Breaking Gridlock in Congress

BREAKING GRIDLOCK
IN CONGRESS

A slightly shorter version of this article by Sol Erdman and Lawrence Susskind appeared on the Op-Ed page of The Boston Globe, May 21, 1997.

Congress isn't designed to deal with tough issues. It has many factions and no mechanism for them to negotiate with each other. In the recent budget talks, for example, Republican congressional leaders simply bypassed all factions and negotiated directly with President Clinton. But each time the two sides inched toward some resolution of their differences, many members in both parties felt they were being sold out and promised to derail the effort. The budget talks would have deadlocked were it not for the unexpected windfall of a booming economy and unusually high tax receipts.

We won't be that lucky often. Gridlock will be a constant risk until Congress faces the fact that it contains many political points of view. Giving the various factions a direct role in the negotiations would help to resolve the toughest issues.

The next time the country reaches a political impasse, Congress could resolve it by organizing a committee on which each member speaks for a bloc of legislators who share a common stance. Committee members could then negotiate with each other, and each one could make a case to his or her own faction for where the negotiations were headed. That is, after all, how problems get solved when there are many points of view.

From 1994 to 1996, for example, representatives from environmental, labor and civil rights groups, and the oil, chemical and paper industries met frequently at the White House. These groups are often enemies, yet their representatives drafted a long-range plan for the nation's environment that most experts agreed was better for the environment, better for labor, and better for business than any environmental legislation Congress has yet passed. The participants agreed that industry would cut pollution to lower levels than it had ever accepted before, and environmentalists would support the elimination of many regulations that specify how pollution must be cut. The result would be to cut pollution at much less cost than in the past.

The secret to their success? Each representative had a cohesive constituency with a real agenda. To move their agendas forward, the representatives had to negotiate with each other. Each one could then show his or her own constituents exactly how the agreements he was making would serve their interests.

A congressional committee might accomplish as much if it were organized the same way: each member responsible to a bloc of legislators with a common agenda. This would be quite different from congressional committees today whose members are appointed by party leaders and either toe the party line or use their committee seats for their own ends. Instead, on a committee that represented blocs of lawmakers, keeping a seat could depend on how well a member advanced his bloc's agenda. The only way to advance that agenda would be to negotiate with the rest of the committee. Each committee member could then meet regularly with his or her "constituents" in Congress to fully explain the bargains he was making and why he was making them. And who could win each faction's support better than one of its own members?

This kind of committee could be formed on any issue in the following way: Any lawmaker who wanted a seat would circulate a platform announcing his or her stance. Every legislator would pick the candidate they preferred. To keep the committee to a manageable size, the candidate with the fewest followers would be out of the running. The legislators who supported that person would be asked to make a second choice. This process would be repeated until a committee of reasonable size remained. Every legislator would end up with a committee spokesperson whose views were close to their own. Every committee member would, in turn, have a constituency that shared his agenda.

Most members of Congress should welcome this idea. Instead of being bystanders, each one would have a genuine spokesperson on a committee deciding a vital issue. Every legislator would also gain public stature, because Congress might actually resolve some issues that few people think it is capable of resolving.

Sol Erdman is president of Democracy 2000. Lawrence Susskind is Director of the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program.