Can Congress Cope With The Communications Age?

The communications revolution has presented Congress with an ironic problem: how to ensure that messages to and from constituents get heard. Former Congressman Lee Hamilton wonders, "Can Congress Cope With The Communications Age?"

When I first came to Congress in the 1960s, dialogue between members of Congress and their constituents was straightforward. Every so often, a lawmaker would get interviewed on radio or television. Many sent monthly newsletters to the folks back home. They responded to letters, fielded and made telephone calls, and met as often as possible with the people who had sent them to Washington. It was by no means a perfect system — unless they made extraordinary efforts, legislators were often in touch with a smaller cross-section of the population than they should have been — but it worked tolerably well and was readily managed.

Today, something very like the opposite situation prevails: lawmakers are deluged by e-mail messages from constituents and grassroots lobbying campaigns; they can be in touch with millions of people at the press of a "send" button or via a quick upload to YouTube; they can blog about their experiences on the floor of the House, hold videoconferences or telephone town meetings with people back home, and Twitter their thoughts to followers any time of the day or night.

The technology allowing communications between ordinary Americans and their elected representatives, in other words, is superb. Yet for all the words that flow back and forth between Capitol Hill and the country at large, it's not at all clear how much actual dialogue is taking place.

Part of this is a function of sheer volume. As the Congressional Management Foundation wrote in a 2008 report after surveying ordinary citizens and lawmakers and their staffs about their use of the Internet, "[T]echnological developments have been so rapid that neither citizens and the organizers of grassroots advocacy campaigns (the senders) nor congressional offices (the receivers) have learned to use it in ways that facilitate truly effective communications between citizens and Members of Congress. As a result, while more messages are being sent to Congress, it seems less actual communication is occurring."

The survey found that no one is happy with the situation: Hill staffers feel overwhelmed, while almost half the people who wrote to Congress and received a reply were dissatisfied with the response and almost two-thirds believed their representatives "were not interested in what they have to say."

Let's be clear about what's at stake here. A representative democracy depends on the give-and-take between lawmakers and those they represent. When that discourse breaks down — whether it's because high-rolling campaign donors drown out ordinary voters, or because changing technology overwhelms the ability of congressional offices to understand and represent public sentiment adequately — then it threatens the legitimacy of the system.

This presents a true challenge for Congress. Where the White House under President Obama has shown that it can use the Internet and social networking tools to mobilize a political base, it is largely a one-way street; no one expects a quick reply from the President to a letter or a text message. Congress is different. It is the tribune of the American people and we treat it accordingly: we not only expect two-way communications, we need them. That's how the system is supposed to work.

In this period of transition to the new technologies, there are some promising signs. A few members of Congress have learned to make effective use of blogs, Facebook and even Twitter to stay in touch with constituents; the House and Senate both have channels on YouTube now, and though they're mostly filled with the equivalent of video press releases, I have no doubt that legislators will figure out more compelling ways to use them. Meanwhile, the Congressional Management Foundation, after a decade of study, is working to convene congressional staff and grassroots advocates to develop ways to aggregate, verify, and manage online communications, so that Capitol Hill doesn't find itself so engulfed by citizens' messages that it tunes them out.

In the end, adapting to new communications technology will require work on both sides of the equation. Members of Congress will need to develop the tools that allow them to manage immense volumes of "mail," and let constituents know the best and most effective ways of passing along their thoughts. Voters who want to have an impact will need to pay attention, and not just assume that sending a quick email or filling out a form provided by their favorite advocacy group will command attention.

In the age of instant communications, in other words, it's not just the volume of words but the quality of the communication that matters.

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Even In An Economic Crisis, Follow The Money

Recently, Newsweek looked at Federal Election Commission records and made an intriguing discovery. The political action committees of five major recipients of federal bank bailout money, it found, made some $85,000 in campaign contributions in January and February, mostly to members of Congress sitting on the committees that oversee their industry.

Quite naturally, the magazine uncovered some squeamishness about the notion that taxpayer dollars meant to resolve the credit crisis are instead being used to influence Congress. "The last thing I want to do is wake up one morning and see our PAC check being burned on C-SPAN," one bank lobbyist said. Even so, some banks are making the contributions, and lawmakers are accepting them.

And why not? This is how business gets done in Washington. In an illuminating, full-page chart, The New York Times recently illustrated the ties between captains of finance and members of Congress in 2007-2008: PAC donations in the millions of dollars from various Wall Street firms, and a web of lines showing personal donations that snaked from their CEOs to various influential lawmakers.

The same could be done with other industries. When prescription drug coverage provisions come up in Congress, big pharmaceutical companies blanket the capital with their presence and their cash. When defense procurement issues come up, military contractors — and their money — are everywhere you turn. On any given issue, in other words, interests with money line up to show Congress how much they care.

In his new book on the chase for political cash, So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government, longtime Washington Post editor Robert Kaiser tells a story about the late John Stennis, the legendary Senator from Mississippi. In 1982, running for his seventh term, Stennis found himself in a tough race, and was urged by his consultants to raise money from the defense industry he oversaw from his perches on the Armed Services and Appropriations committees. "Would that be proper?" Stennis responded. "Sir, I hold life and death over those companies. I don't think it would be proper for me to take money from them."

By the time Senator Stennis uttered those words, Washington was already changing; expressing that sentiment today would immediately get you written off as hopelessly naïve. The political process runs on people and organized interests with money: politicians need it in order to get elected; donors use it to try to get favorable legislation. And everyone knows how the game is played: legislators raise money from the industries that come under the purview of their committees, while donors contribute to those who wield the most influence over their interests and don't waste their resources on politicians who are irrelevant.

It is not at all clear what we can do about this. I don't fault politicians for raising money to run for re-election. How do you fund a multi-million dollar campaign without such contributions? Yet whether they want to admit it or not, accepting that money puts them under some obligation to donors.
We cannot eliminate money in politics, if for no other reason than that doing so would threaten this nation's obligation to protect free speech. Those who contribute to campaigns have a right to do so to promote their interests. I do wonder, however, who contributes to the common good. We want to make sure we have a system that allows everyone — not just the well-heeled — to express their views to their representatives and have those views treated with equal consideration.

I think the chase for money — demeaning to both candidate and contributor — has gotten so far out of hand that it is beginning to threaten representative democracy itself. And though we still haven't figured out a cure, that's not a reason to stop trying to find one.

One step in the right direction is to ensure real-time transparency of donations, so that as they come in, the public can learn about them. This already happens in the U.S. House, where donations must be filed and made available electronically. Astoundingly, though, the Senate has been dragging its heels on even this modest reform — when what we really need goes further: a system that gives the voter, with the click of a few computer keys, instant access to charts that line up contributions to members with their votes and earmarks. This is only difficult politically, not technologically. If Congress wants to restore public confidence in its actions, that's the direction it needs to head.

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Is Congress Up To The Task Before It?

I arrived in Congress in 1965, just as President Lyndon Johnson's transformation of the U.S. government was getting under way. It was an extraordinary time, as LBJ sent up to Capitol Hill his proposals for Medicare, Medicaid, aid to elementary and secondary education, the Voting Rights Act, and a host of other bills that reshaped Washington and its place in the nation's life. The United States was a different country by the time Congress finished.

We are at a juncture that may be as far-reaching and no less dramatic. With the economic crisis as a backdrop, President Obama has sent to Capitol Hill a budget that places the government more thoroughly in American life than at any time in the past three decades, and eschews the anti-tax, anti-regulatory approach to public policy that has generally predominated in recent decades. The White House has put Congress on notice that it intends to reform the health-care system, make fundamental improvements to public education, and remake national energy policy. These changes are necessary, it contends, to keep the U.S. economy strong and prosperous.

There is an important difference in the approaches taken by the two presidents, Johnson and Obama. Enjoying the momentum built by his landslide victory in the 1964 elections, Johnson gave Congress specific proposals, like the Medicaid bill and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. He told Congress precisely what he wanted and then helped shape its response.

President Obama, on the other hand, has given Congress the goals he wants to pursue and the concepts he intends to support, then left it up to lawmakers to craft the fine print. As the New York Times put it recently, he is "taking a gamble in outsourcing the drafting of his agenda's details" to Congress.

This is not just a leap of faith on the President's part, however. Given the recent past, it also presents Congress with an exacting test of its ability to function effectively and produce policies that serve the American people well.

Congress has a history of not dealing well with the big issues. Now it's presented with a budget and a presidential agenda that offer no letup in big issues. Its challenge is two-fold: to act at a time of crisis and in an economy that's being reshaped by the day; and, despite the pressure to act quickly, to act in a manner that allows for the deliberation and consensus-building that uphold the democratic process.

How it will respond remains an open question. No sooner had the President's plans landed on Capitol Hill than legislators of both parties and powerful interest groups declared this or that provision badly flawed, seeming to reject the President's proposals without open-minded consideration and debate. Meanwhile, there is a strong likelihood that the leadership, as it has done far too often in recent years, will choose to deal with the issues before it by bundling them into omnibus legislation that permits very little deliberation and requires an up-or-down vote on a bill of gigantic size and complexity. This may be efficient, but it is hardly democratic.

Congress has been given an extraordinary opportunity to live up to its constitutional responsibilities and to function effectively in the national interest. While its public standing has been improving of late, it remains damaged by the perception its members care more about catering to donors, playing partisan games, and putting in a three- or four-day workweek than they do about tackling the nation's toughest challenges in a reasoned, comprehensive, and fair way.

Now, at a time when Americans are closely tuned in to events in Washington, Congress is being asked by the President to address a far-reaching agenda. It can do so by reviving the tradition of open debate that enlightens the American people and allows its members to weigh the questions before them as they develop consensus, or it can give in to its recent habits of procedural expediency and partisan tactics. The test for Congress is clear. Let's hope it chooses wisely.

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Conference Committees Fade, Democracy Suffers

In the official record, you'll find that the economic stimulus package recently passed by Congress was drawn up by a conference committee — a bipartisan group of House members and Senators who sat down together to wrangle over its fine print. In truth, nothing like this took place.

To be sure, a conference committee met, as is supposed to happen when legislation passed by the House differs from the version passed by the Senate. But it was more for show than for actual debate and deliberation.

Instead, like much legislation over the last decade and a half, the final version of the stimulus bill was pieced together behind closed doors by a handful of lawmakers. Then it was put to a vote before their colleagues could conceivably read the whole thing, let alone digest its implications. As Slate Magazine's John Dickerson put it, "the stimulus deal was so opaque even the people negotiating it weren't in on what was in it."

This may be par for the course in Washington now, but it's hard to argue our democracy has benefited as a result. Of all the various procedures developed by a maturing Congress over the last couple of centuries, conference committees were once seen as perhaps the most important step in passing legislation. They were where House members and senators, Democrats and Republicans, all came together to draft final language, strike compromises, deliberate face to face, and reach agreement on all aspects of a bill before sending a measure to the President.

In essence, they were where the very idea of representative democracy was put into practice, bringing regions, interests, ideologies, and attitudes toward legislating together in one room so they could find common ground.

But the conference committee appears to be dying. As Congressional Quarterly reported in January, there were 62 conference committees in 1993-94, and only 10 in 2007-8. Measures last year to reform electronic surveillance policy, bail out the finance industry, deal with the nation's foreclosure crisis, and fund the federal government all passed without a regular conference committee.

Instead, about 80 percent of laws now are made by one chamber of Congress simply adopting the version passed by the other. Others are so tightly controlled by the leadership that — as with the stimulus package — they're the result of a conference in name only. Because bills that come out of conference can only receive an up or down vote on the floor — there is no chance for amendment — this puts considerable power into the hands of the majority leadership. Especially when, as has happened from time to time, the majority leadership neglects to tell the minority that a conference committee is even meeting.

This certainly makes for expeditious legislating, but at the cost of deliberation, bicameralism, transparency, and basic fairness. It means that debate and compromise get short-circuited. It means that the approaches unique to each chamber — the Senate's tradition of careful rumination, the House's tendency to reflect the urgencies of the moment — have no chance to be balanced against one another. It means that it is almost impossible for ordinary lawmakers, let along the general public, to understand how a measure was put together and what's in it. And it means that most members, especially if they are in the minority party, get cut out of the process.

This trend is not just bad news for the basic values Congress is supposed to represent, it damages Congress' performance as well. Members learn a great deal about the art of legislating in a well-run conference committee. They have to bargain, accommodate one another's needs, listen carefully to arguments, try different approaches, search for consensus, reconcile differences. In a sense, conference committees offer the chance to hone the political arts and values that democracy requests of its elected officials.

By the same token, the move to bypass conference committees has allowed negotiations and the crafting of bills to take place solely within the majority party, under the auspices of the House speaker and the Senate majority leader. The result has been legislation that tends to be less comprehensive, less accommodating to the legitimate concerns of the other side, more partisan, and more irritating to those excluded from the process. A major reason for the frustration of legislators is that they feel left out of this decision-making process.

When rank-and-file members of Congress press for a return to "the regular order," they are talking in part about restoring the conference committee to its rightful place. And that is because they recognize that the institution they serve — and the Americans they represent — are being harmed by the leadership's willingness to sidestep the conference tradition in the name of power and convenience.

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Effective Oversight Requires Effective Press

These are extraordinary political and economic times, and even from a distance you can sense the animation on Capitol Hill as Congress debates President Obama's stimulus package, weighs his executive-branch appointments, and responds to his various initiatives.

You can feel the same intensity in the Washington press corps, as it works to keep a rapt public briefed on the ins and outs of the capital's daily workings. Yet as capable a job as it's doing right now, we should all be worried about what happens with the press in upcoming months.

I say this because reporters in Washington bear great responsibility in our democracy at the moment. Both Congress and the White House are in the hands of the same political party, which is almost certain to magnify an already troubling long-term trend: congressional deference to White House authority, especially on budgetary and foreign-policy issues. We saw the pernicious effect of this during the first six years of the previous administration, when a Republican Congress failed in its oversight role of a Republican president.

Now, although the policy particulars are different with a Democratic Congress and a Democratic president, the results could very well turn out the same: A Congress that defers to the president is, unfortunately, a Congress that is prone to be passive in the oversight of his administration, which can lead to ineffective government performance, unresponsive bureaucracy, and wasteful spending. A few legislators will conduct tough oversight, but the likelihood is high that most will not.

This means that the watchdogs of the press will be needed more than ever to delve into the federal government's nooks and crannies, analyze its performance, make sure that programs are implemented as intended, explore the shadows where officials often feel most comfortable operating, and make sure that both the American people and members of Congress understand what the government is doing in their name.

The public's dependence on the press, however, couldn't come at a more challenging time. Almost every day now brings word of newspaper cutbacks — in space for news, in reporters, and in the resources that can be devoted to research, investigation and reporting. News organizations from Gannett to the Tribune Company to Cox Communications have been laying off and shrinking, with the result that newspapers large and small are trimming or even closing their Washington bureaus, a trend that has been echoed at state capitols around the country.
Inevitably, this means that the breadth of news we can get about our governments, both federal and state, is shrinking, too.

This is not to say that the volume of political and policy news has shrunk — not with niche cable channels, the blogosphere, the websites of organizations devoted to particular issues, and a press corps that, despite its travails, remains determined to cover Washington. Nor do I mean to suggest that we don't get solid investigative work out of the DC press corps any longer. It was the Washington Post, for instance, that reported on the CIA's secret interrogation sites for suspected terrorists and on mismanagement at the Smithsonian Institution. It was The New York Times that broke the story about the government's warrantless wiretapping program.

And it was a politics-and-policy website, Talking Points Memo, that led the press corps in detailing the Justice Department's politically motivated firing of U.S. attorneys. Moreover, the not-for-profit effort, ProPublica, shows promise as a source of serious investigative reporting down the road.

Still, the federal government is immense, and over the years most of the press corps had already given up paying close, detailed attention to the inner workings of various departments, from Agriculture to Housing and Urban Development. This is the kind of coverage that requires patient digging, months of work, detailed knowledge of the arcana of federal policy, sophisticated databases, cultivation of sources and diligent followup of whistleblowers.

I have no doubt that a handful of media outlets will continue to devote time and resources to investigating big stories, but in an era when the very existence of newspapers is coming into question and a successful business model for sustaining potent news organizations hasn't yet emerged, will even they bother to assign reporters to sniff out problems in the administration of far-flung federal programs?

The plain truth is, representative democracy depends on robust oversight of the activities of federal officials. It ought to be part of the daily business of Congress, and the daily concern of the media. When one is politically disinclined to press as hard as it ought, and the other is financially hampered in its ability to do so, every American ought to be concerned.

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In Congress, First Impressions Matter

The start of a new Congress is a time of hope for great accomplishments. For new members, though, it is also when they lay the groundwork for their careers on Capitol Hill. New members face a lot of difficult decisions early on, and their political reputations — both in Washington and at home — will be shaped by how they make them.

This is partly because first impressions linger on Capitol Hill. Will a new member be a legislator or a limelight-seeking showboater? Will he or she focus on work inside Congress — drafting legislation and helping to shape strategy on policy — or on becoming known outside the institution? People in Congress watch one another closely, as does the press, and they begin to make judgments early; negative impressions can be very hard to overcome.

The challenge, of course, is that being an effective member of Congress requires an astounding variety of skills, which also have to be learned early on. So if you were just starting up on Capitol Hill, what should you be doing? There are two arenas to focus on — inside Congress, and back in the district — and here's my advice for both.

First, get to know your colleagues — both chambers, both parties. Attend social events, get together after work, do your best to be approachable and helpful. Personal relationships matter in Congress because they can help overcome ideological and political differences. You will be astounded by the number of times you ask your colleagues for help.

Second, learn the rules of parliamentary procedure, because you'll need them if you want to be effective. Get to know House or Senate officers, such as the parliamentarian — they can help enormously if you let them. And while you're studying, pay close attention to the ethics rules in your chamber and then follow them; you'll save yourself and your staff much heartburn later.

Third, work hard to get the best committee assignment you can for your district or state. Embrace its workload: attend meetings, be prepared, ask tough questions of witnesses, prepare amendments that will make legislation better. Let your colleagues know you are a serious legislator by picking an issue and championing it. Get to know as much as you possibly can about the bills you vote on — if you can get your colleagues coming to you for information or advice on bills, you're halfway to building a solid reputation.

You can go the rest of the way by being thoughtful toward your colleagues. So, fourth, don't be a know-it-all or have a solution for every problem, and be informed, rational and reasonable. Support your leadership when you can and tell them early when you can't. You have to be true to yourself and your district — your leaders expect that. But they don't like to be surprised by an unexpected vote against their position.

Fifth, hire an excellent staff. They are indispensable to your work. No matter how much you bone up on issues, there's always more to learn; they can help you. And if you want to win re-election, make sure you have top-notch aides for constituent service. A good staff will make you a better member of Congress.

Sixth, don't ever forget your constituents. You work for them. Without their support, you'll end up back home permanently.

So, seventh, you have to develop a strategy for communicating with them. A lot of Americans feel as though their representatives in Washington don't hear them and aren't interested — so the time-honored newsletter home isn't enough. Think about how you'll use the Web, social-networking tools, publicity, and your own visits to the district to reach as many people as possible and hear what they have to say. Travel home frequently: you simply cannot learn enough about your district or state, or get to know too many constituents.

Eighth, pick a few projects back home that have broad support, and begin working hard to get them approved. Small triumphs early build confidence and support.

Ninth, if you're in the House, plan now on how to get re-elected. Start raising money for your next campaign and think about staff and themes now. Two years is not a lot of time, and if you want to be effective in Congress, you'll need to win re-election. More than once.

Finally, there's one other constituency you need to keep in mind: your family. I've seen more than one promising political career founder on the rocks of domestic discord. Take some time off to be with your spouse and children and to recharge yourself. It may surprise you after all the fine treatment you get as you travel around Capitol Hill and your district, but the world will muddle by without you for a few days.

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Good Communication Anchors Our Democracy

Shortly before the turn of the year, I got a look at some polling numbers that brought me up short. They suggest that our representative democracy has a great deal of work to do.

Every year, the Center on Congress at Indiana University polls about a thousand people across the country to gauge their attitudes toward, and experiences with, members of Congress. Our most recent survey looked into the relationship between constituents and their representatives.

It found a few encouraging signs: Almost half the respondents had contacted their representatives in Washington during the past two years, for instance, while 58 percent had read their members' newsletters and two-thirds of those had found this material useful. So there is some life in the "dialogue" between key players in our representative democracy.

Yet there was also sobering news. A full 68 percent of the respondents indicated that they don't believe members of Congress care what people like them think. And when asked whom members of Congress listen to most carefully, they turned even more cynical. Only 10 percent thought members of Congress pay the closest attention to people back home; 38 percent indicated party leaders; and over half, 51 percent, said they're convinced members of Congress listen above all to lobbyists.

These are dismaying figures. The very heart of our democracy is the relationship between voters and the men and women who represent them. Our system depends on the ability of voters to convey to their representatives what's on their minds, on the ability of representatives to explain to voters the choices that confront them, and on the care with which each listens to what the other has to say.

If voters don't believe they're being listened to — or, just as important, if they don't trust what their representatives are telling them — then a key piece of our political system needs rebuilding.

What I find especially intriguing about these poll results is that members of Congress do spend a lot of time and effort trying to reach out to constituents. They maintain staffs devoted solely to carrying on the correspondence that goes naturally with the job; they send out newsletters and e-mails explaining their positions; they meet with constituents in Washington, and travel home frequently for open houses and community gatherings. Even so, this recent poll suggests that none of this is as effective as politicians would like to believe.

I suspect that a large part of this has to do with perception on both sides. Many House members — the federal representatives closest to the people — come from essentially uncompetitive districts. They really do not have to listen to all of their constituents, only to a small fraction of them; nor do they have to campaign hard every two years, giving them less incentive to work tirelessly to be in touch with every strand of thought within their district.

It's not that members deliberately ignore particular constituencies, but I know from experience that it's very easy to believe that you're meeting a lot of people as you travel around your district, when in fact you're actually just seeing the same people over and over again. You might visit a given community five or ten times over the course of a year, but if you look back and ask yourself whom you actually saw, you'll find it's often the same people: the news media, the party hierarchy and activists, the movers and shakers. You're not actually reaching deep into the community.

Similarly, many voters satisfy themselves with very limited exposure to their representatives: the occasional letter or e-mail; a glance at a newsletter; whatever they read in the press, see on the news, or hear about on talk radio. They don't take the extra steps to acquaint themselves with their representatives' votes or positions, much less seek out chances to talk with them face to face. So it becomes easy to buy into the national story line that Congress has grown distant from the people and is bought and paid for by special interests.

In brief, the quality of the dialogue between voter and representative is nowhere close to what it should be.

I am hopeful that new technology will eventually play a helpful role here, particularly for reaching younger voters. Members of Congress are — slowly — learning to make use of social networking sites, online communities such as Second Life, YouTube and other forms of new media to expand both their own outreach and the range of constituents with whom they can interact.

But fixing the problem will take time and effort by voters and elected officials alike. It will require a recognition that good communications takes more work than we'd thought — that members of Congress need to take the time to reach beyond the circles in which they usually travel, and that for a voter, being an active citizen means engaging one's representatives, not just passively hearing about them.

The payoff should be significant: more trust on both sides, more faith on the part of ordinary Americans that the system isn't stacked against them, and a more vibrant representative democracy.

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