Fixing Congress isn't a partisan idea. Quietly, a bipartisan group has been working on this.

The Long Game

I talked last week with Yuval Levin about the House Speaker fight and what lessons we might draw from it. This week I've got a different angle on the problems in Congress, and how they might be fixed.

House Republicans who blocked Kevin McCarthy’s ascension to the speakership repeated a mantra during the four-day leadership fight that ended after several rounds of dealmaking: Congress is “broken,” they said.

It can sound like a talking point, one that’s been recycled year after year to bash the other side. It's a reliable fundraising tactic.

But as the right-wing Republicans stood under the bright glare of the TV lights on the House floor each day, a dozen other House members sat scattered around the room, having just spent four years working to address some of the same problems.

It may be news to many Americans that it’s not a partisan idea to think Congress needs fixing. It’s not just ultraconservative Republicans who believe it’s necessary. Democrats do too.

Members of both parties even have some of the same ideas about how to do this — and finding consensus took years and happened away from the spotlight.

I spoke to the two congressman who ran a committee -- the Select Committee on Modernizing Congress -- that ended up issuing nearly 200 recommendations for how to fix Congress. So far, 45 have been fully implemented. Another 87 have been partially implemented.

Rep. Derek Kilmer is from Tacoma, Washington. He's a Democrat and he chaired the committee, after it was created in 2019. Rep. William Timmons was the top Republican on the panel. He's from northwest South Carolina, around Greenville and Spartanburg, which is one the more conservative parts of the state.

So a Democrat from the Seattle suburbs and a Republican from the deep red South somehow figured out how to work with one another. What's everyone else's excuse?

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