My Congressman, Jerrold Nadler

As a new resident of the West Village, my congressperson switched from Yvette Clark to Jerrold Nadler. And it is exciting. The man is cool. While Yvette Clark tended to vote liberally, she did not take the lead on issues. Nadler sponsors bills, and they are awesome. Freedom to Choose Act, Support for Marriage Act and 40th Anniversary of Stonewall Act are all awesome.

An Alternative Form of Congress

I'd like to propose an alternate congressional structure, then spend a while talking about why:

Congress would consist of two parts, representatives, and policy-makers.

Representatives:

• Term: one year
• Can be re-elected? Yes, with no term limits
• Role: 1) Vote on policy. 2) Elect policy-makers 3) Inform policy-makers of issues
• Representatives (should) spend 75% of their time with constituents, and 25% of their time voting (ideally from their home town to prevent needless travel).
• To be clear, representatives do not make policy. They represent their constituents through voting, and by electing policy-makers.

Policy-Makers:

• Term: two years
• Can be re-elected? No.
• Role: 1) create policy, 2) vote on policy

For law to be passed, it needs to pass both the Policy-Makers and the Representatives.

The Ideal Representative:

The Representative's goal is to represent people, and knows she will most likely be re-elected if she does a good job representing her constituents. She will spend most of her time getting to know constituents, going to town-hall meetings and acting as a conduit between policy-proposals and her constituents. Her role exists because citizens do not have the time to immerse themselves in politics, but still want their views to be represented. Her two roles are voting on policy and electing policy-makers.

Why Representatives (and not Citizens) vote on Policy-makers:

A policy-maker's (PM's) job is arguably complex. While representatives and citizens come to the PM with problems (issues), the PM must come up with policy to solve the problem. This requires a lot of education in the field of policy-making, law, history and economics. A policy-maker need not be an amazing public speaker. In fact, an ideal policy-maker is most likely an academic, perhaps used to giving lecture to students, but not used to rhetoric. And this is a good thing. If a PM is elected based on their depth of knowledge, and papers published, how would an average citizen know how to choose? It would take time to digest the papers, and this is why the election falls onto the shoulders of the representatives.

The Ideal Policy-Maker:

The Policy-maker (PM) is only going to serve in this capacity once, and thusly their decisions will not be affected by thoughts of re-election. They were elected based on their ability to demonstrate a mastery of policy-making. This would most likely come in the form of academic papers published, interviews, books written, and general respect within their community.

The Election of Policy-Makers:

If we keep the method of choosing the number of representatives (which I'm not a fan of, but that's for another time), then even in larger states we have fewer than 60 representatives. The take-away is that potential policy-makers would have the opportunity to meet with each representative, give talks about their positions, and generally show that they have what it takes.

Who are Policy-Makers Answerable To?

If PMs can not be re-elected, what is to prevent corruption both in their policy-creation as well as their voting? There are a few answers to this. First, it is in the representatives interest to find candidates whose background suggests dignity and professionalism. Second, the PMs are only in office for two years. Third, this problem already exists for any second-term president, and any lame-duck congressman. Forth, the PMs were elected due to their prestige in their academic community. If some sort of corruption is found out, it would certainly get to the university, and to the community in general, and the many years of work to gain status in their community would be destroyed.

On The 17th Amendment:

In 1913 we ratified the 17th amendment which took the election of the Senate away from the state's government and into the state's populace. This was done for good reason. However, it should not be seen as a reason to object to the idea stated above, for a few reasons. Firstly, a senator need not be an expert at policy given today's system. They need to be an expert in rhetoric, and they need to be well funded. They need to focus on the will of the majority, because they are concerned with re-election. These are real problems that continuously lead to dubious policy. The system I mention above would be devoid of all of these problems.