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So YouTube recommended me this video "Why You Don't Want to Be in Congress" by Power Politics which I thought actually opened my mind a little about congress and the people elected to it. That's why I decided to re-state the arguments here to see what Mottizens think about it.
Background
I briefly searched up Power Politics, looks like it's a newish channel by Christian Fong, currently a professor at University of Michigan, and his bio states the usual litany of bachelors and PhDs from prestigious institutions, of note is that he did serve as an advisor to Mike Lee, Senator of Utah for a while. He also works with the Center for Effective Lawmaking which he draws many of his stats from. In other videos, he states that he wants to provide a non-partisan view into congress and how it works.
Intro
Fong first points out that the most effective legislators currently: Sam Graves (R-House) and Gary Peters (D-Senate) are both quitting. This is striking because 1) they have powerful positions which is supposed to incentivize their continual stay, 2) they're not that old relatively (62 and 67 respectively), and 3) they are likely to be re-elected. It's concerning to Fong because they are not the only ones quitting, and he's concerned the people who leaves are exactly the kind of legislators you would want to stay (experienced, connected, in their prime).
So what's going on? Fong's thesis: "Being a member of congress is not good of a job as most people think and certainly not as good as it was 60 years ago." Stats-wise, Fong points out that back between 1954 and 1964, for every 3 congressmen who retires, 1 dies. Now it's 21 retires before 1 dies. Members of congress used to want to stay in congress for as long as they could, so something must have changed.
Here are the 4 changes proposed by Fong:
1. Congressional elections are more expensive and contributions does not scale
Between 1952 and 2024, congressional spending on elections increased 41300% ($23M in 1952 vs $9.5B in 2024). Now, because of campaigning financing laws which cap individual contributions to $7000 per cycle, members of congress has to essentially have a second job being a telemarketer at night to go beg for money from rich people (cause how many people would donate $7000 to political campaigns?). Time spent on the phone is time not doing policy making, time not negotiating or making connections with fellow lawmakers, time not spent with family and friends to recharge, time not spent connecting with voters, etc.
Now I don't think this is accounted for inflation, and I do think the numbers are not direct comparisons from a quick glance (reported vs total). But, I do think this is a fair point. Much has been said about Singapore's model for high paying public officials. And though badly argued, but this is essentially the same point Mike Johnson makes when he defends members of congress trading stocks. There is also something to be said where we want people we elect to make laws to, well, focus on law-making and all the things that makes law-making easier and more successful.
On the other hand, congress can solve this. Just as much as congress kept complaining about "call time", seems to me like they stopped doing anything about campaign finance reform since 2002.
2. Congress travel requirements are grueling
It used to be that members of congress lived in Washington full time, now they are expected to fly home every weekend. But not all members of congress live in cities like NYC or LA with their multiple airports.
Fong cited this paper which "find that gaining an airport that provides a round-trip direct flight to Washington, DC, is associated with an approximately 1.6 percentage point increase in the probability that a member runs for reelection." Or in other words if you need to have a layover, you'll less likely to run for re-election. Travel for work sucks in general, and Fong also re-emphasize how this is likely to have a negative effect on family, spouses and children.
My thoughts about this is that it sucks, and I'm not sure how to solve this. Are members of congress from rural areas are just going to have the bad luck of having a higher chance of being burnt out? Can the relationship between the public and their representatives be changed so that a better balance can be found? I'm not sure.
3. Congress increasingly becomes more of a stage than a workplace
It used to be that campaigning and governing were two different seasons in a year, and governing was the longer season, now, it is a permanent campaign. Fong has a separate video about "A Congress of Kardashians", and how the system incentivizes disruptive behaviors that is annoying and completely unconducive to law-making. And well, it's encouraged by leadership of both parties. Just as leftists abhor the shenanigans of Majorie Taylor Greene, rightists decry the outbursts of Jasmine Crockett, but guess what, that's what goes viral, and that's what gets funding.
I don't have much thoughts about this at the moment
4. Members of congress are increasingly not making an impact to worth the sacrifices
Fong argues that the parliamentary processes are controlled so hard by party leaders that members of congress can't even get an amendment in. And if they're just there to put a thumbs up and thumbs down on bills agreed to be put to the floor by leadership, it's just not worth it to slog through point 1, 2, and 3.
My Conclusion
In some ways, I find renewed appreciation of US members of congress. It's certainly true that a great number of them are pretty dumb by my count. But quite possibly that for all of them there is a kernel of trying to do public good, or just pure narcissism, or pure naivety, or the promise of insider trading, to make life of a member of congress worth it. But then again, right now, narcissism, or pure naivety, or the promise of insider trading and the public good are not mutually exclusive. The question is still: what can be done about these pathologies of the job of a member of congress so that we get better lawmakers and better lawmaking?
PS: this ranking is pretty good: https://thelawmakers.org/find-representatives
Edit1: Mis-numbered the changes, added slight edit to sentence in intro explaining why Fong wants legislators like Sam Graves and Gary Peters to seek re-election
Edit2: emphasized and bolded Fong's thesis
Can't they just.... not do those things? Not to derail the discussion too far, but I've had similar thoughts about people who are suicidal due to optional aspects of their life such as their specific job. If you're willing to walk away from it all, why not first break all of the conventions and norms in the hope that it makes it better? What's the worst that can happen, you fail to get re-elected?
Advertise less. If you're a popular and well-established candidate who is likely to win, then you can probably win with a lot less time spend collecting donations and spending them advertising yourself. This reduces your chances of re-election in exchange for more time to either spend on yourself or on your real policy work.
Don't travel on the weekends. I assume this is based on wanting to meet and talk to people in your home district to either gather funds or votes and support. Again, this trades re-electibility for freedom.
Don't do that. In this case, you might lose support from your greater political party (and the endorsements), but if you make good policy that aligns with their goals they'll still likely vote for it.
Not really sure how to solve that, other than if you solve 1-3 then this is less of a big deal.
If you're willing to lose the job anyway, then you might as well do it ethically with lower chance of re-election since, worst case scenario, you don't get re-elected. I suppose if you're taking a more partisan perspective maybe running and losing to a candidate in the opposing party is worse than stepping down and being replaced by a newcomer from your own party. But I would think this would be made up for by actually being a better individual within your party while you have the opportunity.
I think the essence of this is a collective action problem, as hinted about in reason 3 and as pointed out by @MaiqTheTrue and @hydroacetylene, and in my view also a feedback loop problem based on how elections work. Let's assume a person as you said who is a member of congress who don't want to do too much traveling, who doesn't want to spend money on advertising, and want to focus their time and resources on lawmaking. Well, they are surrounded by people who are focused on getting re-elected (the stage), not on good lawmaking (the workplace). Their primary opponents are going to hammer them. The party won't put as much resources into them or just kinda ignore them (how many Rand Paul or Bernie Sanders can a political party really accommodate?). The opposing party can attack them on "being out of touch with the people in the district", "a dinosaur who dines on the public dime".
As @Shakes point out though, the incentives are still there for people to run for Congress. But my question after watching Fong's video would be: Are the crop of people currently running for Congress the kind we want to attract and retain in Congress?
My thesis, for what it’s worth is that this is a function of democracy and especially democratic systems with short terms of office. The way to get and keep office in any democratic system is to become really good at winning elections and doing the work is at best a sideline and at worst a problem. Having short election cycles makes this worse, as the time between elections isn’t long enough that a person can “get away” with doing the work. If you had elections once a generation, you’d have very little of this problem, because you get 20 years between campaigns and this is plenty of time to do a lot of good deep work for the people of your district or state or country without having to worry about whether or not the people are happy about it. If you were appointed, as we used to have governors appoint the senate, you’d never have to court public opinion, and therefore your ability to keep office relies on whether or not you impress the guy who appointed you or maybe those who can fire you. You can thus ignore public opinions and do what you believe is best for the country.
sounds to me like we need different states to experiment with different term durations. Federal politics would change significantly if house terms are 3 years, senate 9 years, and president 6 years.
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