Public Health Intersection

I was recently at a meeting where one of my colleagues asked the group which they thought was more dysfunctional, congress or the state legislature.
In response, folks went around the table and shared their opinions about whether congress or the state legislature was more dysfunctional.
Had I served in either body, I might have been a bit concerned that no one challenged the core premise, i.e., that both bodies are dysfunctional.

There is certainly loads of recent evidence that neither body behaves in a businesslike fashion, with missed deadlines, huge deficits and seemingly no shared vision or goals.

It caused me to recall an article I read almost 40 years ago entitled, “The Ten Rules of Politics”. The only one of the ten I remember is, “There are no final decisions”.
Perhaps the intent of that rule was to point out that politics is a process, not a destination.
When I was a lobbyist, I found that rule to be a double edged sword, comforting me when I lost and reminding me when I won that victories are temporary.

Looking at both bodies from the outside though, one can sense how easy it is to get frustrated by both their inability to make decisions and, when made, the tendency for those decisions to lack staying power.

Here in California the plethora of initiatives and propositions is emblematic of the electorate’s impatience and frustration with the legislative process.

With congress, midterm elections seem to be the way of sending that message of impatience and frustration.

When it comes to budgeting, congress and legislatures risk losing the ability to make any budget decisions, as unless congress dramatically restructures the budget and budget process, any opportunity for discretionary spending will all but disappear due to entitlements and other structural challenges. In California, the electorate will continue to reduce discretionary spending through the initiative and proposition process.

Both bodies are at increasing risk of being viewed as irrelevant or simply theatre.
A mere distraction or toy as people who get their work done on time and have a vision for the future continue to find ways around the dysfunction.