Bob Livingston represented the 1st Circuit of Louisiana for 24 years.
Congress is broken.
James Madison’s vision, enshrined in the US Constitution, the world’s most important document, second only to the Bible, has become blurred, distorted and all but forgotten.
Partisanship has eclipsed any thought of working together in the interest of the nation. Party loyalty is sacrosanct and any deviation in either party is frowned upon and sanctioned.
Gone are the days when members of Congress could reach down the aisle to enact legislation based on common sense rather than mere party dogma.
“Negotiation” is not synonymous with “surrender”. But insisting on “my way or the highway” often leads to what we’ve seen too many times in recent years: nothing…or much worse.
It is difficult to pinpoint exactly where the problems began.
The Democrats grew arrogant in their 40 years of practical control of the House of Representatives and near-equal supremacy in the US Senate.
They suffered a disastrous fit when Newt Gingrich led the Republicans to take control of the House of Representatives in 1995. Their outrage forced them to file over 200 reckless ethics complaints against the new speaker, but Republicans were successful in curbing President Clinton’s profligate agenda, leading him to declare, “The era of big government is over.”
The nation benefited as the Republican Congress worked with the Democrat-controlled White House to cut spending and eventually balance the discretionary budget for the first time in decades and the last time in modern history.
The Democrats grew arrogant in their 40 years of practical control of the House of Representatives and near-equal supremacy in the US Senate.
Compulsory entitlement spending has been left unchecked and is now the primary cause of our nation’s continued march toward fiscal disaster.
America’s future is uncertain.
Numerous columns and statements are written in the press every day proclaiming that the end is near. I don’t think they are true, but our government needs a drastic overhaul.
The politicization of our executive agencies is untenable. The Biden administration ignores the thousands of people pouring across our borders from around the world, bringing drug trafficking, sex trafficking and terrorist threats to every city in America.
Our fiscal agenda has lost all connection to reality. Inflation is at a 40-year high and rising interest rates are threatening our fiscal integrity.
“Wokism” has spread from our colleges and universities to our elementary and high schools, to our government agencies, and even to our Department of Defense.
These trends cannot endure and must be reversed. God willing, 2024 will bring a change in administration in the White House and a new direction for the country. Only the American people will decide if that can happen.
But Congress can start making changes today.
Republicans have regained control of the House of Representatives, albeit by an incredibly slim majority. My message to them is simple: ‘Don’t repeat the mistakes of your predecessors!’
Much has been written about Nancy Pelosi’s effectiveness as a speaker. Granted, she was a very successful autocrat. A true supporter of her left-wing agenda, Ms. Pelosi emasculated the committee process and took full control of all legislation, so no bills or amendments were allowed on the floor without her approval.
She rarely, if ever, worked with the Republican minority. Your unwavering support from the President and the entire Executive Branch of the Government; the endless money showering her from Silicon Valley in her native state of California; and the admiring bleating of sycophantic journalists was in philosophical lockstep with Pelosi’s agenda; All of this enabled her to demand absolute loyalty from her Democrats, regardless of how they may have personally felt about her radical left agenda.
When she tore up President Trump’s State of the Union address, she embarrassed herself, her party, Congress and the nation. It was a shameful act.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, the country’s third highest official, should be the speaker of the entire House of Representatives, not just his particular party. Certainly the speaker is a partisan, but partisanship should be exercised by the majority and minority leaders.
Republicans have regained control of the House of Representatives, albeit by an incredibly slim majority. My message to them is simple: ‘Don’t repeat the mistakes of your predecessors!’
The speaker not only represents his party; but he or she represents Congress and the nation. The Speaker owes it to the country to show dignity and respect to the House.
Of course, Ms. Pelosi wasn’t the only speaker to abuse the system in recent years, but she has refined her abuse into an art form.
Speaker Hastert may have started the process when he imposed the “Hastert Rule,” which requires a majority vote of the Republican Conference before committee legislation can be referred to the Rules Committee and/or House Floor.
Much later, under Speaker Boehner, the Freedom Caucus, a skeleton group of about 40 members, required an even larger percentage of approval from its members before any of them would vote for a particular law.
Many of them refused to ever vote for the annual budget bills that must be passed, meaning Speakers Boehner and Ryan had no choice but to negotiate with Democrats on votes to fund government expenses, including defense to adopt.
The process became so cumbersome for the leaders of both parties that it became too difficult to pass the budget bills, so they took action up to the last minute.
Instead of passing smaller, handier bills in the historically accepted procedure, they began consolidating all 12 household bills into individual “omnibus” bills in packets of thousands of undecipherable pages.
When this wasn’t the case, continuous resolutions, or “CRs,” became the common fallback. CRs are the worst of all options as they simply repeat what was done the previous year and add new spending powers to offset inflation without sufficient oversight, attention or change in detail regardless of waste or real need.
Both omnibus bills and CRs serve to disenfranchise individual members and deny their voters participation in the legislative process.
Bob Livingston represented the 1st Circuit of Louisiana for 24 years.
The American legislative process is broken. It can be fixed, but only leaders on both sides will work together to make it happen.
Philosophical positions need not be abandoned, but they must be contained in a process easily foreseen by our Constitution’s lead author, James Madison.
Few current members of Congress understand the term “regular order.” But when I came to Congress under Speaker Tip O’Neill, regular order meant something and it worked. The members of both parties were certainly partisan, but the system kept them from their worst excesses.
Under “regular order,” the committee chairs, along with their minority members, direct legislation through the Rules Committee to the bottom of the House. They are not dictated by the speaker or any member of the leadership. The process allows for public hearings, debate, consensus and adjustments for the minority voice.
It is imperative that changes are made and that members take pride in being elected to one of the greatest institutions in human history. The United States House of Representatives deserves no less.