Rebuild Congress Initiative
Client: Rebuild Congress Initiative
Background
The toxic polarization that threatens the very fabric of the United States democracy extends across the political landscape and from citizens to Members of Congress. The Rebuild Congress Initiative (RCI), a project of Issue One, seeks to improve Congressional capacity as a deliberative body for addressing the nation’s problems and providing oversight for the executive and judicial branches of government.
Process
In the context of conducting an assessment, Susan Podziba and the RCI team met with more than 60 Members of Congress (MoC) and their staff members from across the political spectrum. They shared information about the constraints and dynamics that keep them from contributing their knowledge and expertise, on behalf of their constituents, to productive deliberations of policy solutions on national issues.
Susan prepared a process design that convened a cross partisan group of Members of Congress. The series of meetings included challenging MoCs to envision a more effective Congress and their roles helping to create such a transformation. Their discussions also included a review and analysis of rules established at the start of each Congress and a working draft for the future.
Result
The participating MoCs created relationships across political party boundaries and came to a shared understanding of the dynamics that have contributed to their divisions. They worked together to establish the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress (ModCom), which is composed of an even number of Democrats and Republicans. To date, ModCom has passed 195 recommendations, of which 42 have been fully implemented and 87 have been partially implemented. These actions make Congress more functional, transparent, and technologically adept.
