House rules

The United States Congress had an approval rating of 8 percent last month. That’s a lower favorability rating than for polygamy. And for Richard Nixon during Watergate.

If there’s one thing upon which Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Independents or really anyone at all can agree, it’s that Congress sucks.

Clearly something needs to change. Sure, we could impeach all of them, remove every member from office and then replace them, but even that won’t prevent the same paralyzing issues from arising again.

Here are some things that might.

First, every member of both houses of Congress should be subject to term limits. Congress members spend far too much time fundraising and not nearly enough legislating. Their decisions are based on neither ideology nor pragmatism, but on what increases their chances of reelection. The idea of term restrictions has strong backing from the public. Seventy-five percent of Americans are in favor of instituting congressional term limits. If our representatives continue to focus more on how to maintain their positions of power than on how to solve problems, we will remain without solutions.

Second, every congressional candidate appearing on the ballot in any state should be required to pass a written U.S. citizenship test. As a whole, Americans are pathetically ignorant when it comes to how our government works, so it’s certainly not outrageous to request that those who run it be slightly more knowledgeable. Remember the kid in high school who asked questions like “Did the North or the South win the American Revolution?” Let’s keep him out of Congress.

Finally, senators and representatives should be required to demonstrate competence in the fields of the committees and subcommittees to which they are assigned. Huge decisions that determine whether or not proposed legislation gets traction are made at the committee level, a practice that is amazingly incompetent and tremendously dangerous in its current state.

Take the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, for example. Of the 38 members, only nine have any form of education or work experience in the sciences. And even one of those nine declared last year that evolution and the Big Bang theory were “lies straight from the pit of hell.” A former member, Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., argued women could not get pregnant from being raped.

Extreme ignorance and blatant disregard of accurate scientific information are simply unacceptable traits to find in a group that creates science and education policy in our country. Requiring a background in areas over which a member of Congress will have influence is a step toward informed, practical policies.

These suggestions are obviously large shifts in the process of government, but I believe they are ideas with merit. At least more merit than polygamy and Watergate.

­— sreddiga@indiana.edu