How To Break the Ties That Bind Congress To the Lobbies and Agencies

...This would dissolve the closed alliances between committees, agencies, and lobbies...

...Representatives from union districts shoot for education and labor, Westerners for interior, farmers for'agriculture, and so on...

...It seems to me that the expertise we need in congressmen has to do with their ability to discover the facts they need to know-the ability to question the experts and draw from them the information they need-and to draft wise laws based on those facts...

...Congressmen generally obtain committee assignments by asking their party leaders for them, and with a little patience, tact, and applepolishing, they can pretty much get the ones they want...

...They become close friends who help one another stay in Washington in positions of reasonable power, which is the main life goal of most of them...

...Randomly assigned members would less likely be predisposed by personal desire or political interest to support the private pressure groups and government bureaucrats in their committees’ policy areas...

...To the extent that special knowledge is relevant, it can be supplied by a committee staff, half of whom should have long, fixed terms so they can provide for a continuity of expertise and half of whom should have no tenure at all, and provide for periodic injections of new experts with new ideas about the subject involved...

...Let each party simply place the names of its members of Congress into one hat, the party’s committee vacancies into another, and then draw names from hats until everybody has his assignment...

...I have a suggestion that will break up these relationships...

...The main arguments I can foresee against my proposal are that the random selection would deny congressmen the chance to use the expertise they have when they enter Congress and that the four-year limit would deny them the chance to develop any expertise while they’re there...

...An important side effect of this change might be that it would make far easier the lund of executive branch reorganization that Jimmy Carter envisions...

...If Jimmy Carter is serious about bringing under control the power of “the political and economic elite’’ he talked about in his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, encouraging this simple procedural reform would help him more than anything I can think of...

...To begin with, in order to prevent committees from being dominated by those with particular axes to grind, congressmen should be assigned committees not by choice, but literally by chance...

...It was, after all, in the 19th century, when the average Congress contained more new members than veterans, that the legislative branch was in fact the “first branch” of government...

...How To Break the Ties That Bind Congress To the Lobbies and Agencies by Michael Nelson One of the familiar facts of Washington life is the cozy relationship between a lobby and the executive agencies and congressional committees that affect its ,interests...

...Lobbyists give parties where high department officials (both political appointees and civil servants), Fongressmen, an$ key members of the congressional' staff mingle...

...The hidebound committee structure is now one of the greatest barriers to that reorganization, since committee members’ own status and power is so dependent on the continued size, wealth, and power of the agencies they are supposed to be overseeing...

...With the constraints of seniority gone, new members would have an incentive to develop and introduce fresh ideas...

...Expertise comes from the senior congressmen and those members of the staffs who have been able to keep themselves in good with the senior congressmen...

...Other advantages would follow...

...With seniority no longer a factor, committees could simply elect their chairmen...

...And the petty jurisdictional jealousies that keep, for example, energy and intelligence policy scattered among a dozen or so committees would disappear if congressmen had no permanent stake in promoting one committee over another...

...Then, to keep both committees and congressmen from ossification, legislators-including committee chairmenshould be reassigned no less than once every four years...

...The Department of Agriculture, the agriculturerelated committees and subcommittees, and the agribusiness lobby are perhaps the best known such seamless web...

...Unfortunately, it does not take care of the public...

...Instead of tough regulators of the agencies, the committees often become cheerleaders and salesmen for them...

...My point of attack is the congressional committee...

...The insufferable egotism of committee chairmen would be another unmourned casualty of a system that would turn them out frequently and without prejudice...

...With the present system, there are no tenured members of the committee staffs...

...And the cost of “buying” congressional support with favors or donations would be prohibitive, given the rapid turnover in membership...

...Fortunately, it is a problem that can be solved, and with surprising simplicity...

...They seldom see any wrong in the relationship: it takes care of them...

...They are almost always willing servants of the affected lobby...

...Therein lies the rub, for as you might expect, the ones they want are usually those that will put them in the best position to advance the special interests of their particular districts ('just when they ought to be advancing the broad national interest) and thus get them reelected...

...The result is a committee systemand'thus a Congress-that operates on the premise that good national policy on agriculture, education, energy, etc., is best made by those who owe their careers to farmers, teachers, oilmen, and other narrow interests...

...Michael Nelson is a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University...

...Getting reeducated to face new challenges every four years would help cure tired blood in congressmen and Congress alike...