Default crisis? Congress reaching an impasse? Solution: abolish mid-terms

Despite all of the excessively dramatized newscasts and hyperbolic rhetoric surrounding the debt talks, none of this is really news.  The fact that Congress and the President cannot come to an agreement comes as no surprise.  In fact, it would have been far more shocking if the Congress and President had come to a swift and amicable agreement over the national debt and budget months ago.

Why is this?  Because after President Obama and the Democrats took the White House, Senate, and House in 2008, the tides changed and the GOP took the House in 2010, leaving the opposition party in charge of the lower house.  In effect, the government is split, there is no ruling consensus, and the country is caught in a form of political gridlock.

Some see this as checks and balances at work; those individuals clearly fail to grasp the concept.  Checks and balances are institutional - that is, they are the embedded in the mechanisms and laws which govern interactions between the three branches of government.  Their role is not to ensure that a party, project, or policy is held back, but rather they are in place to ensure that no one branch - as an institution - oversteps its Constitutional bounds.

What we are now witnessing in these default crisis talks is a stalemate, not a check or a balance.  What is more, the stalemate is largely unnecessary.  It is simply there because we are now tolerating a government which is comprised of the outcomes of two separate elections trying to work together as one.  Often this may work, provided there is no great shift in voter turnout such as was seen between 2008 and 2010.  Here, however, the two adversarial parties are entrenched in two separate sides of one government, each attempting to lead as though they held a mandate from the people.  Arguably, they both do, albeit from different moments in time.

There is a solution, and it sits before us like the great big elephant in the room: end the two-year election cycle for the House of Representatives.

That's right.  There needs to be an end to the ridiculous gridlock, posturing, and business of politics, and by extending Representatives' terms and synchronizing their elections with those for the Presidency, all this and more could be achieved.

First, if Congressmen were up for election only at the same time as the President, there would be no confusion as to what the electorate is seeking.  The government as it would be comprised at the outcome of that election would be the government the people voted into office.  There would be no halfway turnarounds two years after the election, and there would be no confusion as to who holds the mandate of the people.  Neither the legislature nor the executive could claim to be in the right, and all members of the House and the President would know with which other elected officials they would need to work for the accomplishment of their goals.  The balance of power both within the legislative chambers and between Congress and the White House would be the balance voted for by the people.  Leaders in Congress and the President could then effectively move forward on legislation based upon that sound premise.

Second, an extension of Representatives' terms would strike a massive blow at the business of electoral politics, ending much of the posturing demonstrated by members such as Boehner and Cantor today.  In short, because Representatives would not always be in a perpetual election cycle as they are now, they would be able to actually sit down and develop policy to be shared with the Senate and to have signed by the President.  They would be veritable legislators, debating and drafting policy, rather than our current campaigners who are most often seeking the most opportune sound bite or photo op.

Of course, all the officials involved in debates such as that surrounding the current default crisis would still be politicians, and would always be looking at re-election.  That said, with longer terms and without the specter of mid-terms looming on the horizon, Representatives could focus their attention and energies on campaigning every one or two years out of four, rather than one or two years out of two.

It would be a bold move, but consider this in closing: 4 year House cycles, synchronized with Presidential elections, would simultaneously provide Representatives with more time to develop policy instead of campaign material, and eliminate the awkward mess of a potentially divided government after a mid-term election.  Again, it would be a bold shift, and it would likely not occur any time in the near future.  However, this reduction in election cycles is absolutely imperative for the development of a more efficient and effective government.