Elections prevent Congress from getting things done

The mood in our nation's Capitol is just dandy … if you're not one of the political-party leaders.

That was the assessment Monday of Oregon Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-5th District. Our country's rank-and-file representatives and senators generally get along, often overlooking their party differences. But the caucus leaders — each party's officers in the House and Senate — have a vested interest in congressional inaction because their focus is on winning the 2012 elections.

That's a bleak way to govern, and it runs counter to what Schrader hears when he talks with people in the Mid-Valley. "The biggest thing I hear from them is, 'Please work together,'" Schrader told the Statesman Journal Editorial Board.

Historically, Oregon's congressional delegation has a decent record of working across party lines, whether it was the long-running budget partnership of the late Republican Sen. Mark Hatfield and former Democratic Rep. Les AuCoin or the recent Medicare initiatives of Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and Republican Rep. Paul Ryan.

Contrary to the public image of Congress, most legislation passes on a bipartisan basis. But that's because it's of little consequence. Major issues get mired in the calculus of which party will benefit at the ballot box.

Is there a way out of this mess? There is, if Americans demand more of their lawmakers — and of the party leaders whom those lawmakers choose. Citizens don't have to buy into the partisan demagoguery and unbending ideology perpetuated by each party's elite.

Schrader, a former Oregon legislator, recalled learning that lesson from former Republican State Senate President Gene Derfler of Salem: "If a bill is 60 or 70 percent good, you should be a 'yes' — unless there's a poison pill in it."

Real life is full of compromise. That should be true as well in our nation's Capitol.

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