Partisan politics has consumed our nation's capital. Things have gotten so extreme that it sometimes seems like our federal officials don't even try to solve the most serious problems facing our nation.
From immigration to healthcare, the issues Americans care about are forever stalled in House committees or Senate bureaucracies. Meanwhile, the American people are left anxiously watching cable news with no ability to solve the problems themselves.
As Howard Kurtz put it in a recent op-ed:
It seems to be all sound and fury these days, with no tangible outcome.
That may be great for the media, which love combat and conflict, and for politicians, who love to decry and declaim. But actual progress? Not so much.
Washington has always been known for gridlock that matches the Beltway traffic, but now it's on steroids. It’s almost as though, while people slam each other on Twitter and Facebook, nobody expects anything to happen.
Let's go down the list.
President Trump unveiled an immigration plan yesterday, and even before the announcement The Washington Post said it's "already is facing skepticism from lawmakers in both political parties, and there appears to be no clear path toward advancing the plan through Congress."
What a shock. And the president probably didn't help its chances by immediately calling Democrats the "open borders" party.
The plan, which would favor legal immigrants with high skills over those with family ties, is "another test of Trump's willingness to stump for a plan that could face opposition from border hawks and his ability to forge bipartisan support at a time when he has inflamed Democrats over unilateral immigration actions, including declaring a national emergency to pay for a border wall."
It's true that his hard-line approach has played mainly to his base. But it’s not all Trump's fault. Barack Obama couldn't solve the immigration mess either, and neither could George W. Bush. Neither side is ever prepared to make the necessary compromises.
It's time to move the center of power outside of D.C. The American people need to be empowered to solve their own problems in a way that makes sense to their local communities and states.
Washington will never willingly give up its power (no matter how ineffective they become), which is why the people and the states need to rise up and call a Convention of States.
A Convention of States can propose constitutional amendments that limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government. These amendments won't solve gridlock or partisan politics, but they will allow the people and the states to find and implement their own solutions to the problems they believe are most important.
We need to break our obsession with Washington, and the best way to do that is by calling the first-ever Article V Convention of States.
