A thought on constitutional reform to reduce the likelihood of gridlock

It seems obvious that the government should operate and that the Congress should authorize the executive branch to borrow the money needed to implement the program that the Congress has required the executive to implement.

It seems obvious that fiscal policy should balance concerns for economic growth and employment with concerns for the debt. It seems obvious that our tax code is dysfunctional, being much too complicated for people to understand and being full of loopholes benefiting special interests. It seems obvious that the distribution of income and wealth is too skewed to favor a tiny minority of the country.

I believe that it makes sense for progressives and conservatives as well as people with middle of the road ideas to negotiate with each other, seeking to find some political solution that will draw on the good ideas from all sources and satisfice the concerns of most in order to move forward.

This is not happening.

It seems to me that there are two key problems: the way we elect members of the House of Representatives and the role of money in politics.

• Too many members of Congress are elected from districts that are safe for one or the other party. Candidates are more worried about challenges in the primaries from within their own parties than about challenges in the final from candidates of the other party, and as a result they tend to take more extreme positions. Too many people are excluded from voting, and too few people from the middle or the road ideologies vote. The situation has been made worse by recent weakening of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court.
• Elections are too expensive, and as a result politicians spend too much time and effort raising money. A relatively small number of rich people provide the majority of the funding for election campaigns. They and their legions of lobbyists wind up with too much influence on politics. The situation is worse due to the Supreme Court ruling that organisations have the same first amendment rights that people do, and the development of means by which the rich can buy political advertisements anonymously.

I think we need two new constitutional amendments, 

• one to assure voting rights and avoid gerrymandering
• the other to change campaign financing to reduce the dependency of politicians on the rich and recognize that the rights of citizens to political speech are different than those of organizations.

Perhaps then our representatives will negotiate in good faith.