United States is poorly served by a Congress that is often beset by inaction and localism. Supporters of the Congress maintain that the institution is a superior deliberative and representative institution. Which argument is the more persuasive and why?
by 
SunTzu1962
ANSWERS: 2
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You can definitely make the case that Congress is a slow acting beast that rarely seems to actually do anything. But I think there is also a case to be made that this isn't such a bad thing. If I may steal an argument from my politics prof, he compared the American system to the Canadian one (the course being Canada in Comparative Politics). In Canada, as long as the Prime Minister has a majority of the House of Commons on his side, any law he wishes to pass automatically goes through. Imagine a conveyor belt loaded up with legislation, wham bam thank you ma'am, every one goes through without a hitch. Is that a better system than the American one? I don't pretend to know, and I'm not ready to make a value statement. Suffice it to say both ways have their advantages, but neither is perfect.
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In the US: In my opinion, the structure of congress is not the problem. The real issue is partisanship. The bimodal nature of the current political system prevents legislation from being debated on its own merits. Remember the show Survivor? In the first season it was designed to be this great survival-of-the-fittest competition where the person with the greatest survival skills would win. Halfway through the first season, Richard Hatch, a lawyer (nota bene: I am in law school), figured out that he could subvert the system by organizing the weakest players to vote out the strongest. It became another instance of high school popularity politics. The same thing has happened in the US congress. When congresspeople vote along party lines instead of on the merits of a bill, we wind up with stalemate and stagnation.
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