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Time to change Congress

Daniel Korski

Wednesday, 19th November 2008

Ever since Hillary Clinton was first mooted as Barack Obama’s pick for Secretary of State, journalists have been analysing the New York senator’s options. One of the key reasons why she would want the job, they argue, is because she’s too junior to get a plum position in Congress – for example, chairing one of the powerful committees. If that is not a reason to reform Congress, I don’t know what is.

Let us just look at the rules. In Congress, the Senate Rules Committee determines an overall ranking of Senators, in which re-elected senators move up the list and newly elected senators come in below them. The Democrats rank the freshmen in the following order: former members of the House, former members of the Cabinet, and former governors.

That puts, for example, Bill Nelson of Florida, who served six House terms, and Maria Cantwell of Washington, who served one, ahead of Hilary Clinton, who ranked 36th out of 49 Democrats before the recent elections, and would for need to leapfrog a lot of people to become, for example, a committee chair. The way around this small matter of seniority is to establish a sub-committee and be asked to run it by the chair of the “mother” committee. But apparently when Clinton asked Edward Kennedy, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, to establish a subcommittee that she could lead she was rebuffed.

The final option –- the nuclear option, if you will –- is to try to unseat Harry Reid as Majority Leader. The Majority Leader is elected by Democrats in the Senate at the beginning of each Congress. But though there is a vigorous campaign for her to get the job, many law-makers would probably balk at upsetting the apple cart. I mean, if Senator Kennedy won’t make her a sub-committee chair he is unlikely to want to make her his boss.

As a result, one of the most popular women in American politics today is prevented from taking a prominent role in the legislature because of a Tammany Hall system. Arguably this would not matter if Congress was seen to be doing a good job. But it is not. A July survey of 1,016 adults found that 14% approve of the job Congress is doing. That is a half President Bush's record low 28%a approval rating, and the lowest congressional rating since Gallup first began asking the question in 1974.

The problems are not confined to the choice of congressional leaders, where seniority clearly trumps skill. They go to the heart of Congress’ work, especially when it comes to foreign policy. The bipartisan Project on National Security Reform showed in a recent report that the way Congress works, the way its committees are structured, creates more, not less, government inefficiency. Jurisdictional squabbling between committees, for example, caused a four-month delay in obtaining congressional approval for a police training program in Somalia in 1993 while earmarking limitations constrained USAID’s ability to respond proactively to the signing of a 1996 peace agreement between the government of the Philippines. Similar examples abound.

Whether or not Senator Clinton becomes America’s top diplomat, her candidacy has shown that President Elect Obama cannot afford only to bring change to the White House, but needs to instigate change down the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, in Congress, too.