Topic: Campaign for Liberty
Simplifying Our U.S. Congress The prevailing style of management must undergo transformation. A system can not understand itself. The transformation requires a view from outside. (W. Edward Deming) We, the people, provide the outside view necessary to streamline and improve the quality of our congress and our nation. Our congress does not know itself.by Gary Wood
(conservative libertarian)
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Currently we are tired of the ineffective, "do-nothing" legislative branch. With a historically low approval ratings John McCain quipped, ""Look at the Congress, we're down to relatives and paid staffers." Yet I would guess many relatives aren't real happy with the performance either. Our cycle of disapproval has been building for decades yet we continue to find ourselves frustrated by our government and especially our congress. So many issues, so many party considerations, so many large legislative initiatives loaded with important laws and decisions, and little time to focus on the immediate needs of the constituents in between election cycles. Amazingly, performance seems to peak just prior to holiday shutdowns while little appears to get done most other times.
Our legislative branch must undergo transformation. It's growth and scope created over the past two centuries exploded into a complexity that chokes commonsense from governing. There was no one better at training companies for improvement than our founders and their teachers. The government is treated like any other company within the successful process improvement initiatives we the people can institute. Our view from the outside is not only a gripe nor merely armchair quarterbacking. Our view holds the critical answers to process improvement through careful analysis based on the data we have. We know its broken, together we can fix it and then keep it running efficiently.
In our nation we've got 51 initial branches of the government for consideration of immediate transformation. Our test branch resides in the federal level and once we adjust the processes there we can measure for effectiveness, adjust the changes and begin improving each of the state legislatures as well. With only 51 site locations and one test location our changes can be implemented at any time and there is plenty of time prior to January 2009. Organizationally our test location, the federal legislative branch, has expanded to create conflict in clarity and complexity in operation. Processes are bloated beyond management's ability to effectively produce quality results.
If the congress were a hose we have witnessed it go from a new, well flowing hose, to one of numerous kinks, leaks, and bare threads. We wouldn't water our lawn with a hose in such bad shape, we'd replace it. Hoses are fairly inexpensive and there's a lot less frustration involved in replacing the hose rather than attempting to continually repair it since we know a new leak and a new kink will just greet us immediately after the repair. There's no difference between the worn out hose and our worn out congress, we must replace it. Throwing out the current systems is far less expensive and less frustrating...it is not an emotional decision, it is merely logical.
Our goal is to improve the overall quality of production while minimizing the costs and delivering excellent customer service consistently. Since we've thrown out the current organizationally challenged system we are presented with a clean slate with which to build our improved congress upon. We've also got each other, years of data, tools for process improvement, and the power to make the changes. Some of the tools we possess are the three key boxes (soap, juror, and ballot) combined with our U.S. Constitution and Article V. To get the improvement process started here are my main initiatives for simplifying our congress and improving our government.
Initiative One: Alter the bills process
Three initial steps for accomplishing improvement in the way we handle legislative bills are provided by those far smarter than me, the friends of liberty at DownsizseDC.org. Although there are many great ideas provided for downsizing and simplifying our government the three we must do to initially rebuild our congressional business are as follows;
One Subject at a Time Act - One of the key process improvements is making it simpler for our elected representatives (employees) to filter the good legislation from the bad. Currently too much is presented in behemoth bills loaded down with difficult to sort out earmarks. Tossing this out and replacing it with a single subject at a time saves time, improves quality, and will deliver more consistent results to the customer (we the people). Each bill stands and falls on its own, period.
Read the Bills Act - Now that we've whittled the bills down in size there is no reason for our representatives not to actually read the bills they're voting on. Currently many bills are approved with very few actually reading them. In our analysis it was easy to see the mere size would cause reading every word to be cumbersome and bad for the process. Now that there's one subject under consideration the bills can be efficiently read, debated, and voted upon in a timely manner without sacrificing quality.
Enumerated Powers Act - Here's one even politicians can understand. Our Constitution makes identifying federal power real easy. It's spelled out in Article 1, Section 8 and there are only 20 of them. Remember, simplification is one of our fundamental goals for creating a congressional system our employees can handle. It's as true today as it was over 220 years ago. I borrow the following two quotes from DownsizeDC.org's website;
" This government is acknowledged by all, to be one of enumerated powers." -Chief Justice Marshall in McCulloch v. Maryland"
" We start with first principles. The Constitution creates a Federal Government of enumerated powers." -Chief Justice William Rehnquist in United States v. Lopez"
In drafting the single subject legislation the representatives (not some bureaucrat somewhere) must simply identify which of the 20 powers their subject is approved under. Talk about streamlined processes, if there is no enumerated power, in other words no authorization, crumple the bill up and shoot a three pointer into the waste basket, next subject please. What if it's a really good subject? Submit a request to add the authorization to our Constitution through the proper process. Once added submit the enumerated bill. Simple!
These three bills are already circulating. We only need to have enough of our representatives support the bills for passage through voting. What's the hold up? Remember that kinked up hose? One split and its the one with all the elite titles of nobility and precious water (productivity) is pouring out of it. Since we've replaced the hose the kink and split are gone.
Initiative Two: Eliminate middle management clog from the organization
A quick study of the current organization chart shows extensive layers of wasted management, along with the associated costs of maintaining the waste. The process worked the best when it was working with the least oversight for the employees. There are 535 current employees and nowhere is there a better example of the vision of too many chefs or too many chiefs and not enough Indians. We elect Indians, representatives whose focus must be to serve their term in congress by providing top-notch customer service and efficiency in protecting our constitution, producing make-sense legislation and providing check and balance oversight of the judiciary and executive branches.
Our original constitution provided a simple organization. The Senate would be supervised by the Vice President (keeps him out of trouble and easier to see) and the House is to be supervised by a Speaker of the House selected by the other employees. The new hose restores this flow while the kinks are no longer there. All other organization blocks are terminated; majority and minority positions, committee chair positions, party secretaries, and all connected blocks...no more whipping of our employees by outside agents. Simplification that improves the flow while helping employees clearly understand their responsibility which is to the people who hired them for their short-term contract of service in congress to produce the portion of the widgets their contract calls for.
Initiative Three: Fire any employee not willing to implement Initiatives One and Two
Perhaps the simplest initiative of the first three. Every two years 435 are up for review and this is the year of review, their contract can be renewed or terminated. The other 100 rotate reviews every six years. There's a new hiring process associated with firing under-performing workers. We no longer will negotiate through agents (political parties), we will only do direct hire recruitment. Candidates are free to consult with any agents while the employers will not register with any agent and will vote based on the direct interviewing responses delivered by the candidate. It is the responsibility of the owners to insure only the best are retained for any period of time beyond their first term of service and then no more than two direct terms so as to not adversely impact their private lives these citizens are rooted in.
To recap; there are only three simple initiatives necessary for seeing immediate improvement in the quality and performance of our congress. None of these contain specific issues. Issues, along with their resolution, are the widgets produced by congress. Even then what congress produces isn't the end widget as other processes are required to refine the final product. Today we're focused on improving the production portion of our congress. We'll begin to produce widgets once the process is improved. We'll also monitor the improvements through continuous process management by the new branch of federal government, the Citizen Oversight Branch.
One final note; throughout this essay the initiatives introduced have been categorized as simple. All are simple, however none will be easy. Connect with grassroots action, embrace education through conversation, stay involved and they will be easier...not easy, yet still simple.
Thanks for taking the time to visit Nolan Chart, do come back often and share the articles with others. The most important thing we can all restore is conversation regarding politics.
The views expressed in this
article are those of Gary Wood only and do not represent
the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Gary Wood is
solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an
employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
Posted By: Joel S. Hirschhorn
Date: 2008-08-18 07:38:01
Like so many other smart Americans, the author of this article presents sensible solutions to restore American democracy. But let us all remember that real fixes will only be made through constitutional amendments and that Congress will never propose the really good ones. These only have chance through an Article V convention of state delegates that the Founders anticipated we would need; learn all the facts at www.foavc.org.
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