- Hey, I'm Zora Bikangaga,
and I'm gonna state the most obvious thing
that I'm pretty positive everyone agrees with.
The United States Congress is the worst,
but we all know this,
and we can talk about how dysfunctional they are
until the cows come home back to their districts, yeah.
No, South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson, you lie.
Okay, you lie,
and I don't know about you guys,
but I'm getting tired of complaining
about the same old partisan posturing,
corporate (beeping) sucking cockamamie.
Okay, I want solutions.
I want fixes.
I want to never see this dumb (beeping) face again.
Obstructionist geriatric turtle from hell,
(upbeat instrumental music)
positive thoughts, solutions.
Here are seven practical ways
we could actually fix Congress.
(upbeat instrumental music)
First, let's talk about term length.
As you remember from civics class,
the House of Representatives
is the biggest chamber of Congress,
made up of 435 members,
all of which serve a term of only two years,
and most of that is spent fundraising
to get reelected and not do
what they were actually elected to do,
is to make laws that represent their constituents,
but instead they're just calling campaign donors
the entire time like, "Cash monies please?
"Can I have the cash monies?
"Can I have the monies please?
"Give me the monies."
So let's increase their term length to four years
so they can actually legislate.
With that said, we also need to put a cap
on those terms to five,
and then you're out.
Okay, that would give Representatives 20 years
and Senators a whopping 30
because their term length is six years,
which is plenty of time to make your mark
and then get the (beeping) out.
In fact, there are plenty of Congressmen
who have stuck around way too long,
like Senator Robert Byrd,
who filibustered the Civil Rights Act
of 1964 for 14 hours,
and then continued serving in the Senate
until, wait, 2010.
57 years?
Like are you serious?
I mean, this guy was like, "Oh, I'm that guy
"taking a stand for segregation,"
and then kept getting reelected until the iPhone 4.
Like, how?
Like, (beeping) this guy.
Congress isn't just about
stodgy old stalwarts stalling progress.
Okay, it's about the hundreds of congressional staffers
who are actually doing the nitty gritty work of lawmaking.
Let's make that a legit profession too.
Currently, congressional staffers are underpaid
and stretched way too thin,
and often the talented ones are lured away
by higher paying jobs in the private sector,
thus creating a revolving door of staffers
that use their experience at the Capitol
as a stepping stone for a more lucrative career
as a lobbyist,
but let me ask you this.
What is more important, influencing lawmakers,
or actually being a lawmaker?
If you chose the latter then,
I don't know.
I mean, you still have hope,
but if you chose the former,
then you probably got sorted into Slytherin.
- Slytherin.
- Got them, Harry Potter reference.
Look, my point is we need to make the job more attractive.
Pay them more.
Keep them longer.
Give incentive for bright minds
to create policy that's not influenced
by partisanship or a bigger paycheck down the road,
and speaking of lobbyists,
that leads me to my third point.
So over the past 30 years,
there have been federal laws passed by Congress
that have been written verbatim by lobbyists,
laws specifically having to do
with their own special interests,
but wait, that can't be legal, right?
Well, it can when you're literally writing the law.
The most recent example of that
was the roll back of financial regulations
set by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010,
which was meant to protect the market and consumers
from risky banking practices that led
to the Great Recession.
Then this year, Congress passed a law
which reverses many of those protections,
and guess who wrote it?
Lobbyists for Citibank.
Wait, hold up.
They aren't lawmakers.
They're a bank.
I mean, they can't do that, right?
How is that possible?
Well, Congress is so understaffed
that they don't even have the capacity
nor the time to research or effectively write policy,
so they outsource it to the very people
that stand to benefit from it.
I mean, that's like putting 11 year old me in charge
of my elementary school's chocolate milk distribution,
and you bet your ass I'm gonna be like,
Yeah, you can go ahead and put
all those cartons in front of Ms. Stine's class right here.
Yeah.
(murmuring)
That's not how you drink chocolate milk.
I don't.
So after we've fully staffed Congress
with competitively paid congressional staffers,
how do we make sure that things still stay non-partisan?
Well, we already have a wonderfully neutral group
called the Congressional Budget Office,
which assesses the financial effectiveness
of each bill written
and its impact on the American public,
so more things like that, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
Guess what?
Congress used to have this thing
called the Office of Technology Assessment
that researched advancements in science and technology
and how to apply that knowledge to federal policy
in order to make bureaucracy more streamline
and cost-efficient.
Then in 1994, conservative Republicans
took over Congress for the first time in over 40 years,
and they were led by this (beeping),
so in the name of limited government,
they slashed the amount of congressional staffers
by almost half and did away with the OTA
to streamline bureaucracy,
thus creating the aforementioned workload issue
and doing away with the very people meant
to streamline the process.
You dummies.
Look, even fiscal conservatives would agree
that it takes a little investing of money
to actually find out how you can save money,
or God forbid even make money.
I mean, that's what financial planners do,
and there was even a recent push to bring back
a new and improved Office of Technology Assessment,
and then we, you know, elected who we elected.
Yeah, that election was the worst,
but you know what?
No stress, okay?
We're gonna have another one in 2018,
midterms, baby,
and it's high time that midterm elections
get the same kind of media coverage that they deserve.
I mean, it's Congress.
In fact, the primary gage on whether a president
was truly effective or not was
their ability to work with Congress
and get legislation passed.
They create policy.
They decide where tax dollars are allocated.
They confirm Cabinet members and Supreme Court Justices,
approve treaties.
They're the only branch that can officially declare war.
There's no reason why we shouldn't be treating
congressional elections with the same amount
of stakes we do a presidential election.
I mean, come on, let's make it big.
Let's make it exciting.
Let's make it sexy, yeah, sexy election.
Sexy.
Okay, sexy may be a challenge,
okay, but I don't know.
I mean, maybe we can cover it like March Madness
where everyone fills out a bracket
on all the races across the country,
and it can get all kinds of TV coverage
with funny beer commercials
and deals on large pizzas.
I mean, we can call it Midterm Mayhem.
I mean, that'd be cool.
Like I'd watch it.
I'm a nerd, but I would watch it.
So my last point has to do
with state legislature's sneaky way
of redrawing congressional districts
to give a particular party an electoral advantage,
and that's called gerrymandering,
and that (beeping) needs to be banned.
Oh, gerrymandering.
Yeah, fun word, and not so fun consequence.
Yeah, in fact, a federal court in Wisconsin
recently ruled that the state drew districts
in such a partisan fashion
that it violated the Constitution,
and just this year, the Supreme Court ruled
that North Carolina drew districts in 2011
that were based on race,
which blatantly violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
So how about this.
Let's just make a Constitutional amendment
that bans gerrymandering altogether
so Congress can be a true representation
of the people,
as intended by the founding slave owners.
So yay, now we fixed Congress, right?
Yeah, well, I mean, not exactly,
not until we immediately get vote out these people,
Senator Mitch McConnell, who is arguably the sole cause
of dysfunction in Washington for over the past 10 years.
He is the worst,
or maybe it's Paul Ryan.
Either way, they're both out.
Also Representative Steve King and Doug Lamborn,
the former has openly promoted white supremacy,
and the latter referred to President Obama as a tar baby.
So yeah, (beeping) these guys,
and certainly Ted Cruz,
because the Constitution clearly states
that a senator must be at least 30 years of age
and not a blobfish.
You know what, let's just get rid of all of them.
Yeah, fixed it, right?
(electronic crackling)