The retirements in Congress are continuing, and this time it’s two high-ranking Republicans. House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., and the Chairman of the Select Committee on China Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., announced they won’t seek reelection this fall. Both lawmakers both said dysfunction is the reason why.
Gallagher blamed career politicians.
“The Framers intended citizens to serve in Congress for a season and then return to their private lives,” Gallagher said in a statement. “Electoral politics was never supposed to be a career.”
Green echoed Gallagher’s statement about serving for a season.
“Our country — and our Congress — is broken beyond most means of repair,” Green said. “I have come to realize our fight is not here within Washington, our fight is with Washington.”
“The states have got to sue the heck out of Washington, D.C.,” Green told Straight Arrow News. “Washington, D.C., has gobbled up power from the states. The 10th Amendment is very clear: If it’s not enumerated in the Constitution, the federal government doesn’t own it.”
Partisanship is also an issue. Straight Arrow News spoke with lawmakers who agree Congress is dysfunctional, but they blame the opposing party when asked why.
“I think our biggest challenge is that our guys represent their districts,” Green said of Republicans. “On the other side of the aisle, they just vote their ideology. So they’re all the same lockstep, and that makes it really hard. We have to have bigger majorities. That’s the solution.”
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., who once ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, said said the dysfunction is “centered in the Republican Party.”
“What you’re seeing in the House is representative of the dysfunction in the Republican Party across the country,” Moulton said. “They don’t know how to deal with this crazy man, Donald Trump, who is a real national security risk to our country and yet is going to be nominated on their presidential ticket.”
Moulton, a veteran like Green, would like to see multiple changes to Congress and campaigning, including eliminating gerrymandering, getting money out of politics and getting rid of partisan primaries.
In an ideal world we need to make some constitutional structural changes to how Congress works, how members are elected. I mean, these are all reforms that would help. But in the meantime, we just need to get better leaders to run for Congress.
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass.
“In an ideal world we need to make some constitutional structural changes to how Congress works, how members are elected,” Moulton said. “I mean, these are all reforms that would help. But in the meantime, we just need to get better leaders to run for Congress.”
One newer member, Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., said Congress was designed to be dysfunctional by the Constitution’s framers.
“The problem is, as soon as you make it an efficient government it becomes overly powerful,” McCormick said. “We designed our government by the Constitution of the United States to be very inefficient on purpose so that it would never become more powerful than the people themselves. When I get frustrated, I have to remind myself, we are on purpose designed this way,”
There are 44 House lawmakers who are either not seeking reelection or seeking another office in November — 10% of the chamber.
