a venture for actually getting things done that are in the public interest."</p>
<p>And the issues outlined in this report are just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other areas, where elected officials can collaborate to identify potential solutions.</p>
<p>"By daring to venture across the political divide and find compromise on areas of public concern, leaders can get important work done for the American people, and that work itself will forge a pathway out of the nation's dangerous, counterproductive and toxic polarization," said Faye Park, president of U.S. PIRG.</p>
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2020 Rising Star Awards
Dec 09 2020
Organizer: Millennial Action Project
This award recognizes bipartisan legislators from our State Future Caucus Network who have embodied MAP's mission to transcend political tribalism. This year's nominees went above and beyond to build relationships with their colleagues across the aisle, as they had to do it virtually and in a polarized environment. For that, we applaud them. Even if you don't tune in for the whole thing, the livestream will be a chance for you to unite with legislators and thought leaders under a shared vision: a diverse democracy where the political culture is grounded in empathy and leaders pursue innovative policy solutions.
Location: Livestream
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Overlooked reason for Capitol atrophy: Lack of a modern and more substantial diet
Dec 09 2020
Kosar is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, and co-editor of the recently published "Congress Overwhelmed: Congressional Capacity and Prospects for Reform" (University of Chicago Press).
<p>For the past 15 years, public disapproval of the performance of Congress has averaged around <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/1600/congress-public.aspx" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">70 percent</a>. Typically, when people look at Washington, as former Speaker Paul Ryan once <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/paul-ryan-elected-speaker-transcript-full-text-215351" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">observed</a>, "It looks like chaos" — not leadership or governance, regardless of which party is in control.</p>
<p>What's wrong with Congress? Most frequently the problem is framed as a people problem. Congress has bad people in it. There are clowns, cranks and crooks, and we should throw those bums out. Others point to Capitol Hill having too many rabid partisans. Best to send them packing, too, in favor of new legislators who will choose "<a href="https://www.uniteamerica.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">country over party</a>." Still others point to the corrupting influence of lobbyists and the campaign finance hustle as the proximate cause for congressional dysfunction.</p>
<p>All of these diagnoses have merit, and their corresponding remedies are worth pursuing. But we should not forget about the "congressional capacity" problem.</p>
<p>Like any organization — a charity, restaurant or automobile repair shop — congressional performance is greatly, but not entirely, affected by Congress' capacity. It can only do as much as it is capable of doing.</p>
<p>In the congressional context, capacity can be defined as the human and physical infrastructure needed to resolve public problems through legislating, budgeting, holding hearings and conducting oversight. Some specific aspects of congressional capacity are intra-chamber organization (the organization of committees, for example), the processes for allocating resources (the leadership selection process is one of them) and the processes for executing tasks (such as how legislation gets to the floors of the House and Senate). And, of course, the people — the legislators and staff whose efforts produce governance. </p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>During the past 40 years, the demands upon Congress have grown immensely. The nation's population has increased by <a href="https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R43590.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">one-third</a> and federal spending has increased <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/historical-tables/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">sevenfold</a>. Today, the federal government has more than 4 million civilian and military employees and an annual budget in excess of $4.5 trillion. The executive branch has around <a href="https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/how-to-strengthen-congress" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">180 agencies</a>, which administer untold thousands of statutes and programs. The government also funds, and to a degree directs, <a href="https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/facing-up-to-big-government" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">hundreds of thousands</a> of contractors and subnational organizations. </p>
<p>And as a <a href="https://www.aei.org/research-products/book/congress-overwhelmed-the-decline-in-congressional-capacity-and-prospects-for-reform/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">lengthy study</a> by me and a couple of dozen scholars found, congressional capacity has declined during this same four decades. Today, Congress has <a href="https://twitter.com/kevinrkosar/status/1333799109703004160" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">fewer staffers</a> than it did in the 1980s. It also has <a href="https://www.legbranch.org/2017-5-25-legislative-branch-staffing-down-45-percent-since-1975/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">fewer nonpartisan experts</a> working at the Congressional Research Service and its other legislative branch support agencies. And turnover among Hill staff is high: The average experience of a person working for Congress is <a href="https://www.aei.org/research-products/book/congress-overwhelmed-the-decline-in-congressional-capacity-and-prospects-for-reform/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">three years</a>.</p>
<p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>Remarkably, the number and structure of congressional committees has evolved only a little to meet the new issues that have confronted the nation in the past 40 years — the opioid epidemic, to cite but one example. The size of the House remains at 435 members, who somehow are supposed to represent 330 million people. (That's an average of 758,000 for every legislator.) And the rules and procedures by which Congress conducts oversight and advances legislation look much as they did when Tip O'Neill was the speaker of the House and Olivia Newton-John was crooning "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-End_Hot_100_singles_of_1980" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Magic</a>."</p>
<p>All of which means Congress' responsibilities have ballooned and its capacity to handle these challenges has contracted. This is a formula for bad governance. Certainly, no private company could survive were it so dilatory to update its structure, operations and people power. </p>
<p>The process has begun. The Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress has put together a list of nearly <a href="https://modernizecongress.house.gov/recommendations" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">100 reforms</a> for the House. But only a third of these improvements have been enacted, and those are just the tip of the iceberg. Decades of neglect mean the work of upgrading Congress will take years.</p>
<div></div><p>So, let us throw out the members of Congress who show little interest in governing, and let us reduce the perverse incentives that reward elected officials for their fundraising skills and behaving like partisan hacks. But we must also tackle the problem of congressional capacity if we want to have a Congress that can behave like the "first branch" of a national government that can well serve the people. </p>
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How to Unite the Un-United States of America
Dec 03 2020
Organizer: Reform Elections Now
In the 2020 election, Democrats lost, Republicans lost, but most of all the country lost — and the losses could haunt us. Right now, trust in this election and in the election process is at historic lows, trust in government is at historic lows, a majority of Americans have lost trust in each other, and a majority of Americans do not trust the media.
If we don't trust our government, our media, or each other and if we can't agree on basic facts, how are we going to span the divide between our two parties? While the gulf between both sides appears to be wide, we believe there are ways to rebuild trust in government, trust in media, and trust in each other if we start to work now.
Please join Reform Elections Now for a discussion of how our country became divided and How to Unite the Un-United States of America.
Location: Webinar
