The topic of this episode is, “What’s wrong with Congress?”
I can’t recall the last time I met someone who said, “Congress is doing great. The first branch of government is getting things done and playing its central role in our Constitutional system.
Nope. Almost everyone who shares their feelings about Congress with me despairs of the state of our national legislature. They think that it is playing second or third fiddle to the president and the courts.
So what’s wrong with Congress? And are things as bad on Capitol Hill as we are told?
Usually on this podcast I have a guest who answers my questions. But this time around I am going to share my own thoughts. So let me give you my top line conclusion before I share my thoughts:
Yes, Congress has some real problems. But it is not a hopeless case; nor is it as bad as it seems. Moreover, legislators, Hill staff, and we the people can improve Congress and revive representative government. We really can.
Kevin Kosar:
Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution, and few Americans think well of it. But Congress is essential to our republic. It is a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be.
And that is why we are here: to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I am your host, Kevin Kosar, and I’m a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC.
So let’s start with the bad news about Congress.
The 119th Congress returned to the U.S. Capitol recently. They have an immense amount of work to get done, policy matters that they should have addressed last year.
Top on the list is completing the federal budget process for the current fiscal year, which began on October 1. It has passed only six of the 12 spending bills. The remaining half-dozen spending laws are funded by a continuing resolution that expires on February 1.
Yes, you read that correctly. The country is flirting with another federal government shutdown only a few months after it endured a 43-day shutdown.
This is to say nothing of the habit of Congress standing idle as President Donald J. Trump has usurped legislative authority by establishing tariffs, engaging in military actions against Iran, Yemen, and Venezuela, and withheld congressionally appropriated money on education and foreign aid programs. Trump, to be clear, is only the latest president who has been happy to unilaterally make policy by “pen and phone” as former chief executive Barack H. Obama pithily put it.
And speaking of tariffs, the Supreme Court is poised to decide the constitutionality and legality of Trump’s actions. This is only the latest major policy issue that should be decided by the people ending up in the hands of the third branch of government. Immigration, Internet regulation, environmental policies, oceanic fishing regulations—all these matters that properly would be decided by Congress have ended up in the federal courts.
James Madison famously warned in Federalist 48 that in republics the “legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity, and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.” Legislators are lawmakers and possess the power of taxation, two preeminent governance powers. Yet for decades we have seen Congress give up authority and not do the things it was built to do.
Why? What’s wrong with Congress?
How dysfunctional is Congress?
Certainly, John Q. and Jane Q. Public are not much impressed by our nation’s legislature. A mere 15 percent of individuals surveyed by Gallup in autumn of 2025 approved of “the way Congress is handling its job.” Some 79 percent of respondents disapproved of the national legislature’s performance. This is no mere blip; public approval of Congress has hovered between 10 and 30 percent for 20 years.
The public is not utterly wrong in feeling there are no heroes on Capitol Hill. Legislators are increasingly passive. Indeed, one need only look at the slow death of the presidential veto. Congress used to treat presidents as no more than equals and sometimes as a lesser branch of government. The House of Representatives and Senate alike would deliver unwelcome legislation to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
For example, Congress regularly sent President James E. Carter legislation he found disagreeable. Sometimes he begrudgingly acquiesced and signed the bills. But in 31 instances over his four-year term he vetoed bills sent to him by a Congress that was controlled by his own party.
Carter, mind you, was the norm not the outlier. His successor President Ronald W. Reagan issued 78 vetoes over eight years. Subsequently President George H.W. Bush and William J. Clinton, vetoed 44 and 37 bills. Since then the past five presidents over the past 25 years have returned to Congress a mere 47 bills. Plainly it is not because Congress is producing bills that are inherently more agreeable. Instead, they tend to withhold bills unless the president signals he will sign them.
Yet, the public’s view is excessively jaundiced. It is not as if Congress is doing nothing. The 118th Congress, which was racked by a lengthy fight over who would get to be Speaker and myriad partisan disputes, nonetheless enacted nearly 300 laws comprising 4,500 pages of text. The current Congress, which spent months out of session, nonetheless has enacted 60 laws. Yes, some of these statutes are not especially substantive. The “Miracle on Ice Congressional Gold Medal Act” awards Congressional Gold Medals to the members of the 1980 U.S. Olympic men’s ice hockey team.
But most of the laws that Congress made were substantive. The very first bill they passed toughened law enforcement against illegal immigrants arrested for crimes (the Laken Riley Act). Legislators created or amended policies affecting national defense, rural public schools, and fentanyl trafficking. Congress also cut $9.4 billion in federal spending on foreign policy programs and public broadcasting.
The average American, however, has heard very little about any of these achievements. What little content they consume about Congress heavily focuses on conflict. “What bleeds reads” is the old saying in journalism, and few reporters dare to turn in feel-good stories about Congress to their editors. Reporters and editors presume articles about bipartisan agreement in Congress and competent policymaking are uninteresting to most Americans and will not get many clicks online. (Unfortunately, this assessment is mostly accurate and has been for a long time.)
Or Americans see lots of pieces about the most colorful personalities within the two chambers. Thus, more Americans know Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana than Sen. John Boozman, a fellow Republican from neighboring Arkansas. Both are solid legislators, yet Kennedy is great grist for the media because of his wisecracks; Sen. Bozeman is more staid and consequently draws fewer reporters and social media attention. Similarly, far more stories have been published about bomb-throwers Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Green (R-GA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) than about the top two members of the House appropriations committee, who have a big say in the spending of $7 trillion. By the way, they are Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), and they are not household names.
So Congress is both deeply dysfunctional and surprisingly functional. It frequently fails in some spectacularly obvious ways that are readily visible to voters (e.g., budgeting), and Congress does valuable things that are nearly invisible to Americans (e.g., the Veterans’ Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act of 2025).
This apparent antinomy can be made cognizable by conceiving of our national legislature as two somewhat Congresses. There is the Toxic Congress filled with raging partisans who trash talk one another, reflexively support or oppose whomever is president, and cannot pass policy on major issues, like immigration. Then there is the Secret Congress of lawmakers who move myriad bills and gently curb the executive branch’s errors and excesses. It is little noticed by reporters or the public.
Here I want to say a bit more about the two Congresses.
For the most part, the Secret Congress operates well. America’s diverse interests flow in and legislators respond by forming both expected alliances and strange bedfellows. Certainly, not every bipartisan legislation advanced is wise policy. But the Secret Congress generally gets things done. Its troubles stem from the dysfunction of the Toxic Congress, which stokes partisanship and squanders legislators’ time and resources on toxic politicking.
The troubles of the Toxic Congress are manifold and largely flow from political polarization, inadequate congressional capacity, and bad electoral incentives.
Partly, they stem from political polarization. There has been some demographic self-sortation amongst the American public. Concurrently, the media has fragmented and increasingly packages the news in ways that foments outrage and exaggerates the perception of differences amongst Americans. Fox News regularly publishes pieces about crazed leftists and MSNBC declares the right has unleashed facism. That the old journalism line between news and opinion pieces is gone goes without saying. Unsurprisingly, these differences and perceived differences amongst voters flows into Congress.
The Toxic Congress’s dismal behavior also flows from the sorry state of Congress as an institution. Like any other organization or entity, Congress’s performance is affected by its capacity—its people, internal structures and processes, and technology.
By all accounts, Congress’s capacity is inadequate. A 2024 survey of senior congressional staff found that half of them thought the legislature’s capacity to do its work was inadequate. The House has fewer committee staff and nonpartisan legislative branch support agency employees than in the 1980s, and there are significant gaps in legislative staff understanding of governance issues.
The legislative process has devolved from an orderly, predictable set of steps into an incoherent mess of backroom dealing that makes it inordinately difficult for individual legislators to move bills to a floor vote. That the chamber has a rule that empowers the Speaker of the House to unilaterally shutdown the people’s house for multiple weeks, as occurred in autumn of 2025 is symptomatic.
And this is to say nothing of the frozen-in-amber aspects of the House’s structure and operations. Consider committee hearings. Conducted properly legislators would come away better understanding day-to-day aspects of policy implementation and agency officials would depart with a better appreciation for how Congress understands the law to require. Collaboratively they could work on changes to improve policy. But no. Instead, Congress holds hearings in an age-old format wherein legislators sit on a dais, give speeches, and then allow witnesses to speak for a few minutes before peppering them with questions. Conversation is almost entirely absent.
Not to be understated is the extent to which the Toxic Congress’s dysfunction is a product of bad electoral incentives. Congressional elections mostly feature preliminary elections run by political parties followed by a general election of the two winners of the primaries. The candidates compete for a single seat and voters may select only one candidate. Whomever gets the most votes wins even if their vote tally does not amount to a majority.
On average fewer than one-quarter of eligible voters cast votes in primaries. Americans who do participate tend to be party activists, single-issue voters, and otherwise not the average voter. Interest groups understand that they can get a great bang for their bucks by putting dollars behind primary candidates who will do their bidding. So too dark money groups, who often pay for massive advertising campaigns to bolster or sully candidates.
All told, it is not the optimal hiring process for selecting someone to do the difficult job of senator or representative. Our congressional elections weed out quality candidates, elevate partisan bombthrowers, and discourage bipartisan problem-solving on complex national issues. It incentivizes many of the worst behaviors of the Toxic Congress.
Matters are made worse due to the fact that every two years party control of the Senate or House (or both) are up for grabs. When Democrats are in the majority, they will do everything they can to make Republicans look terrible, and Republicans will reflexively oppose Democrats on signature issues. The same happens when the GOP holds power. The desire to win the next election, in short, discourages each side from working together on matters at the top of voters’ minds and sharing credit for success.
So there you have it: What’s wrong with Congress? My answer is that it has a Toxic Congress within it, that is fueled by polarization, hobbled by insufficient congressional capacity, and perverted by bad electoral incentives and intense partisan competition.
It’s a mess, but it is not an irredeemable situation. We’re not doomed to have this forever.
Our national legislature’s split into a functional Secret Congress and a dysfunctional Toxic Congress is a recent development in our political history and a deviation from the norm. It does not have to be this way.
Congress can reform itself. Article I of the U.S. Constitution gives our national legislature near plenary authority to organize itself, design its workflows, and fund its operations.
Throughout its history Congress has come together to redesign itself so that it can better discharge its duties. In both the 1940s and early 1970s Congress undertook major overhauls of the legislative branch. Legislators in both instances had become embarrassed at how little power they were wielding and made a collective effort to take back lawmaking authority that had flowed to the executive and judicial branches.
In recent years a Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress and a Subcommittee on Congressional Modernization and Innovation have pushed forward various internal upgrades. For example the House has started utilizing artificial intelligence to help legislators and their staff to more rapidly digest and understand complex policy matters. The chamber also has enacted various changes to lower the turnover of staff, whose departures leave Capitol Hill heavily dependent on inexperienced twenty-something year olds. These are positive developments.
But it is going to take a lot more work to address the dysfunctions of the Toxic Congress, and Americans cannot treat this as Congress’s work alone. “We the people” need to push Democrats and Republicans to reform the First Branch by contacting legislators and telling them to reform Congress. More of us need to show up at candidate forums and raise this issue and then vote for the candidates who commit to working on it.
Americans also should push their home states to adopt electoral systems that better incentivize legislators to carry out their constitutional duties. Innovations such as instant runoff jungle primaries that pit candidates from all parties to compete with one another in a single election can goad legislators to govern beyond the activists on the far right and far left.
So, a choice is before us: we can enact reforms to improve the performance of our national legislature, or we can shrug and do nothing. Both paths will give Americans the representative government they deserve.
Editor’s note: This podcast is based upon the essay, “What’s wrong with Congress?”, which was written by Kevin R.Kosar and published by The Public Discourse.
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