Is Congress and the US govt. completely broken?

Many would argue that Congress and the Senate have been feckless bodies for a long time, there are multiple reasons why their popularity is so low now, but it seems worse than ever as Trump regularly bypasses congressional and senatorial authority by pushing legislation and programs on his own that require that, and constantly threatens members who don't fall in line with his policies. 

In addition many would argue that the Trump administration is completely broken, run by a morally bankrupt man, and not working in the interests of the majority of the American people, but rather the super rich and corporate America. 

Congress is wrapping up the year in the shadow of the longest government shutdown and with a growing reputation as the least productive in modern history.

"Congress is in a coma. It has a pulse, but not many brainwaves," said former Rep. Jim Cooper, a Democrat who represented Tennessee for 32 years. "It's hard to tell that it's even alive as an institution."

A record number of lawmakers are calling it quits ahead of the midterm elections next year and are running for the Capitol exits, pursuing different offices or retiring from political life altogether.

"The polarization is just dramatically different from even from the 'good old days' when you had the Clinton impeachment, but you got things like welfare and tax reform done," said Comstock, who was a congressional staffer in the 90s and served in Congress from 2015 to 2019. "Even while Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton were going at each other, they realized you still had to get governing done."

"When I arrived in Congress, I thought there was a lack of bipartisanship, that the degree of comity and cooperation had reached a new low," said Dan Kildee, a Democrat from Michigan who served from 2013 to 2025. "But I didn't realize those were actually the good days of my time in Congress."

And in the aftermath of the targeted violence of state lawmakers in Minnesota this summer, the House launched a pilot program to increase lawmakers' security allotment.

U.S. Capitol Police told NPR its agents are on track to work through roughly 14,000 threat assessment cases by the end of the year.

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