Both the House and Senate lost their way long before Trump.

Has anyone seen Congress recently? You know them, right? They’re about <this> tall, smile too much, and talk a lot without saying anything? A lot of dyed gray hair?

Yeah, me neither.

Congress has been missing in action for a while. We blame Trump and MAGA for all the damage they do — as we should. But they’re only allowed to run wild because both the Senate and the House collapsed. And, as much as I’d love to blame Speaker Mike “Spineless” Johnson and… who’s the Republican, again? Right, Senate Majority Leader John Thune. It was burning before they lay down.

Can Congress Act?

Here’s a test: can you imagine the phrase “Today, Congress took decisive action…” outside of a bad joke? Sure, there are as many good and honorable members as there are disgusting and dishonorable cretins. We have good people. But the leaders of both Parties act like placeholders for something better. Lord knows we deserve better.

The collapse wasn’t Trump’s doing, as much as I’d love to blame him. And this isn’t new. Both houses faded over generations. We barely noticed their decline because it happened so gradually.

Congress is Broken

Yeah, both chambers of Congress are broken. Back in the 70s and 80s, each Congress used to pass 700—800 bills during a 2-year term. The 118^th Congress only managed to pass 274 bills. Now, we’re more than halfway through the 119^th Congress. Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. They have a super-majority in the Supreme Court to boot! And they’ve only passed, what, 74 bills so far? Not impressive. Although, given the quality of their work, I’m happy they haven’t gotten more through.

Original Intentions

Remember the democratic ideal? We would elect representatives based on our self-interests (“Give me stuff I want and protect me from stuff I hate.”) Those representatives, with their different ideas and goals, would also be driven by their self-interest. To get stuff done and get re-elected, they had to work together. That meant drafting legislation, debating the issues, finding common ground where it exists, and working out compromises where it doesn’t. Give away something to get something you want more. Sure, that means brute force and bare-knuckle politics, but we’d get governance as a consensus.

The Framers considered the Legislature the primary branch of government. They wrote the laws that authorized budgets and directed the Executive’s actions. It was Congress that reviewed and oversaw the Executive’s actions. The Senate approved judges, and only the Senate had the power to impeach (theoretically). The Executive couldn’t even fill important positions (“Officers”) without the Senate’s prior consent. And they had the authority to impeach anyone up to and including the President. (Again, only in theory; it’s never worked.) Notice there’s no Constitutional mechanism for another branch to impeach a Senator or Congressperson?

Ah, they had such sweet dreams, you know?

What Parts are Broken?

I’m just some Internet rando, but I see several reasons why Congress failed.

Party Power Consolidation

America was never close to that democratic ideal, but the idea of compromise started to die after Watergate.

Republicans joined Democrats in the investigation. They did good, powerful work, and what they uncovered brought down their own candidate, President Richard Nixon. They deserve our gratitude.

But that scandal washed over every Republican. Americans voted Republicans out of power for decades. They were not rewarded. Democrats locked Republicans out completely, limiting or blocking any GOP amendments, rolling roughshod over their objections. Democrats got strong majorities for so many elections that they began to assume they’d have permanent majorities. They became arrogant.

Without competition, Democrats became complacent. They took their voters for granted and stopped delivering for their voters. And they had the gall to be astounded when they finally began to lose their ‘permanent majority.’ Poor babies.

And yes, Republicans were the first to discard the principle of compromise itself openly. In their defense, they didn’t have much choice. Democrats had broken the legislature before they got there, then used that power to lord it over Republicans for decades.

When Republicans finally yanked power back, blocked Democrats as far from the levers of power as possible. It’s disappointing that they followed the Democratic example, but it wasn’t a surprise.

Leadership

When I was a kid, lots of people had political power. Being a committee chair was a powerful position. Individuals dealt their way into being power brokers. Influential constituencies had a voice.

Party leadership did their best to whip votes, but it was never perfect. Every representative voted according to a mix of conscience and self-interest. Talk about herding cats and butterflies. Every bill had people from both parties voting for and against.

Republicans were the first to figure out how to enforce Party leadership, making their representatives to follow the party line. For years after that, hapless Democrats watched in stunned befuddlement as Republicans voted as a block. They knew that a few conservative Democrats would usually vote with them. And it worked. Republicans won too many of those fights.

Slowly, painfully, and surprisingly, Democrats learned the same tricks. They consolidated power under their own leadership. They learned to enforce Party leadership.

And, instead of hundreds of individuals, we had just two parties locked in a death spiral.

The Death of Compromise

Enforcing Party unity on every issue means that bills are mostly decided along party lines. The few who don’t vote as they’re told are called ‘defections.’ Chilling, right?

Long ago, politicians always talked about how well they could deal across party lines. It was a shibboleth. Everyone had to say that, even if they didn’t mean it. Now, it’s not just that Republicans brag about never compromising; even dealing with the other party is political suicide. You can expect someone more ideologically pure to run against you in the next primary.

And I’m watching Democrats doing just the same thing.

Crippling Rules

I’m nobody’s expert on the intricacies of House and Senate rules, but here’s the trick: almost nobody is. The chambers run under systems so convoluted that most of our legislators can’t get them to work. The Senate is the worst, but the House is nearly as bad.

Don’t ask me why. Every new House writes new rules, and somehow, they get more convoluted and chaotic every time. The Senate doesn’t, and it’s even worse. And leadership ensures that even the smallest change fails.

We’ve normalized gridlock so much that we don’t even talk about it now. But our democracy is dying from it. Even with leadership support, most legislation has to sidestep the rules altogether through dodges like ‘unanimous consent.’

These dodges work, sometimes, but they’re trivial to block.

Obstruction

Did you notice that the only decisive action from either Party is blocking legislation? It’s what they do best because obstruction is the only thing that still operates.

Interesting how each Congress tries so hard to hamstring the other party. Leadership in both Parties willingly hurt their own interests if that keeps them in place.

Think about how many ways one Senator can block so much, from judges to promotions to unanimous consent. One Senator!

Fascism in a Power Vacuum

With Congress essentially catatonic, the Presidency was forced to fill the power vacuum. Trump always wanted absolute power, so he wins the “Worst President!” award, but each President before him expanded Executive power to compensate for Congress’s fading support.

The Founders didn’t expect an Imperial Executive and didn’t include practical checks and balances for that. There are institutions and norms, but we found out that most of that stuff is, at best, voluntary. The “Advice and consent” clause struggles to be enforced. As nice as impeachment sounds, that one’s a non-starter, too. The Constitution itself failed. The Supreme Court ruled that the nobody has legal standing to enforce the 14th Amendment. Imagine that?

I’ve got to say, Republicans’ most brilliant step was to corrupt the judiciary. With Congress derailed, they knew that the only remaining check on their insurrection were the courts. They spent decades carefully jamming in one partisan judge after the next into lifetime positions. It’s not like they’d ever be impeached, after all. It worked. Now their big-money donors controls both the Supreme Court and the Fifth Circuit, using that as a MAGA pipeline.

But none of that would matter with a functional Congress.

What to Fix

• Rationalize the House and Senate rules. Nobody believes the current structure works. They’re just afraid of losing power to the other side. Protect political minorities, but don’t go nuts. No single person should have the power to block overwhelmingly popular actions. That’s just stupid.
• Break the Party’s lock domination of our representatives. Those Congresspeople and Senators? Those are our representatives, not your property.
• Reconnect our representatives with their voters. Right now, they only do what the richest lobbyists tell them. Break the money train.
• I’m not sure how to make compromise less of a curse. I hope that these changes will help. Break the Party dictatorships, create rational rules, and hold our representatives accountable. “What have you done for me recently?” can be refreshingly curative.