WASHINGTON –American trust in Congress has reached an historic low. The recent federal government shutdown and continuing congressional gridlock over passing a budget to end the impasse have many Americans wondering whether their congressmen can work together.
A new website is taking a different approach — creating its own “congress” of citizens to tell Capitol Hill what to do.
Steven Kull, a self-describe political independent, and Richard Parsons launched an online organization called Voice of the People Thursday that is developing what Kull calls a “Citizen Cabinet” to encourage compromise in Congress.
“(People) see government as dominated by these competing interests that become polarized, gridlocked and unable to find common ground,” said Kull, VOP founder and president. “The American public is far less polarized than Congress.”
Kull called his method of educating Americans on important legislation and gathering their opinions regarding how Congress should proceed a “policymaking simulation.”
Kull explained he will select a representative sample of 275 people in every congressional district, 120,000 nationwide, who would be asked to be part of the “Citizen Cabinet” for up to a year. They then would be asked for advice to be published on the website for issues under consideration by Congress. The responses would be broken down by state and district so that every member of Congress would not only see the total responses but those from their constituents.
“The idea is to take people through a process where they are in the shoes of a policymaker,” Kull said. “They are given a briefing on the current issues, they are presented various policy options and then they evaluate arguments strongly stated for and against each option. And only then do they formulate the recommendations.”
Former congressmen and governors have supported the effort.
“Most of us understand that the voice of the people is rarely heard with any volume anymore in our government,” said retired North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan, a Democrat. “Increasingly the voices that command attention, also in my judgment, suggest some very dangerous things. ‘Shut down the government it doesn’t matter!’”
“We have an opportunity to use the new media, the new age of communication, to give the voice of the people resonance,” Dorgan said. “The bridge to that opportunity for the American people is something called Voice of the People and is something today called a Citizen’s Cabinet.”
Former Delaware Gov. Michael Castle, who served as a Republican congressman, called Voice of the People “a new very concrete way to ensure that our democracy is truly of the people, by the people and for the people.”