In one of the simplest yet more radical ideas of all: eliminate partisan seating in the Senate so that there is no more left-wing or right-wing construct.
These were just some of the ideas circulated among more than a dozen former members of the House and Senate who convened Thursday for a day-long session by the University of Pennsylvania’s Biden Center for Diplomacy & Global Engagement.
Seven Republicans and six Democrats spent hours brainstorming both the causes of — and how to fix — what all agreed has been an atrophying institution critical to national discourse. The most optimistic portions of the day came as the ex-lawmakers discussed how some minor changes that require no political risk could start to create better incentives for a more productive legislature.
The most pessimistic moments came as these retired politicians acknowledged that some outside forces, from the influence of money in elections to the polarized climate in which voters learn about Congress, are not going away anytime soon.
“I don’t think we can put the genie back in the bottle,” said Norm Coleman (Minn.), a former senator and onetime member of GOP leadership.
All of which leads to the depressing outlook they face when they try to encourage smart people to run for Congress. “When I try to recruit candidates, they look at me like I’m crazy,” said Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), who served two stints in the House totaling 32 years.
The sessions, billed as Fixing Congress, served as therapy for some of these ex-lawmakers. They shared their biggest gripes with life on Capitol Hill and told once-private tales of battles within their own party.
Including Cooper, there were 10 former House members in attendance: Barbara Comstock (R-Va.), Tom Davis (R-Va.), Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), Donna F. Edwards (D-Md.), Leonard Lance (R-N.J.), Andy Levin (D-Mich.), Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), Fred Upton (R-Mich.), and John Yarmuth (D-Ky.). Former senators Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) also attended.
The group skews heavily toward those types of lawmakers who had more centrist outlooks, came from swing districts or regularly served as bipartisan dealmakers even if they hailed from the more liberal or conservative flank of their caucuses.
The effort, which might grow to a session specifically on female lawmaker experiences and promises another session next year, came together through the work of Ezekiel Emanuel, a provost at Penn, and Steven Pearlstein, a George Mason University professor.
For the past few years, Emanuel, a former Obama administration health official, and Pearlstein, a former Washington Post columnist, have been teaching a course at Penn’s Capitol Hill offices titled How Washington Really Works.
Their most obvious discovery has been that, while the executive branch keeps on operating through new regulations and presidential orders, and the judicial branch slowly but surely processes the legal battles over those actions, Congress itself has been in sharp decline for more than a decade.
There have been spurts of legislative activity over the years, including a run of 2020-2022 bipartisan achievements on fighting the coronavirus pandemic, updating infrastructure, boosting semiconductor production, same-sex marriage and gun laws.
But that was preceded by a fallow decade of partisan brinkmanship that led to a few government shutdowns, hyperpartisan clashes over the Supreme Court and fruitless efforts on major issues like immigration.
The ex-lawmakers began their discussion with hopeful nods toward the House and…
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