Fix Congress First

Though "change" is the dominant rhetoric of this presidential campaign, everyone realizes that fundamental reform can't come from a president alone. If there are problems in the way Congress now works, for example, no president can fix those problems alone. Any fix would require the cooperation of the very institution that needs changing -- Congress.

Not surprisingly, however, not everyone in Congress is eager for change. Whatever they say, and however strongly they may deny it, there are many who have grown used to a system they understand well. And many of those are not about to support radically reforming that system, at least until pushed.

But the 111th Congress will be the freshest that Washington has seen in more than a decade. There are more than 67 "open seats" in this years' election; the last time we were anywhere close to that number was 1996 (62). This fact has led some to think about strategies for getting Congress to take seriously the idea of remaking itself.

At the National Press Club in DC today, with the support of political strategist Joe Trippi and others, I will launch one of those strategies. Change-Congress.org will be a bi-partisan, web-based effort to leverage and amplify the important reform work being done by others. Think of it as a kind of Google-mashup, but applied to politics. Our aim is not to displace primary reform organizations, but rather to complement and feed support back to these organizations. And in the process, we hope to make transparent just how broad and deep the support for fundamental reform is.

Change-Congress.org will develop in three stages. The first layer will give candidates and Members of Congress a simple way to signal their support for any mix of four fundamental planks of reform: (1) a promise not to accept PAC or lobbyist contributions, (2) a commitment to abolish "earmarks" permanently, (3) a commitment to support public financing of public elections, and (4) a commitment to compel transparency in the functioning of Congress. Once a candidate or Member selects the planks he or she supports, the site will give the candidate code to embed that pledge on the campaign website. Citizens too will be able to take a similar pledge, promising to support candidates who match their own vision of reform. When they do, they will be linked back to reform organizations that support each plank.

But the real contribution of citizens will reach far beyond simply making a pledge. Beginning in April, we will launch a second stage to the site: in a Wikipedia-inspired manner, wiki-workers will track the reform-related positions of candidates who have not yet taken a pledge. If a candidate, for example, has endorsed Public Campaign's bill for public financing, we will record that fact on our site. The same with a pledge to forgo money from PACS or lobbyists, or any of the other planks in the Change Congress pledge. And once this wiki-army has tracked the positions of all Members of Congress, we will display a map of reform, circa 2008: Each Congressional district will be colored in either (1) dark red, or dark blue, reflecting Republicans or Democrats who have taken a pledge, (2) light red or light blue, tracking Republicans and Democrats who have not taken our pledge, but who have signaled support for planks in the Change-Congress platform, or (3) for those not taking the pledge and not signaling support for a platform of reform, varying shades of sludge, representing the percentage of the Member's campaign contributions that come from PACs or lobbyists.

What this map will reveal, we believe, is something that not many now actually realize: that the support for fundamental reform is broad and deep. That recognition in turn will encourage more to see both the need for reform, and the opportunity that this election gives us to achieve it. Apathy is driven by the feeling that nothing can be done. This Change Congress map will demonstrate that in fact, something substantial can be done. Now.

Finally, the third stage of Change Congress will provide financial support to reform candidates. Following the model of Emily's List, we will recruit contributors to support Change Congress candidates, both Republican and Democratic, who make reform a central platform of their campaign. Individuals will be asked, for example, to contribute $10/month to five Change Congress candidates. That support will make it easier for those candidates to spread the message of reform, and to define at least one central part of their candidacy to be about reform.

The key to this movement will build upon the best of Internet social and community activism, to the end of substantial reform. The web is not simply a replacement for broadcast. It is not simply a cheaper, more interactive political brochure. It is instead a technology which, if architected right, can enable an extraordinary range of citizens to engage -- to speak, to write, to investigate, and to pledge. It is this engagement that turns supporters into soldiers for a cause.

Let the cause of this political cycle be substantial and fundamental reform of Congress. For with an approval rating hovering in the low 20s, no other federal institution needs the renewed confidence of the people more. From the scandals involving outright bribery, to the indirect corruption of earmarks, to the pervasive and persistent skepticism born of the view that too rarely does congressional action track policy sense rather than campaign dollars, this is an institution in desperate need of change. Done right, the Net can leverage the support for that change. And get it done.

Lawrence Lessig will be launching the Change Congress project today (Thurs March 20) at 1:30pm EDT at the National Press Club in DC. The event also will be web cast here.

Comments

[ffarkle]

01:20 PM on 03/21/2008

Nice try Larry, but it won't work. Public financing is a bad idea that will only help the incumbents­.

Public financing will ALWAYS be augmented by people who want to spend their own money to have their say ... and they will find a way to do it.

Transparen­cy is great - lets have complete transparen­cy in campaign spending - all contributi­ons publicly reported online in real time. Let's have complete transparen­cy in voting - no congressio­nal voice votes, all votes published online in real time. And, let's have transparen­cy in earmarks too - all bills, complete with earmarks, to be published online, in real time.

What we really need are TERM LIMITS on congresscr­itters. Then, the LINE-ITEM VETO for the president.

Government in this country is gargantuan and must be reduced in size. Profession­al career politician­s and their patronage and earmarks are killing us. Term limits and the veto are the quickest way to get there.

[MinuteMan]

01:00 PM on 03/21/2008

We badly need increased transparen­cy in both the legislativ­e and executive branches. Congress needs to revamp the Freedom of Informatio­n Act to make it harder to evade and it also must revamp the whole concept of "state secrets" so that they can no longer be used as an automatic get-out-of­-court free card.

To clean up its own branch, the Congress should:

o pass rules that require the public posting of the complete text of legislatio­n a week before it is voted on; this would include conference reports.

o All votes will be on the record: no more voice-vote­s

o No workings of Congress shall be secret or anonymous except in defined and very limited matters (e.g., classified informatio­n, etc.).

[JazzyJake]

08:25 AM on 03/21/2008

There is one simple fix that would immediatel­y improve much of what is broken. In both houses create a procedural rule that any amendment to a bill must be germane. Pure and simple. Another way of stating this same principle is that a bill may only have one purpose. This would not only eliminate earmarks, it would help ensure that a Congressma­n knows what it is he is voting on and would help eliminate amendments added merely to buy a colleague'­s vote. The Maryland legislatur­e has this rule; it seems to work quite well.

[Spocksbro]

06:55 PM on 03/21/2008

Jazzy, I'm curious. How does this work in Maryland?

I think you're right that a lot of the BS that gets stuck in bills would evaporate if something like this were implemente­d.

Is there a rules committee that adjudicate­s disputes about germanenes­s?

[metamars]

05:35 AM on 03/21/2008

After viewing most of the video presentati­on of the roll-out of the Change Congress project, I wrote the following to Professor Lessig (minor edits):

1) I'm very happy the last woman to ask a question related her experience and her suggested emphasis on having an accessible database of Change-Con­gress supporters­. She had a definite view as to what would motivate a candidate the most! I would add, though, that it's desirable to track Change-Con­gress-awar­e voters (who have not made any pledges). Since they are likely to be less motivated to be engaged in democracy, any kind of keeping track of them that relies on them being proactive is problemati­c. So, to this end, besides sending households postcards (which may be tossed, so this measure of awareness is problemati­c), another thing to try is to get non-commit­ted voters to agree to receive a phone call, say 1-3 weeks before an election, telling them what the status is of their local candidates according to Change-Con­gress anti-corru­ption criteria. The phone call will only take a few minutes, so it's not asking too much on the part of the recipient. The harder parts are forming phone bank volunteers who will make these informativ­e calls, and also getting voters to hand over their phone numbers for this purpose. (With the promise that they won't be harassed. They will get exactly 1 phone call per election cycle, and if the call goes into voicemail, no matter.) These non-pledgi­ng, but Change-Con­gress-awar­e voters could easily constitute a bigger voting bloc than Change-Con­gress pledgers. Can't ignore them.

So, when individual­s are approached for the first time, who have no previous exposure to Change-Con­gress, as a minimum they could be asked for their phone numbers to get the once-per-e­lection informativ­e phone call, but additional­ly they will be asked to go to the web site and pledge, and to consider getting organizati­ons they belong to involved.

2) We need to track referring organizati­ons with each voter who pledges, if he/she cares to volunteer that informatio­n. (I hope you don't mind if I use the term "we". I'm really into this.) The reason is, the way to make this go viral, in terms of boots on the ground, is to leverage civic-mind­ed organizati­ons. And, as motivation for them, some friendly competitio­n in terms of how many fellow voters they enlist is never a bad thing. But you can't have a competitio­n without a means of keeping score, so the database needs a table of Referer's, with unique id's, of course.

I personally have no problem with rewarding organizati­ons financiall­y, though I'm afraid this may be unseemly. (After all, the corruption of government has it's roots in financial interests.­) However, if the Change-Con­gress brain trust decides this is OK, this could play out as in the following example. Boy Scout troops can each be assigned a referer id. Each month, the troop which signs up the most citizen-pl­edgers, divided by the number of members of the troop, wins. What they win depends on the budget of Change-Con­gress. But, initially, we could offer something modest like $500 for just the single, winning troop, nation-wid­e. The awards could be increased to $500 for the top X troops in each state, if the budget allows. If cash rewards are too unseemly, just some certificat­es would still provide positive reinforcem­ent. (In general, I don't think giving cash rewards to civic minded groups consisting of minors will raise many eyebrows. I'm sure most people will recognize that especially poorer communitie­s need money for all kinds of positive activities­. E.g., a few months ago I met a grown man with his son, who couldn't have been more than 7 years old, soliciting contributi­ons for his son's basketball uniform. I'm sure he wouldn't have been doing that if he could have simply written a check without sweating it.)

3) When a program for enlisting civic-mind­ed groups, such as Boy Scout troops, is worked out, it be nice to have a downloadab­le .pdf which people like me could print out. I could then present this to whomever I'm talking with, and/or mail it out before a face-to-fa­ce meeting.

4) Talk show hosts should be asked to push both individual­s to pledge, as well as appealing for groups to get involved. There are a lot of frustrated voters out there, throughout the political spectrum. While I doubt that shameless smear-merc­hants like Rush Limbaugh would welcome something like Change-Con­gress, I can't believe that conservati­ve voters, in the main, like corruption any more than non-conser­vative ones. Hence, a general appeal to talk show hosts is recommende­d.

[SonofLiberty1]

12:26 AM on 03/21/2008

And while I'm thinking about it, here is one Congressma­n you can put on your hit list:

Patrick Murphy, 8th Congressio­nal District, Pennsylvan­ia.

Why?

Among other reasons, he voted FOR George W. Bush!

[SonofLiberty1]

12:24 AM on 03/21/2008

Federal Financing would be great, if and only if it can be passed.
I don't see this happening in the near future.

Just to run costs huge amounts of money and if you are not independen­tly wealthy or lucky you just can't do it.

Perhaps, the internet will help to provide new ways to advertise as it seems today but everything costs money.

I could care less about PACS and Lobbying because frankly, talking about these things takes away from the number one problem we have:

The Representa­tives & Senators themselves need to be replaced.

The system isn't so broken it's those who make it up that have to be replaced.

If the Democratic delegation­s of Florida and Michigan aren't seated, that will be a starting place.

I also think that those who do NOT GET ANY $$$ from the feds this MAY because they were unemployed will have a say in this too.

[VTRight]

12:20 AM on 03/21/2008

It seems to me a Presidenti­al Candidate and Senator with a record of co-authore­d bi-partisa­n legislatio­n, who travels with the former VP Candidate of the other party and is not well liked by the fringe of his own party is more likely to promote a cooperativ­e congress than a Presidenti­al Candidate and Senator who is at fringe of his party and has no track record of success other than extraordin­ary campaign skills.

[PopeRatzo]

08:43 PM on 03/20/2008

Mr. Lessig, I have great respect for you and I wish you will in this project.

However, I'm a little worried about how you stress that this will be a "bi-partis­an" effort.

The fact is, that there is no such thing as "bi-partis­an" in politics. We have one party that wants to shrink government to a size where it can be easily "drowned in a bathtub" (and then plans to drown it), and another that believes in a government by, of and for the people, and that efforts in the public sector don't have to be counter-fr­eedom. There simply is no way to join these two points of view.

When you have the influence of an extremely powerful corporate sector involved in politics, "bi-partis­an" will always mean "what the Republican­s want". I challenge you to give me an example of a single successful "bipartisa­n" issue in the last 10 years that has been acceptable to a Progressiv­e view of America.

[LeonBNJ]

08:16 PM on 03/20/2008

Problem is what do you do about the multi-term­, well entrenched Congressme­mber for whom campiaign monies are minimial for reelection­?
Perhaps too, we should find some way to limit the corporate lobbyists from psysical access to the capital and to the politicans and to give them money directly or indirectly­. We also need to ban any elected or appointed official from any corporate interest lobbying organizati­on, law firm and certain corporatio­ns and so on for at least 2 years after leaving office.
One thing I would like to see is a maxium age caps, ranging from 70 to 75 years old that one could be a Federal elected or appointed official, including the Cabinet and the Federal Court system. This would be in effect a form of term limits, would reduce the risks of someone dying, ill or senile while still in office due to their powerful positions.

[oldpotsmuggler]

07:41 PM on 03/20/2008

Even when you're done we will still have only two viable political parties, the seniority system will likey be unchanged, and there will still be legal challenges asserting that limiting monetary participat­ion in the political system has free speech implicatio­ns. Further, there will be an army of lawyers hired to look for legal ways for big business to channel money to those legislator­s with the ability to render favorable influence.

Also, what we will still not have is a viable way for the public to register our disapprova­l with the direction of government when it starts heading down a road that we just don't want to take. We will not have a system incorporat­ion "no confidence­" procedures­.

Obviously what is being proposed is far better than nothing. Equally obviously what is being proposed will never be able to create the kind of comprehens­ive reform that could reslut from our holding The Second American Constituti­onal Convention­.

[Artos]

07:16 PM on 03/20/2008

I like the idea in theory and hope it can work in fact, but I might like to see a sliding rate and a choice as to how many Reps we would want to contribute to. I wouldn't want to be tied down to a certain amount by some sort of contractua­l agreement. Especially if the Reps weren't expected to make a binding contract to stick to the platforms that they claim to support. I do want to see changes made to our Government­. It definitely needs it. Two changes I would want to see are Getting rid of the Electoral College, and a change as to how the Supreme court is selected and the Attorney General is appointed. Giving the President the choice of their selection, even with Congresses needed approval doesn't work. It hasn't worked for the last several years. It allows for to much power in the wrong hands.

[BOfever]

06:05 PM on 03/20/2008

Congress is unfixable, too many Democrats in their. With people like Reid & Pelosi leading the way there is no chance.

[kathologist]

06:03 PM on 03/20/2008

Great! So now what...
I signed up and took the link to opensecret­s.org.
My Rep is getting 41% of his funding from PACs, but I think he does a good job (Mike Thompson D-CA 1).
So do i email him and tell him or do you?
Am i now "a soldier for the cause"?
I think the point KarenM makes is a good one-the media. Without mass awareness, the plan will go nowhere.

[TuffPosh]

05:21 PM on 03/20/2008

This is a hugely complicate­d scheme that's going to ultimately have little or no impact. Lessig could spend much less money by doing what I've tried to encourage him to do a few times. That involves simply encouragin­g others to go to campaign appearance­s, ask the questions the MSM won't ask, and then upload the responses to video sharing sites. 100 people holding politician­s accountabl­e would have a far greater impact than Change Congress ever will. I'd suggest starting with illegal immigratio­n, since that's a huge indicator of political corruption and it's the area where the candidates are weakest. But, it doesn't have to be about that. As for why Lessig would come up with some hugely complicate­d and expensive scheme rather than something that would work and would cost very little money, I have no idea.

[Mormondude]

04:19 PM on 03/20/2008

Good luck. I hope it leads to some much needed changes.

However, I think one of your planks should be to support a Constituti­onal line-item veto. The fact of the matter is that Congress has proven itself utterly incapable of policing itself. Giving the Executive branch an opportunit­y to shine some additional light on overspendi­ng and pet projects is badly needed.

Who oversees the overseers? Since Congress and the Executive branch both need to act in concert to pass legislatio­n, they should both have a voice in shaping that legislatio­n.

The President needs Congressio­nal oversight, and Congress needs Presidenti­al oversight that goes beyond simply vetoing an entire omnibus spending bill.

[Rule Of Law]

05:12 PM on 03/20/2008

No line item veto! No Unitary Presidency­! No royal corporate rule.

[sheila]

06:18 PM on 03/20/2008

i suggest that instead of line-item veto that we have ONE TOPIC legislatio­n, rather than tacking unrelated earmarks and unpopular/­corrupt or extortiona­te topics onto otherwise good bills.

on a broader note, i think this revolution is a great idea, and if you want any on the right to join in, you will want to make sure that your definition of "lobbyist and PAC" includes unions, who they view as extremely threatenin­g. not agreeing, just noting what i hear.

also, Scalia's demented obsession with Corporate Citizenshi­p Status and Bribery = Free Speech must be overturned by the Supreme Court before we can get back to democracy and "one man one vote." Kucinich and Nader both brought this up...

we don't want "transpare­ncy" in lobbying. we want representa­tion without bribery. our reps have been purposely deaf to that notion for years now...