ICYMI: Fixing the House means more staff pay and member budget sway, panel concludes

David Hawkings over at The Fulcrum writes about the latest set of bipartisan recommendations passed by the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress. He writes:

“The panel has been something of a pet project for good-government groups inside the Beltway, who engineered its creation two years ago, pelted it with ideas and prodded it toward consensus.

For these democracy reform advocates, the formula for quelling Washington gridlock and poisoned partisanship includes boosting a legislative branch that’s fallen way behind in balance-of-power struggles — and that won’t happen until Capitol Hill is a place where politicians and their aides actually want to work for more than a few years and have realistic hope of getting something done.

That’s why the recommendations from the panel, formally the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, aim to “help the legislative branch reclaim its Article One responsibilities, reform the broken budget and appropriations process and ensure the people’s house has the capacity to meet the needs of those we serve,” Rep. Derek Kilmer of Washington, the committee’s Democratic chairman, said after the meeting.”

Read more about the recommendations passed by the Committee over at The Fulcrum.