1. What’s Wrong with Congress?

2. Gerrymandering
• Gerrymandering is a form of redistricting in which electoral districts boundaries are
deliberately modified for electoral purposes, thereby producing a contorted or unusual
shape.
• negative: when used to allege that a party is gaining disproportionate power – packing
districts with hardcore support form one party, creating wasted votes.
• positive: producing a proportion of constituencies with an African-American or other
minority in the majority (these are then called "minority-majority districts").

3. Social Representation
• Although there has been a significant increase since the 1980s, women only
make up 16% of both houses of Congress.
• Representatives from ethnic minority backgrounds make up less than 7%
(though more in House than Senate due to redistricting)
• Many come from wealthy backgrounds with a large proportion of Senators
being former lawyers, and the average age of a Senator is 60 years old.

4. Pork barrel projects
• Members of
Congress often
earmark
bills, loading them
with amendments in
order to please the
‘folks back home’.
Alaska’s ‘Bridge to
Nowhere’, and the
pork added to
Obama’s 2009
Economic Stimulus
bill being chief
examples.

5. Committee Chairs
• Once overly
powerful, with many
past their ‘sell by
date’, chairs are now
subject to term limits
of 6 years. This has led
to:
• Loss of expertise
• Intra-party squabbles
• Musical chairs
• Presidential – chair
relationships are more
fluid.

6. Ethical Problems
Media focus on
scandals rather than
achievements:
• James Traficant jailed
for bribery
• Blagojevich expelled
for trying to sell
Obama’s Senate seat
and
• Gary Condit suspected
of unsolved murder.
This does much to
increase scepticism
associated with public
service in US politics.

7. Ineffective oversight of the executive
branch
• Academics suggest that it is
only when the executive and
legislature are controlled by
different parties that
scrutiny is truly effective. If
not, Congress is in danger of
turning from a watchdog into
a lapdog.
• But even under divided
government oversight often
looks more like personal
attacks and vindictiveness
(Clinton impeachment and
the Starr report) than
effective scrutiny of the
executive and nominations

8. Abuse of the filibuster
• In 6 years between 1995-2001
Clinton only got around 73% of
his judicial nominations
confirmed.
• For the first time (in 2003) the
minority party in the Senate
used the filibuster against
nominees that had already
gained a recommendatory
‘yes’ vote from the Senate
Judiciary Committee. Bush
said this was ‘an abdication of
constitutional responsibility’.