Two weeks ago I sat in the United States Senate gallery to watch Chris Coons, D-Del., make his first speech as a member of the "world's greatest deliberative body." No one else aside from the pages, Cloakroom staff, stenographer and Presiding Officer (who was chatting on his Blackberry the whole time) witnessed it. It was 6 p.m. and Coons' colleagues had already left the chamber, likely bound for their offices, their homes or the Capitol Hill Club for a glass of vintage aprs-work Merlot.
Senator Coons' resume is impressive. He's a graduate of Amherst College and Yale Law School, a Truman Scholar and a published author. But without an audience to pander to, he sounded like a third-grader at speech therapy rehashing the same lines for no discernable purpose, grudgingly practicing his elocution and presumably growing more and more irritated with his constituents for having sent him there in the first place.
This scene is common in the Senate, where despite their lofty rhetoric about "bipartisanship" and "winning the future," members don't hear (or even listen to) each other speak. There is no "deliberation." The only people who pay attention are the stenographers. And they don't look happy. The whole charade makes high school Model Congress look rigorous.
"Sit and watch us for seven days just watch the floor," said Michael Dennet, a freshman Democrat from Colorado. "You know what you'll see happening? Nothing. When I'm in the chair, I sit there thinking, I wonder what they're doing in China right now?'"
The Senate's decline as a forum for debate members ignore each other on the chamber floor and repeat their stump speeches with little regard for cooperation undermines the role of Congress in our constitutional system, leaving us unprepared to face the challenges of the 21st century. As a result, from the 2003 war in Iraq to the 2009 economic stimulus package, the legislature has been perverted to serve immediate presidential interest by passing, if anything at all, poorly crafted and highly partisan laws.
Just look at the Senate's greatest achievement under Obama: health care reform. The bill only passed after a year-and-a-half long war of attrition that decimated the political landscape and aggravated ideological polarization despite support from a Democratic president, a Democratic house and a Democratic senate. Even now, the fate of health care reform remains in question as Republicans threaten to repeal the legislation.
Senators cannot continue to make speeches to themselves, vote solely along party lines and filibuster legislation they don't like. We face too many pressing challenges climate change, decaying infrastructure, education reform, immigration, etc. ad infinitum for our leaders to sit around blocking positions about which they no longer even pretend to care.
Fortunately, just last week the Senate showed signs that it might not be beyond saving. A new truce between Senate Democrats and Republicans limits the number of executive branch nominations subject to Senate confirmation, making it harder to anonymously block legislation and barring senators from forcing clerks to read aloud the complete text of a bill.
The truce is certainly better than nothing, but it's still unclear whether it will have any lasting impact it could easily collapse if senators don't adapt their rigid agendas to improve cooperation. That happened in 2009 when, after making strong gains in the 2008 election, Democrats opened the floor to more amendments but were quickly frustrated by Republican opposition. The new House Republican majority promised an open floor but remains gridlocked by internecine conflict.
I am skeptical that the Senate will fix its internal problems and move on to America's problems. Much has been said about the political climate in D.C. over the past two years it's conformist, violent and perhaps irrevocably broken. I often maintain that people who follow American politics closely are either helplessly quixotic or helplessly masochistic. Yet there's reason for hope. The final days of the 111th Congress show that our representatives can accomplish significant amounts in punctuated bursts of activism.
Legislating should be simple: write a bill, debate amendments, vote and repeat. It's up to our senators to decide if they care more about their careers or their country, more about hearing their own voices or the dissenting voices of their peers. In this regard at least, the truce is a step in the right direction.
