I say make it like boot camp - open bay barracks style with no privacy toilets and communal showers. Nothing builds teamwork like embracing the suck together.
Need a few more for the non-voting representatives from the territories. And maybe a few spares so that some of them can be tidied up in between sessions, and ready in case we ever add a new state.
Funny I had almost the identical thought! Except I thought, a mini city, a couple of grocery stores, a few amenities... enough so they could stay.
It may be naive, but I've had the idea for a number of years, that each candidate should be given, by their respective government (funded by appropriate taxes) a certain amount, each identical, so that there's no possibility of bribery, no lobbyists, no sugar mommas. Less likelihood of special interests overthrowing local ones... it's complex, but I think doable. Anyone?
You could combine that with John Dickerson's old idea that they should have to play an escape room together. Lock them in the building, until they can puzzle their way out together. :-D
I think this is a good idea conceptually, but will never be executed for the reasons you point out - it’s politically a bad look. I can already see the ad…
*ominous music*
“Member X hasn’t visited our district in months. Member X moved his whole family out to the DC Swamp. Member X doesn’t care about the district anymore. This November, tell Member X that if he forgets about us, we’ll forget about him.”
This message is approved by Candidate Y for Congress.
Will it matter that under the proposed rules Member X is required to stay in DC? Not at all!
For sure, it would require a norm switch and different set of expectations from the voters. But that’s why I end the piece saying that the problem is also us! We expect too much.
“Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks."
I like George Carlin, but for the most part, I don't think we have selfish, ignorant leaders. I think most of our leaders are trying to do a hard job, I think most of them are trying their best and doing better than I would, and I wouldn't trade places with them for a million bucks.
Carlin nihilism is alright for comedy, but it's a shit worldview if you're trying to improve anything.
I was reading this as the exact opposite. He’s saying that people have unreasonable expectations and don’t know what politicians are actually trying to do, and they only think politicians suck.
Which is why my intention was to read this as comedy. It's in the same vein of my regular posting of Kent Brockman's "This reporter places the blame squarely on *you*, the viewers!" clip.
Maybe if people don’t like being “ruled from afar” they should find themselves a smaller country to live in. Or maybe pay some attention to their state government, which is in charge of a lot of things that actually affect their daily lives.
Agreed. Or, just give a generous allowance. They can rent in DC. No reason they have to own (or, they can rent in their districts). If if were up to me members of Congress would: a) get a very large raise, and b) receive a variated housing stipend based on home district cost of housing.
585 legislators x $1M would generate a lot of money to build some pretty nice condos or, even better, rent-free apartments - at least a few only serve a term or two (or, like Santos, less than one). And, as most of them are wealthy, many would just buy a place.
Members would still have plenty of months when Congress is out of session to be in the home district. But they should be traveling between the district and DC only a few times each year, not constantly traveling home for the weekend. Before air travel, congressmen usually spent the winter in DC and the summer in the home district, with just one round trip each year.
Why don't states just buy apartments or townhouses in DC for their congresspeople? They're effectively ambassadors, and countries own residences for their ambassadors. States have governors mansions. This seems like a no brainer.
Just to state the obvious, this additionally selects for people who want to live in the District of Columbia. I don't think people who want to live there are bad people (plz don't ban me), but it's moving even further from a representative sample of the country.
The current system selects for people who are much more interested in preening for TV cameras, boosting their social media presence, and positioning themselves for book deals. Hard to imagine that we wouldn’t have fewer MTGs and more boring, public service minded people if we required them to move to DC and do actual legislative work 40 hours a week.
I have as much contempt for MTG's "public service" as the next Slow Borer, but I think we need to keep in mind what motivates her much more numerous colleagues.
Addendum: in a healthier political climate, MTG's freak crankitude would very rarely matter what bills could or could not pass in Congress.
I think this gets to part of Ben's point in the article - do we want our legislators to be a representative sampling of us, or to be the best of us? There are trade offs either way.
We're not going to get a perfect representative sampling or elect the absolute best person every time, but its a question of which approach are we (the public) aiming for.
Not sure what you mean by “do their best,” but if they work hard and are effective at implementing policies that I do not want, there’s no way to see that as a good thing.
I have no desire to live in DC, but if I had to choose between moving to DC and spending 10-15 hours flying back and forth between DC and California EVERY WEEK you bet your butt I'd rather just move there. It's not like members are living a quiet life in their beloved rural Idaho now. The people who want to become congresspeople are already very unusual, "you have to move to DC" sounds like a drop in the bucket compared to all the craziness members already have to go through.
This was my first thought. Pulling my kids out of school and moving from CA to DC would be disincentive enough from running. The end result of this is a Congress full of millennial ambition psychos who either don't have working spouses or don't mind never seeing their families.
I feel like this is oversolving a wrong diagnosis of the right problem. Yes, conviviality has gone down, but it's not JUST because they don't have their kids on the same baseball teams. IMO, the conviviality and the baseball teams were positively reinforcing dynamics that were ultimately downstream of a system that offered congresscritters more freedom of action (sometimes to the bad/corrupt, though even the corruption could often be bent to serve greater goods), and even occasionally tended to promote multifactional compromise politics within a relatively depolarized party system.
At the root of all of this is what I call "Dumb Populism". If you squint hard enough, you can trace its big breakout moment in American politics to Andrew Jackson's big Jacksonian Democracy push, but it's basically a bunch of really dumb, simplistic notions of how our democracy is supposed to work, ideas which have always had a lot of purchase among the underclasses in America.
Dumb Populism gave us primaries, because voters wanted "control" over their representatives. Dumb Populism gave us Paul Ryan making a show of sleeping in his office. Dumb Populism keeps the filibuster alive by perpetuating idiotic notions about how "compromise" works instead of a realistic assessment of the results we're actually getting -- and as a result, indirectly gives us all the grandstanding and divisiveness that flows from the filibuster's gridlock.
Most relevant to today's discussion, Dumb Populism gives us members who like to showboat about "staying in touch" with their districts.
Ben, you might object that I'm not focusing enough on the problem at hand, and that your solution may actually help put us on a path to a virtuous cycle. And that would be valid! But I don't think you're actually thinking hard enough about what such a path might look like, what paths are actually feasible, or any specific mechanism by which the virtuous cycle would purport to reinforce itself.
You're giving us a thing that sounds like it might help, and making a case for a bunch of ways it would do that, but you don't really have a "theory of the case".
I hope none of this comes across as mean; we're all of course rooting for you here, and I love this series. Just want to challenge your thinking and offer constructive criticism!
Speaking of Jackson and dumb populism: am I the only one here who saw (and loved) the Public Theatre’s emo musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson?!
It’s what made me grab tickets to Hamilton when it first opened, before it was a phenomenon, even though I am not a big fan of hip hop (or indeed the musical genre). At least in my mind BBAJ was kind of a precursor—historically driven musical with modern songs.
Never heard of it, but sounds like I could like it, since I've long held my take that Jackson was our Worst President Ever, at least until Trump came along to threaten that status.
I think it was slightly before its time. It played on Broadway and I think had a run at the Studio in DC, but didn’t really take off. I saw it in I think 2010 or so. It would have been the perfect mid-2010s production.
Sample lyric: “Life sucks, and my life sucks in particular,” sung by w wallowing-in-self-pity Jackson (played by Benjamin Walker, who I think is a movie star now [?]).
Well, I think you misunderstand my point a bit. I’m indeed embracing a “fix the problems, don’t just describe them” approach. I’m just saying that when you go fixing problems, it helps to have a comprehensive strategy and a valid “theory of the case”.
I couldn't disagree more. Remember Jefferson's admonition that "The government that governs best governs least." I spent my career representing a telecom company before Federal and State legislatures and regulatory agencies. I can say that the most effective legislatures were those with limit sessions and the worst were the "full time" ones. Take Texas as a good example: it met for 90 days (I think now 120 days) every two years and the legislators received very small pay and only one or two staff members.
Except when the Texas legislature was in session, they lived and worked (in real world jobs) in their constituencies. They weren't "professional elegislators". The short session meant that ONLY important legislation could be considered ...none of the junk bills clogging Congress that are introduced as a fundraiser or ego soother.
The Texas legislators actually attended the hearings that often lasted all night and they asked thoughtful, knowledgeable questions because they only needed to deal with a few real, significant bills and therefore had the time to do "deep dives." By comparison, members of Congress, if they attended hearings at all, typically showed up for photo-ops and grandstanding, read a few vacuous questions prepared by their staffs without follow-up and left.
I strongly believe that Congress would be MUCH more effective if it met for one 90 day session each year, subject to additional special sessions called to address a specific subject.
That’s interesting. From my years in Texas I had the impression that it was one of the worst legislatures for precisely this reason - it prevented members from developing expertise and required them to have some sort of fancy day job that would pay them well enough to take six months off every two years.
And the lack of expertise can/will be filled by lobbyists who are all but certain to be full-time. I don't know if it makes a difference in practice though.
I live in NY, which has a notoriously inefficent legislature. I was suprised when a new colleague moved here from Texas, and she said the Texas legislature may have been more efficient with their time but was even worse than New York's in governing because people with money were the ones who had access to legislators in the lengthy off time. And you had to wait so long for legislation to be considered again if a vote didn't come up in session. So pros and cons to both, I suppose.
I can only speak from my personal experience: the contrast between the Texas legislature's handling of a complex telecom deregulation bill and other States and Congress was amazing. All the legislators I spoke with were knowledgeable, energetic and interested in hearing all sides. By contrast, most (not all) members of Congress and full-time legislatures such as New York and Pennsylvania were lazy, full of themselves and much more "political."
As to "expertise:" subject-matter expertise is necessarily a good thing because the "expert" legislator (one who had been around for many years and spent time on the same committees) tended to have pre-conceived notions and weren't open to new ideas. Having the towering egos needed to be a successful politician, they were always "right" (correct) and didn't need to hear from young whippersnappers.
You were a lobbyist lol, respectfully I think your conceptions as to what makes a good versus bad representative are pretty much 180 degrees opposite of what we as a society should want. A lobbyist saying 'I prefer the part-time legislators, they were easier to deal with' simply proves the point that part-time legislators are in fact bad. The 'new ideas' you were peddling were simply to benefit your industry
I was supporting legislation to adopt a radically different regulatory system (competition) against century-old monopoly regulation and the regulated monopolies. The legislation was drafted by a few legislators who wanted to take Texas out of the clutches of Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. I simply testified at a few hearings and met with some legislators in their offices to explain why the proposed law would work. I'm not sure that is "lobbying" as you might think of it.
I definitely appreciated having the opportunity to speak with the part-time legislators who had open minds and were eager to hear about the new ideas. The incumbent monopolies loved the incumbent politicians, and vice versa. Representing a start-up taking on the entrenched monopolies, I didn't have the resources to compete with the incumbents on a like-for-like basis.
BTW, the only States where legislators looked for some quid pro quos were in the "full time" legislatures (where there are full-time lobbyists) perhaps because being a legislator was the only source of income whereas the part-time legislators had good incomes back home and didn't need income from their legislative activities. Part-time legislators aren't available to full-time lobbyists at home and they didn't need them nor did they want a fancy dinner.
>I simply testified at a few hearings and met with some legislators in their offices to explain why the proposed law would work
Yes, that is the literal definition of 'lobbying' man. And you were 'supporting' this legislation in exchange for some kind of financial benefit, I take it?
(BTW the days of Southwestern Bell was a loong time ago- like over 20 years ago!)
A modern society requires fulltime legislators- and fulltime administrative staff, so that they can get accurate information on issues without hearing it from self-interested lobbyists. Texas' model is terrible, and broadening it to the world's largest economy is deeply unserious
Where do you think the full-time legislators and the full-time administrative staff get their information and ideas? The answer is lobbyists (paid representatives who register as such) and representatives of the various (special) interests (corporate, non-profits, environmental, citizen groups, etc., even individual citizens once in a while. I was once of the latter: a corporate employee, not a paid lobbyist.
If you think legislators get information from people who are not self-interested you are naive. EVERYONE who talks to legislators and staff about actual and potential legislation are self-interested so it behooves the legislator to talk to everyone to get input from all sides. Full-time legislators have too much time on their hands and that makes them targets for unscrupulous lobbyists and soft corruption. There is rarely anything so urgent that it can't wait for a 90-day legislative session.
Also a very good idea. If you haven't testified before Congress or met with Reps and Senators, you will have no idea how disconnected Congress is from the "outside the Beltway" world.
I was going to say something similar: That Ben believes this is a good idea because he wants the federal government to do a whole lot more than it's supposed to do.
The Washington State Legislature meets for short sessions and it is a nightmare. Only folks with jobs that let take the winter off can run and they are all moving so fast and doing stuff so late into the night that they make mistakes that could be prevented by slowing down and they rely too much on lobbyists for anything outside their personal focus.
Allow me to pitch much grumpier version of this that might play much, much better with voters:
Congress should be in session five days a week, because we pay the members $174,000 a year, and generally we expect five days of work at that salary level. [1] I wouldn't be opposed to them working the typical government shift of nine hours away, every second Friday off though.
Relocation assistance should be limited the amount that is tax deductible by law.
Sleeping in your office should be banned [2], and honestly the Capitol should be closed from 11pm to 5am unless Congress is in session overnight for necessary legislative business.
As it stands now, everyone else who works in Congress makes less than a member of Congress, as do most of the government workforce in D.C., and they find ways to live on their salary and raise families. More interaction with the city and the various economic forces that act upon it would go a long way to improving governance.
[1] Unless you're a certain type of tech CEO, where you can also be CEO of multiple other companies, I guess? That's between them and their credulous shareholders though.
[2] The sleeping on cots in the office has always made me irrationally angry, because it's pitched as "I'm saving the taxpayers money" when there's no housing allowance and the taxpayers aren't saving a dime. You're just lining your own pockets while making life harder for the people who work for you and those who have to clean congressional offices. Gross, get an apartment.
Time in district isn't the problem in US governance, Republicans wanting to break the government is the problem in US government. If you're going to cite Gingrich in the context of governance, I think you should note he slashed staff and committee budgets.
This may seem nitpicky but I think when there is a glaring problem, it is wrong to distract from that by bringing up other issues which, even if they're real, are orders of magnitude less important and let the true culprits to escape responsibility.
In the same vein, another commenter linked to a book about UK governance. I'm sure UK governance could improve. But the real problem in Britain is a planning system that means it can take a 5 years to fix an intersection. Parties across the spectrum know this is a disaster but to date to the NIMBYs have always defeated the reformers. Highlighting minutiae of governance structures lets the NIMBYs off the hook.
“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”
Essentially, I’m here to serve the country as a whole, not you whiny constituents.
-----------
The point isn't necessarily that he is there to serve the country as a whole, but that the role of a representative is to take the will of his constituents and use his judgement to figure out a way to best enact it.
Constituents want X, representative figures out how to best achieve X.
Constituents say they want X, but really want Y, figure out how to give them Y.
I don't think it means suborning their will to that of the rest of the country (when conflicting).
Sometimes, the role of a representative is to explain to his constituents why he is voting contrary to their will and self-interest and convince them that this is for the greater good. Politicians voting in accordance with their strongest convictions--political consequences be damned--are part of the balancing act. I think the best representatives strive to reflect the interests of their district most of the time, but reserve a bit for the tough votes that they believe in.
The weekly travel schedule is also more unfair to west coast congresspeople (not to mention Hawaii & Alaska!). You raise good points, but most of them could be solved with a schedule change to a month-on month-off rotation combined with allowing voting by proxy for some of the unimportant stuff (naming post offices). Fwiw, I think that keeping the kids of congresspeople in a variety of school districts instead of some super-district in CD is actually a good thing :)
But it's funny that this is basically a quality of life problem that Congress has not been able to solve for itself. Every butt in those coach seats has a vote in the congressional rules and hasn't changed something Newt Gingrich did 30 years ago.
There are two realities here. The first is that the best way to say you're out of touch with voters without saying you're out of touch with voters is to advocate "a starting [moving full time to DC] package of $1 million, with additional bonuses for children." The part about incentivizing MCs to move to DC is especially detached from the reality of the median voter. The second reality is that for highly talented professionals, becoming a member of Congress involves a massive pay cut. At the end of the day, you get what you pay for. https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/product-manager?country=254
While admirable, I think this would be very difficult as a reform to carry out given the expenditures it would take for assisting members of congress and their family, and very likely staff if you're considering weekend legislative days.
It's possible another approach is to accept that people vote for the party, not the person, and to reduce the importance of the individual member by looking to something like multi-member districts with multiple parties.
There are times when I feel that if members of Congress really have become just mouthpieces of their parties, you may as well not even bother with districts or direct election, and just let each state's governor appoint the state's entire congressional delegation. The politics of the people would still determine control of congress, you just do all the red vs. blue fighting in the governor's races, rather than in individual districts. The end result would be Congress becoming like electors in the electoral college, but at least with all elections statewide, it would become impossible to gerrymander.
If you are doing that change, I think it makes more sense to have party-list voting, otherwise you incentivize states to never elect moderate governors from the other party, who are often useful governors to have.
To be clear, I was saying this mostly in jest, with full realization that such a move would be unconstitutional anyway. But, if you replace "governor" with "head of the party's national committee", we're not that far off from such a system in practice.
Better to do single transferable vote or something so that voters can express preferences among various factions rather than having predefined parties.
Is it? Parties provide an immensely valuable cognitive shortcut for the public in providing them a good idea of what the candidate is likely to think on a number of issues. Moving to multiple parties would expand the selection of issue groupings. This might allow for more popular legislation to be passed.
If you dilute the parties messaging by allowing various factional candidates, then you require the public work to inform themselves about every individual they vote for. This is MUCH more time intensive and is likely to lead to a public less informed about the particular policy opinions of their representatives - which is kind of what we have now.
There are 2 countries that use STV for federal elections globally, Australia and Ireland. Most political scientists believe that Australia's version is simply a weird version of open-list PR, as 90% of voters vote 'above the line' (that is, accept the candidate rankings that the party gave them). Half of Ireland's districts have like 3 members.
The majority of voters don't have ranked preferences between candidates, or even clearly understand the difference between them. It's only us politics-obsessed weirdos who have distinct opinions as to who should be ranked #3, 4, and 5- I bet the average voter couldn't even name 3 candidates for a given office, much less articulate the difference between their policy positions. STV is not realistic at-scale
The massive parking lots just south of the Cannon House Office Building would actually be the ideal location to construct a Congressional dorm (probably with some basement parking), since it's already USG property, is within the existing Capitol Police security perimeter, and would allow easy access to both the DC Metro and the internal Capitol subway system.
While a dorm is a funny idea, it’s important to make sure the housing options doesn’t bias away from families IMO. Doesn’t have to be SFH, but a dorm definitely isn’t family friendly. Cheap dorms for staffers, however, is a pretty good idea.
This reminds me of a lifetime ago when legislative committees in Ontario used to travel on a regular basis throughout the province to hear the views of citizens and experts. I believe that this time spent travelling and hoteling (and most likely drinking) together helped encourage more civil and cooperative norms between members from different parties.
"... found that Congress is spending a historically low amount of time debating bills on the floor..."
In the last 10 years (20 years? 40 years? ever?) has floor debate ever convinced a single Congressman how to vote? It seems to me that most decisions on how to vote happen in back rooms (or are made long before a bill is considered). Maybe committee hearings are edifying; I'm not even sure about that.
Part of the problem is that anything said in debate is broadcast on television and the internet, so members really aren’t allowed to think or change their mind there. Getting rid of the cameras might make more real debate happen.
I have frequently thought that there is more and better content in the written testimony submitted. Which doesn’t require a physical presence for the hearings.
What about congressional kids in school? Are they supposed to go back to the district for several-week stretches? I like your idea in a vacuum, but I don’t see it working for school kids.
For most of recent history, they went to school in DC when their parent was in office. Legislators used to spend a lot more time in DC. And they even were relatively well-behaved at bipartisan social events because their spouses and kids were there.
Combine it with Matt’s YIMBYism - build a big building in DC with 535 units and make them all stay there.
I say make it like boot camp - open bay barracks style with no privacy toilets and communal showers. Nothing builds teamwork like embracing the suck together.
Not bad! Can you imagine some of them? Hahaha hahaha 😆 that's going to tickle me all day!
I assume that what "suck together" was about. But I'm not a politician, so I might have that wrong.
Also requiring lunches where you are required to sit bi partisan as much as possible
Tables that are approximately split between both sides
Need a few more for the non-voting representatives from the territories. And maybe a few spares so that some of them can be tidied up in between sessions, and ready in case we ever add a new state.
And a wing for the mistresses.
I was thinking of ankle bracelets that give an electrical shock and alert the Capitol Police if they leave the area when Congress is in session
Funny I had almost the identical thought! Except I thought, a mini city, a couple of grocery stores, a few amenities... enough so they could stay.
It may be naive, but I've had the idea for a number of years, that each candidate should be given, by their respective government (funded by appropriate taxes) a certain amount, each identical, so that there's no possibility of bribery, no lobbyists, no sugar mommas. Less likelihood of special interests overthrowing local ones... it's complex, but I think doable. Anyone?
Does your plan include bars of gold?
You could combine that with John Dickerson's old idea that they should have to play an escape room together. Lock them in the building, until they can puzzle their way out together. :-D
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/12/escape-from-the-mysterious-room-the-game-congress-should-play.html
Congratulations, you just created a terrorist target that can't be secured to the same level as the White House.
I think this is a good idea conceptually, but will never be executed for the reasons you point out - it’s politically a bad look. I can already see the ad…
*ominous music*
“Member X hasn’t visited our district in months. Member X moved his whole family out to the DC Swamp. Member X doesn’t care about the district anymore. This November, tell Member X that if he forgets about us, we’ll forget about him.”
This message is approved by Candidate Y for Congress.
Will it matter that under the proposed rules Member X is required to stay in DC? Not at all!
For sure, it would require a norm switch and different set of expectations from the voters. But that’s why I end the piece saying that the problem is also us! We expect too much.
“Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks."
--George Carlin
I like George Carlin, but for the most part, I don't think we have selfish, ignorant leaders. I think most of our leaders are trying to do a hard job, I think most of them are trying their best and doing better than I would, and I wouldn't trade places with them for a million bucks.
Carlin nihilism is alright for comedy, but it's a shit worldview if you're trying to improve anything.
I was reading this as the exact opposite. He’s saying that people have unreasonable expectations and don’t know what politicians are actually trying to do, and they only think politicians suck.
Which is why my intention was to read this as comedy. It's in the same vein of my regular posting of Kent Brockman's "This reporter places the blame squarely on *you*, the viewers!" clip.
This is the hot takery, even focused on governance, so the obvious answer is to welcome our new insect overlords.
Exactly. The point of the joke was, "Be an adult and take some responsibility for your country."
American law schools. They come from American law schools these days.
Yes how dare us dumb voters not let our betters rule us from afar!
Maybe if people don’t like being “ruled from afar” they should find themselves a smaller country to live in. Or maybe pay some attention to their state government, which is in charge of a lot of things that actually affect their daily lives.
>>so a starting package of $1 million, with additional bonuses for children, seems like a reasonable starting point.<<
Yep. The attack ads write themselves.
That said, I agree 110% with the sentiment behind Ben's piece today
I think it would be better to just have the housing units ready rather than finances to buy them.
Agreed. Or, just give a generous allowance. They can rent in DC. No reason they have to own (or, they can rent in their districts). If if were up to me members of Congress would: a) get a very large raise, and b) receive a variated housing stipend based on home district cost of housing.
Strong agree. This can also enforce physical proximity.
Or they get a $1 million loan, interest and payment-free as long as they’re in Congress
585 legislators x $1M would generate a lot of money to build some pretty nice condos or, even better, rent-free apartments - at least a few only serve a term or two (or, like Santos, less than one). And, as most of them are wealthy, many would just buy a place.
Members would still have plenty of months when Congress is out of session to be in the home district. But they should be traveling between the district and DC only a few times each year, not constantly traveling home for the weekend. Before air travel, congressmen usually spent the winter in DC and the summer in the home district, with just one round trip each year.
Why don't states just buy apartments or townhouses in DC for their congresspeople? They're effectively ambassadors, and countries own residences for their ambassadors. States have governors mansions. This seems like a no brainer.
Just to state the obvious, this additionally selects for people who want to live in the District of Columbia. I don't think people who want to live there are bad people (plz don't ban me), but it's moving even further from a representative sample of the country.
Worth it anyway? I dunno, maybe!
A reasonable and fair minded response. But unfortunately, you have, in fact, been banned.
aw h*ck
double banned!
The current system selects for people who are much more interested in preening for TV cameras, boosting their social media presence, and positioning themselves for book deals. Hard to imagine that we wouldn’t have fewer MTGs and more boring, public service minded people if we required them to move to DC and do actual legislative work 40 hours a week.
I have as much contempt for MTG's "public service" as the next Slow Borer, but I think we need to keep in mind what motivates her much more numerous colleagues.
Addendum: in a healthier political climate, MTG's freak crankitude would very rarely matter what bills could or could not pass in Congress.
I think this gets to part of Ben's point in the article - do we want our legislators to be a representative sampling of us, or to be the best of us? There are trade offs either way.
"...the best of us?"
As determined how?
We're not going to get a perfect representative sampling or elect the absolute best person every time, but its a question of which approach are we (the public) aiming for.
We never, ever get a representative sample and rarely get the best.
Which is more important to you when voting for an elected official, that they will do what you want, or that they will do their best for you?
Not sure what you mean by “do their best,” but if they work hard and are effective at implementing policies that I do not want, there’s no way to see that as a good thing.
I have no desire to live in DC, but if I had to choose between moving to DC and spending 10-15 hours flying back and forth between DC and California EVERY WEEK you bet your butt I'd rather just move there. It's not like members are living a quiet life in their beloved rural Idaho now. The people who want to become congresspeople are already very unusual, "you have to move to DC" sounds like a drop in the bucket compared to all the craziness members already have to go through.
This was my first thought. Pulling my kids out of school and moving from CA to DC would be disincentive enough from running. The end result of this is a Congress full of millennial ambition psychos who either don't have working spouses or don't mind never seeing their families.
I feel like this is oversolving a wrong diagnosis of the right problem. Yes, conviviality has gone down, but it's not JUST because they don't have their kids on the same baseball teams. IMO, the conviviality and the baseball teams were positively reinforcing dynamics that were ultimately downstream of a system that offered congresscritters more freedom of action (sometimes to the bad/corrupt, though even the corruption could often be bent to serve greater goods), and even occasionally tended to promote multifactional compromise politics within a relatively depolarized party system.
At the root of all of this is what I call "Dumb Populism". If you squint hard enough, you can trace its big breakout moment in American politics to Andrew Jackson's big Jacksonian Democracy push, but it's basically a bunch of really dumb, simplistic notions of how our democracy is supposed to work, ideas which have always had a lot of purchase among the underclasses in America.
Dumb Populism gave us primaries, because voters wanted "control" over their representatives. Dumb Populism gave us Paul Ryan making a show of sleeping in his office. Dumb Populism keeps the filibuster alive by perpetuating idiotic notions about how "compromise" works instead of a realistic assessment of the results we're actually getting -- and as a result, indirectly gives us all the grandstanding and divisiveness that flows from the filibuster's gridlock.
Most relevant to today's discussion, Dumb Populism gives us members who like to showboat about "staying in touch" with their districts.
Ben, you might object that I'm not focusing enough on the problem at hand, and that your solution may actually help put us on a path to a virtuous cycle. And that would be valid! But I don't think you're actually thinking hard enough about what such a path might look like, what paths are actually feasible, or any specific mechanism by which the virtuous cycle would purport to reinforce itself.
You're giving us a thing that sounds like it might help, and making a case for a bunch of ways it would do that, but you don't really have a "theory of the case".
I hope none of this comes across as mean; we're all of course rooting for you here, and I love this series. Just want to challenge your thinking and offer constructive criticism!
Speaking of Jackson and dumb populism: am I the only one here who saw (and loved) the Public Theatre’s emo musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson?!
It’s what made me grab tickets to Hamilton when it first opened, before it was a phenomenon, even though I am not a big fan of hip hop (or indeed the musical genre). At least in my mind BBAJ was kind of a precursor—historically driven musical with modern songs.
Never heard of it, but sounds like I could like it, since I've long held my take that Jackson was our Worst President Ever, at least until Trump came along to threaten that status.
I think it was slightly before its time. It played on Broadway and I think had a run at the Studio in DC, but didn’t really take off. I saw it in I think 2010 or so. It would have been the perfect mid-2010s production.
Sample lyric: “Life sucks, and my life sucks in particular,” sung by w wallowing-in-self-pity Jackson (played by Benjamin Walker, who I think is a movie star now [?]).
I’ve never seen the show but the soundtrack is great.
Never saw it, but now I’m curious!
Can I interest you in a recent Slow Boring article?
https://www.slowboring.com/p/ask-how-to-solve-problems-not-why
(just lightly trolling - I don't think you're necessarily wrong, but it may be beside the point.)
Well, I think you misunderstand my point a bit. I’m indeed embracing a “fix the problems, don’t just describe them” approach. I’m just saying that when you go fixing problems, it helps to have a comprehensive strategy and a valid “theory of the case”.
I couldn't disagree more. Remember Jefferson's admonition that "The government that governs best governs least." I spent my career representing a telecom company before Federal and State legislatures and regulatory agencies. I can say that the most effective legislatures were those with limit sessions and the worst were the "full time" ones. Take Texas as a good example: it met for 90 days (I think now 120 days) every two years and the legislators received very small pay and only one or two staff members.
Except when the Texas legislature was in session, they lived and worked (in real world jobs) in their constituencies. They weren't "professional elegislators". The short session meant that ONLY important legislation could be considered ...none of the junk bills clogging Congress that are introduced as a fundraiser or ego soother.
The Texas legislators actually attended the hearings that often lasted all night and they asked thoughtful, knowledgeable questions because they only needed to deal with a few real, significant bills and therefore had the time to do "deep dives." By comparison, members of Congress, if they attended hearings at all, typically showed up for photo-ops and grandstanding, read a few vacuous questions prepared by their staffs without follow-up and left.
I strongly believe that Congress would be MUCH more effective if it met for one 90 day session each year, subject to additional special sessions called to address a specific subject.
That’s interesting. From my years in Texas I had the impression that it was one of the worst legislatures for precisely this reason - it prevented members from developing expertise and required them to have some sort of fancy day job that would pay them well enough to take six months off every two years.
And the lack of expertise can/will be filled by lobbyists who are all but certain to be full-time. I don't know if it makes a difference in practice though.
I live in NY, which has a notoriously inefficent legislature. I was suprised when a new colleague moved here from Texas, and she said the Texas legislature may have been more efficient with their time but was even worse than New York's in governing because people with money were the ones who had access to legislators in the lengthy off time. And you had to wait so long for legislation to be considered again if a vote didn't come up in session. So pros and cons to both, I suppose.
I can only speak from my personal experience: the contrast between the Texas legislature's handling of a complex telecom deregulation bill and other States and Congress was amazing. All the legislators I spoke with were knowledgeable, energetic and interested in hearing all sides. By contrast, most (not all) members of Congress and full-time legislatures such as New York and Pennsylvania were lazy, full of themselves and much more "political."
As to "expertise:" subject-matter expertise is necessarily a good thing because the "expert" legislator (one who had been around for many years and spent time on the same committees) tended to have pre-conceived notions and weren't open to new ideas. Having the towering egos needed to be a successful politician, they were always "right" (correct) and didn't need to hear from young whippersnappers.
You were a lobbyist lol, respectfully I think your conceptions as to what makes a good versus bad representative are pretty much 180 degrees opposite of what we as a society should want. A lobbyist saying 'I prefer the part-time legislators, they were easier to deal with' simply proves the point that part-time legislators are in fact bad. The 'new ideas' you were peddling were simply to benefit your industry
Fair enough point in theory, but not in practice.
I was supporting legislation to adopt a radically different regulatory system (competition) against century-old monopoly regulation and the regulated monopolies. The legislation was drafted by a few legislators who wanted to take Texas out of the clutches of Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. I simply testified at a few hearings and met with some legislators in their offices to explain why the proposed law would work. I'm not sure that is "lobbying" as you might think of it.
I definitely appreciated having the opportunity to speak with the part-time legislators who had open minds and were eager to hear about the new ideas. The incumbent monopolies loved the incumbent politicians, and vice versa. Representing a start-up taking on the entrenched monopolies, I didn't have the resources to compete with the incumbents on a like-for-like basis.
BTW, the only States where legislators looked for some quid pro quos were in the "full time" legislatures (where there are full-time lobbyists) perhaps because being a legislator was the only source of income whereas the part-time legislators had good incomes back home and didn't need income from their legislative activities. Part-time legislators aren't available to full-time lobbyists at home and they didn't need them nor did they want a fancy dinner.
>I simply testified at a few hearings and met with some legislators in their offices to explain why the proposed law would work
Yes, that is the literal definition of 'lobbying' man. And you were 'supporting' this legislation in exchange for some kind of financial benefit, I take it?
(BTW the days of Southwestern Bell was a loong time ago- like over 20 years ago!)
A modern society requires fulltime legislators- and fulltime administrative staff, so that they can get accurate information on issues without hearing it from self-interested lobbyists. Texas' model is terrible, and broadening it to the world's largest economy is deeply unserious
Where do you think the full-time legislators and the full-time administrative staff get their information and ideas? The answer is lobbyists (paid representatives who register as such) and representatives of the various (special) interests (corporate, non-profits, environmental, citizen groups, etc., even individual citizens once in a while. I was once of the latter: a corporate employee, not a paid lobbyist.
If you think legislators get information from people who are not self-interested you are naive. EVERYONE who talks to legislators and staff about actual and potential legislation are self-interested so it behooves the legislator to talk to everyone to get input from all sides. Full-time legislators have too much time on their hands and that makes them targets for unscrupulous lobbyists and soft corruption. There is rarely anything so urgent that it can't wait for a 90-day legislative session.
This is an interesting perspective, which I think would be bolstered by the idea that TV should be banned from the whole lot of it.
You can read the transcript if you care--no one will. But less grandstanding and preening.
Also a very good idea. If you haven't testified before Congress or met with Reps and Senators, you will have no idea how disconnected Congress is from the "outside the Beltway" world.
I was going to say something similar: That Ben believes this is a good idea because he wants the federal government to do a whole lot more than it's supposed to do.
The Washington State Legislature meets for short sessions and it is a nightmare. Only folks with jobs that let take the winter off can run and they are all moving so fast and doing stuff so late into the night that they make mistakes that could be prevented by slowing down and they rely too much on lobbyists for anything outside their personal focus.
Allow me to pitch much grumpier version of this that might play much, much better with voters:
Congress should be in session five days a week, because we pay the members $174,000 a year, and generally we expect five days of work at that salary level. [1] I wouldn't be opposed to them working the typical government shift of nine hours away, every second Friday off though.
Relocation assistance should be limited the amount that is tax deductible by law.
Sleeping in your office should be banned [2], and honestly the Capitol should be closed from 11pm to 5am unless Congress is in session overnight for necessary legislative business.
As it stands now, everyone else who works in Congress makes less than a member of Congress, as do most of the government workforce in D.C., and they find ways to live on their salary and raise families. More interaction with the city and the various economic forces that act upon it would go a long way to improving governance.
[1] Unless you're a certain type of tech CEO, where you can also be CEO of multiple other companies, I guess? That's between them and their credulous shareholders though.
[2] The sleeping on cots in the office has always made me irrationally angry, because it's pitched as "I'm saving the taxpayers money" when there's no housing allowance and the taxpayers aren't saving a dime. You're just lining your own pockets while making life harder for the people who work for you and those who have to clean congressional offices. Gross, get an apartment.
Time in district isn't the problem in US governance, Republicans wanting to break the government is the problem in US government. If you're going to cite Gingrich in the context of governance, I think you should note he slashed staff and committee budgets.
This may seem nitpicky but I think when there is a glaring problem, it is wrong to distract from that by bringing up other issues which, even if they're real, are orders of magnitude less important and let the true culprits to escape responsibility.
In the same vein, another commenter linked to a book about UK governance. I'm sure UK governance could improve. But the real problem in Britain is a planning system that means it can take a 5 years to fix an intersection. Parties across the spectrum know this is a disaster but to date to the NIMBYs have always defeated the reformers. Highlighting minutiae of governance structures lets the NIMBYs off the hook.
https://archive.nytimes.com/economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/gingrich-and-the-destruction-of-congressional-expertise/
No, if only they played baseball together with the people who want to do a coup, everything would be fine!
“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”
Essentially, I’m here to serve the country as a whole, not you whiny constituents.
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The point isn't necessarily that he is there to serve the country as a whole, but that the role of a representative is to take the will of his constituents and use his judgement to figure out a way to best enact it.
Constituents want X, representative figures out how to best achieve X.
Constituents say they want X, but really want Y, figure out how to give them Y.
I don't think it means suborning their will to that of the rest of the country (when conflicting).
Sometimes, the role of a representative is to explain to his constituents why he is voting contrary to their will and self-interest and convince them that this is for the greater good. Politicians voting in accordance with their strongest convictions--political consequences be damned--are part of the balancing act. I think the best representatives strive to reflect the interests of their district most of the time, but reserve a bit for the tough votes that they believe in.
The weekly travel schedule is also more unfair to west coast congresspeople (not to mention Hawaii & Alaska!). You raise good points, but most of them could be solved with a schedule change to a month-on month-off rotation combined with allowing voting by proxy for some of the unimportant stuff (naming post offices). Fwiw, I think that keeping the kids of congresspeople in a variety of school districts instead of some super-district in CD is actually a good thing :)
But it's funny that this is basically a quality of life problem that Congress has not been able to solve for itself. Every butt in those coach seats has a vote in the congressional rules and hasn't changed something Newt Gingrich did 30 years ago.
There are two realities here. The first is that the best way to say you're out of touch with voters without saying you're out of touch with voters is to advocate "a starting [moving full time to DC] package of $1 million, with additional bonuses for children." The part about incentivizing MCs to move to DC is especially detached from the reality of the median voter. The second reality is that for highly talented professionals, becoming a member of Congress involves a massive pay cut. At the end of the day, you get what you pay for. https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/product-manager?country=254
While admirable, I think this would be very difficult as a reform to carry out given the expenditures it would take for assisting members of congress and their family, and very likely staff if you're considering weekend legislative days.
It's possible another approach is to accept that people vote for the party, not the person, and to reduce the importance of the individual member by looking to something like multi-member districts with multiple parties.
There are times when I feel that if members of Congress really have become just mouthpieces of their parties, you may as well not even bother with districts or direct election, and just let each state's governor appoint the state's entire congressional delegation. The politics of the people would still determine control of congress, you just do all the red vs. blue fighting in the governor's races, rather than in individual districts. The end result would be Congress becoming like electors in the electoral college, but at least with all elections statewide, it would become impossible to gerrymander.
If you are doing that change, I think it makes more sense to have party-list voting, otherwise you incentivize states to never elect moderate governors from the other party, who are often useful governors to have.
To be clear, I was saying this mostly in jest, with full realization that such a move would be unconstitutional anyway. But, if you replace "governor" with "head of the party's national committee", we're not that far off from such a system in practice.
Better to do single transferable vote or something so that voters can express preferences among various factions rather than having predefined parties.
Is it? Parties provide an immensely valuable cognitive shortcut for the public in providing them a good idea of what the candidate is likely to think on a number of issues. Moving to multiple parties would expand the selection of issue groupings. This might allow for more popular legislation to be passed.
If you dilute the parties messaging by allowing various factional candidates, then you require the public work to inform themselves about every individual they vote for. This is MUCH more time intensive and is likely to lead to a public less informed about the particular policy opinions of their representatives - which is kind of what we have now.
There are 2 countries that use STV for federal elections globally, Australia and Ireland. Most political scientists believe that Australia's version is simply a weird version of open-list PR, as 90% of voters vote 'above the line' (that is, accept the candidate rankings that the party gave them). Half of Ireland's districts have like 3 members.
The majority of voters don't have ranked preferences between candidates, or even clearly understand the difference between them. It's only us politics-obsessed weirdos who have distinct opinions as to who should be ranked #3, 4, and 5- I bet the average voter couldn't even name 3 candidates for a given office, much less articulate the difference between their policy positions. STV is not realistic at-scale
I don’t think giving 538 people a $1M subsidy to buy a home is going to help with DCs affordability.
Better to just buy 538 housing units. We already have one for the president and 50 for the state governors.
Buying has the same effect. Swap buy with build and I’m with you though! Heard there’s going to be some empty space where RFK was pretty soon…
The massive parking lots just south of the Cannon House Office Building would actually be the ideal location to construct a Congressional dorm (probably with some basement parking), since it's already USG property, is within the existing Capitol Police security perimeter, and would allow easy access to both the DC Metro and the internal Capitol subway system.
While a dorm is a funny idea, it’s important to make sure the housing options doesn’t bias away from families IMO. Doesn’t have to be SFH, but a dorm definitely isn’t family friendly. Cheap dorms for staffers, however, is a pretty good idea.
This reminds me of a lifetime ago when legislative committees in Ontario used to travel on a regular basis throughout the province to hear the views of citizens and experts. I believe that this time spent travelling and hoteling (and most likely drinking) together helped encourage more civil and cooperative norms between members from different parties.
"... found that Congress is spending a historically low amount of time debating bills on the floor..."
In the last 10 years (20 years? 40 years? ever?) has floor debate ever convinced a single Congressman how to vote? It seems to me that most decisions on how to vote happen in back rooms (or are made long before a bill is considered). Maybe committee hearings are edifying; I'm not even sure about that.
Part of the problem is that anything said in debate is broadcast on television and the internet, so members really aren’t allowed to think or change their mind there. Getting rid of the cameras might make more real debate happen.
I'm not sure. I don't think state legislatures (which are not often broadcast the same way) have any floor debates that cause mind-changing.
Nobody will bring a bill to the floor unless they are sure it will pass, or are okay that it will fail.
I have frequently thought that there is more and better content in the written testimony submitted. Which doesn’t require a physical presence for the hearings.
What about congressional kids in school? Are they supposed to go back to the district for several-week stretches? I like your idea in a vacuum, but I don’t see it working for school kids.
For most of recent history, they went to school in DC when their parent was in office. Legislators used to spend a lot more time in DC. And they even were relatively well-behaved at bipartisan social events because their spouses and kids were there.