Our Government is Failing Us. I am Complicit.
It’s a national fact that the US Congress is ineffective. We have a gaggle of Senators who do little more than “piddle twiddle and resolve” to quote John Adams from the musical 1776. Add to that a hoard of Representatives who spend more time sniping at each other than grappling with the real issues of our nation. Real issues — like immigration, economic inequality and gun control — get shouted about ad nauseum with no real interest in finding compromise or resolution. The fun and games, the media ops, the fund-raising opportunities, and keeping the base inflamed all favor rhetoric over concrete action.
It is a regional fact that Massachusetts state government is dysfunctional. You might think that a state with a top to bottom slate of true-blue elected officials would usher in a progressive utopia. Not so. Massachusetts State Legislature has the lowest ranking from Open States “based on the state’s inaccessibility, the state website’s consistent breakdowns, a lack of vote data, and deficiency in historical information…” Not only is the Massachusetts legislature obtuse, it is wildly ineffective. Over 7,000 bills are introduced in a typical two-year session, yet few are actually enacted. In fact, Massachusetts has the lowest “efficiency’ rate of any state — enacting only 0.41% of bills introduced. In the past few years, I have become more involved in Statehouse machinations, and can attest to the bedlam. There are usually two, three, or more bills dealing with essentially the same issue. Filing bills is good politics. Our elected officials can tout that they have filed a bill addressing this social issue or that economic disparity, without owning the reality that virtually every bill swirls into a committee black hole, never to become law. Last year, our legislature could barely even pass a budget. A common DC problem, but a ridiculous one for a wealthy state with a healthy tax base that is entirely controlled by one party.
So, if our government is failing us, why am I complicit? Because, like most Americans, even as I disdain our legislatures I love my own reps: Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Ed Markey, Representative Katherine Clark, State Senator Will Brownsberger, Stare Representative Steve Owens. Even though I am not a Democrat (all of them are) I feel represented by five people who channel my values.
I am not alone in thinking my government institutions are ineffective, even as I love my own peeps. While over 70% of Americans think Congress is doing a bad job (and the approval ratings of the Supreme Court and anyone as President are also plummeting), Americans approve of their own legislators by a margin of over 2 to 1.
This dichotomy is bad for our democracy because it skews the motivations of our politicians, for whom effective governance is not a condition of keeping their jobs, and it provides civic blinders to our citizens, who can pretend they have wonderful representatives even as every of them — red or blue — is engaged in increasingly polarized, often undemocratic government.
I wish I had a remedy for this sorry state. Alas, I do not. The path to more effective democratic government will require less partisanship, more compromise, more focus on the common good, less attention to special interests. Nothing in our USA today trends in that direction.
