Kevin Roose clearly misunderstands what "functioning" means in Congressional terms. Perhaps he was absent on the day that his 4th grade class learned:
- The Executive branch enforces laws.
- The Judicial branch interprets laws.
- The Legislative branch makes laws.
Think about that: The Legislative branch's ONLY JOB is to make laws. Now, I'm a big-government-loving bleeding heart liberal, but even I have to admit that it's completely ridiculous to put 535 people representing 3.8 million square miles of land into one building for 11 months out of every year for the sole purpose of making new laws. How could you not end up with tons of unnecessary cruft and bloat?
What this means is that the only time we aren't adding more restrictions to our lives is when Congress is gridlocked. Gridlock is the system functioning as designed. What's not to love about it? We don't want a government that moves fast and breaks things. For startups and lean companies, it can be a real pain in the ass! It's hard enough to keep up with compliance issues when you're just starting out; having to change your policies every 6 months due to the whims on Congress would be practically anti-business.
The Legislative branch's ONLY JOB is to make laws.
I don't think that's quite right. Its job is to change the laws. That can mean adding laws, repealing laws, updating existing laws in the light of changing circumstances, etc. And "changing the laws" includes one-off things that do something once and don't leave much enduring cruft behind, like the Hurricane Sandy relief bill.
There's no reason in principle why they couldn't do their job while keeping the total amount of law constant or even reducing it. If in practice they do spend almost all their time (when not gridlocked) making new laws without trimming the resulting bloat, the problem isn't simply that their job requires them to do that.
There's no reason in principle why they couldn't do their job while keeping the total amount of law constant or even reducing it.
Actually, there is! The reason is because Congress can only make laws -- that includes laws that repeal other laws! Note how we still have the Eighteenth Amendment despite it being nullified by the Twenty-first Amendment.
While there can be, in theory (and again, with such a large mass of people, it's really only in theory) laws whose sole purpose is to repeal other laws, such laws almost never make it to the President without a sizable layer of pork slathered on top in order to gather enough votes.
I personally believe the following things should happen:
1) increase the # of representatives. Why was the # capped? Now I believe there are an average of 700k per representative. I am going by memory here. But I know the original recommendation was 35,000 per rep as per the Constitution. This needs to be allowed. So what if we end up with about 6,000 representatives! At least we would have a more direct access to our rep.
2) House of Representatives shouldn't run for 11 months a year. Make it 6 or 7 months. Let them come back to their districts for one month every 3 or 4 months. They need to spend more time with their constituents.
Comments
Kevin Roose clearly misunderstands what "functioning" means in Congressional terms. Perhaps he was absent on the day that his 4th grade class learned:
Think about that: The Legislative branch's ONLY JOB is to make laws. Now, I'm a big-government-loving bleeding heart liberal, but even I have to admit that it's completely ridiculous to put 535 people representing 3.8 million square miles of land into one building for 11 months out of every year for the sole purpose of making new laws. How could you not end up with tons of unnecessary cruft and bloat?What this means is that the only time we aren't adding more restrictions to our lives is when Congress is gridlocked. Gridlock is the system functioning as designed. What's not to love about it? We don't want a government that moves fast and breaks things. For startups and lean companies, it can be a real pain in the ass! It's hard enough to keep up with compliance issues when you're just starting out; having to change your policies every 6 months due to the whims on Congress would be practically anti-business.
I don't think that's quite right. Its job is to change the laws. That can mean adding laws, repealing laws, updating existing laws in the light of changing circumstances, etc. And "changing the laws" includes one-off things that do something once and don't leave much enduring cruft behind, like the Hurricane Sandy relief bill.
There's no reason in principle why they couldn't do their job while keeping the total amount of law constant or even reducing it. If in practice they do spend almost all their time (when not gridlocked) making new laws without trimming the resulting bloat, the problem isn't simply that their job requires them to do that.
Actually, there is! The reason is because Congress can only make laws -- that includes laws that repeal other laws! Note how we still have the Eighteenth Amendment despite it being nullified by the Twenty-first Amendment.
While there can be, in theory (and again, with such a large mass of people, it's really only in theory) laws whose sole purpose is to repeal other laws, such laws almost never make it to the President without a sizable layer of pork slathered on top in order to gather enough votes.
I personally believe the following things should happen:
1) increase the # of representatives. Why was the # capped? Now I believe there are an average of 700k per representative. I am going by memory here. But I know the original recommendation was 35,000 per rep as per the Constitution. This needs to be allowed. So what if we end up with about 6,000 representatives! At least we would have a more direct access to our rep.
2) House of Representatives shouldn't run for 11 months a year. Make it 6 or 7 months. Let them come back to their districts for one month every 3 or 4 months. They need to spend more time with their constituents.
That's basically how it is now.
That's what campaigning is, and they do it.
Where does the article say anything about Kevin Rose?