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Broken Branches
Our democracy is in a dangerous state. Healthy competition between Republicans and Democrats has descended into bitter tribalism as ideology and partisanship rule the day. Congress, the linchpin of our democracy, is now the broken branch of government.Just consider some of the ways that our system of government is under siege:
A Day's Work for a Week's Pay
If you're like most Americans, you're probably on the job at least 40 hours a week. But not if you're a U.S. Senator or Representative. This year, Congress will be in session fewer than 100 days out of 365 -- a modern-day record for inaction. A typical workweek has them arriving late afternoon on Tuesday and departing midday on Thursday. During the day and a half they spend in Washington, activity in the House and Senate chambers is frenetic and abbreviated. At every opportunity, legislators leave the Capitol grounds to go "off site" -- to party headquarters or rented town houses -- in order to take care of more urgent business: raising money for their re-election and their team. On average, it cost over $1 million to win a House seat in 2004, and more than $7 million to get elected to the Senate -- price tags that have turned members into fund-raisers who constantly work the phones. There is precious little time for legislating, which happens to be the main job we're paying them to do.
In fact, rather than steep themselves in issues, members just assemble to ratify decisions made by someone else (often in the White House or a party leadership office with a handful of members, staff and lobbyists present), usually to advance a partisan and ideological agenda. Bills are often drafted by special interests (the 2005 Bankruptcy bill, for instance, has the fingerprints of credit-industry lobbyists all over it) and then passed with no hearings or serious debate. Those hard-working fund-raisers just cannot break away for time-consuming stuff -- like the people's business.
Wood utilization research: $6.4 million. The International Fund for Ireland: $13.5 million. The Water-free Urinal Conservation Initiative: $1 million. This past year, like every year, the appropriations process was hijacked by legislators who slip "earmarks" into bills: individual projects for specific districts, states or companies. While some of this spending is beneficial, plenty of it clearly wastes taxpayer money -- and virtually none of the projects are weighed against the nation's real priorities. The conservative watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste, which reported the examples above, recently noted, "Over the past ten years, pork-barrel spending has increased exponentially, from 1,430 projects totaling $10 billion in 1995 to 10,656 projects totaling $22.9 billion in 2004."
Not many decades ago, appropriators avoided earmarks, knowing they'd lead to a kind of circus or bazaar, with rising pressure to add funds for each district or to use the earmark as a tool to reward friends and punish enemies. They also worried about the temptation to use earmarks to get campaign contributions or favors in return (all the more likely these days, since lawmakers are always fund-raising). Former Rep. Duke Cunningham was convicted one year ago of using his position on an appropriations committee to steer millions of dollars to defense contractors in exchange for bribes that included cash, a Rolls-Royce, Oriental rugs and the free use of a yacht.
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