Congress

Twice now I've heard people on the news saying something to the effect of, "if regular people did their job the way Congress is doing its job, they'd be fired." This statement is just silly to me. I understand that people (me included) are frustrated by how difficult it has been for Congress to pass a budget and how close we got to another government shutdown, but statements like these indicate a basic misunderstanding of how Congress works. And, as a political scientist, I obviously want to clear things up :)

The reason Congress has had such a hard time passing a budget this year is not because individual members of Congress aren't doing their jobs. In fact, it's exactly the opposite! It's actually because individual members of Congress are doing EXACTLY what a plurality of constituents in each our 435 congressional districts elected them to do. In particular, many of the new members of Congress affiliated with the Tea Party, campaigned with the promise that they would go to Congress, cut spending, and refuse to compromise. Other members of Congress represent districts where their constituents want them to fight to protect access to women's health services (a.k.a. funding for Planned Parenthood). The recent showdown isn't an indication that our representatives aren't doing their job, it's an indication that they're doing it a little too well. They are willing to fight to the wire to protect the things that their constituents want.

The problem with this is that both sides have lost track of the bigger picture and that is that it's not all about what's best for individual districts sometimes--we also have to think about what's best for the nation as a whole. This is where compromise comes in. In politics, compromise is absolutely essential. You simply can't have a functioning democracy without the willingness to give a little sometimes. People who have served in government for a while realize this, but it is a hard lesson to learn for people new to politics.

Learning this lesson won't solve all our problems. People will still disagree about issues like abortion, which programs we should cut, and who should bear the brunt of the financial burden for government, but we have to be willing to have ideological differences within the context of understanding that we won't always get everything we want. If we the people communicate that message to our elected officials, maybe we can start making some progress on our shared national problems.