New SCMC Recommendations Would Increase Congressional Capacity and Effectiveness
Today, the Select Committee for the Modernization of Congress passed a huge package of recommendations that help Congress increase its capacity, work more efficiently, and make its processes more deliberative.
Connecting to Congress has engaged with the SCMC since its creation in 2018, and has particularly supported the committee’s efforts to make it easier for Congress to partner with civil society groups and to make better use of digital technology to engage their constituents.
This new set of recommendations includes some long-needed, critical shifts that would improve Congress’ effectiveness. There are 6 that are particularly relevant to civic initiatives such as Connecting to Congress, which uses to digital technology in deliberative constituent engagement, but also the broader deliberative democracy and democratic reform network more broadly.
Remove constituent communications costs from Member office budgets and create a shared account for communications. Making communications a separate budget of its own will make it easier for offices to plan more constituent communication, including more modern modes such as online town halls or other digital engagement;
Provide Members and staff with training for debate and deliberation skills. There is a whole network of civil society organizations with existing resources that could train Members and staff to work more deliberatively.
Identify changes made to House operations due to the COVID 19 pandemic and determine what – if any – additional changes should be made. During COVID, a number of rule changes, administrative policies and ethics waivers provided the flexibility Members needed to handle the increased work and disruption caused by the pandemic, including some that made it easier for congressional offices to collaborate with outside research partners and civil society organizations. This progress should not be abandoned, but made permanent.
Increase capacity for policy staff, especially for Committees, policy support organizations and a restored Office of Technology Assessment. The SCMC has made other recommendations for reducing Congress’ technology backlog before, but a restored OTA dedicated to dealing with that in an ongoing way is vitally necessary in order not to backslide.
Reduce dysfunction in the annual budgeting process through the establishment of a congressionally-directed program that calls for transparency and accountability, and that supports meaningful and transformative investments in local communities across the United States. The program will harness the authority of Congress under Article One of the Constitution to appropriate federal dollars. Right now, individual citizens in any city or county have no direct way to advocate for targeted federal investment. What this recommendation is really about is creating a framework through which individuals in their cities and states could generate priorities for local investment that their Members of Congress could then advocate for federal funding. The most democratic method for such local decision making would be citizen participatory budgeting.
Staff pay should be delinked from Member pay and a new cap specific to staff should be established. While this wouldn’t improve constituent engagement and deliberation directly, by making it possible to pay staff more without taking the politically risky move of authorizing raises for Members themselves, it would enable offices to retain talented, experienced staff and preserve institutional knowledge. Right now, so much efficiency is lost through the furious churn of staff burnout and turnover that few offices ever attain enough bandwidth for internal policy deliberation, and the deep constituent engagement that should inform it. In our experience collaborating with Congressional staff, these are passionate, smart, and service-oriented individuals who do their best under amazing constraints— and our government, sadly, loses many of its most experienced and effective staff every year.
“In a bitterly divided, often dysfunctional Congress, the SCMC has been an underappreciated bright spot,” says Dr. Michael Neblo, director of the Connecting to Congress research initiative and the Institute for Democratic Engagement & Accountability at the Ohio State University. “The committee’s practical, effective, and bi-partisan approach to long needed reforms can serve as a model for how a modern legislature is supposed to work. Their recommendation will help the Congress itself, and ultimately the country, make improvements we all want to see.”