By Timothy Loftus, Editor & Publisher | Sergeant Bluff Advocate
(SBA) - Last week, I wrote about the lawsuit filed by current and former members of Congress seeking back pay and future cost-of-living salary adjustments. Regardless of how the courts eventually rule, the story sparked a larger conversation about public expectations.
So now I want to address an equally important question.
What should Americans reasonably expect from the people we elect to represent us?
Most jobs have measurable standards.
Teachers are expected to educate students.
Police officers protect communities.
Firefighters respond to emergencies.
Farmers produce crops.
Business owners provide goods and services while creating jobs.
Even volunteers usually have a mission they're trying to accomplish.
Congress is also supposed to have a mission.
Its constitutional responsibilities are straightforward. Write laws. Debate national policy. Oversee the executive branch. Appropriate federal spending. Represent the interests of the people.
I have to admit, none of these are easy things to accomplish in a polarized government.
Every issue Congress tackles affects millions of Americans with different priorities, different values, and different ideas about what government should or shouldn't do. Disagreement is part of representative democracy and always will be. But gridlock, however, shouldn't become the goal.
Over the past two decades, Congress has generally enacted fewer public laws than it did during the previous decade. Legislative output isn't a perfect measurement of effectiveness—one major law can have a greater impact than dozens of minor bills—but the trend reflects an institution increasingly consumed by political division rather than legislative accomplishment.
This reality isn't entirely Congress's fault.
America itself has become more politically divided, and Congress reflects the country that elects it.
Close elections produce narrow majorities. Narrow majorities make compromise more difficult. Social media rewards confrontation instead of cooperation. Twenty-four-hour news channels fill airtime by highlighting conflict because conflict attracts viewers.
It's a cycle that feeds itself.
The loudest voices often receive the most attention, and the quiet work of governing rarely makes the evening news anymore.
Unfortunately, Americans don't send representatives to Washington simply to make headlines or produce a sound bite for a talking head on a news program or a podcast.
We elect and send these people to the Iowa legislature to represent Iowa’s interests in Washington and to hopefully solve the multitude of problems we face daily.
I believe this distinction matters.
Campaigning and governing are not the same thing because campaigns are built on promises. While government is built on decisions.
Campaigns reward sharp one-liners. While government requires difficult compromises.
Campaigns divide voters into opposing teams. While government eventually has to bring those teams together if anything meaningful is going to happen.
Somewhere along the way, Washington seems to have blurred those lines.
Running for office has become almost a permanent occupation.
Members spend enormous amounts of time raising campaign money, attending political events, recording media interviews, posting on social media, and preparing for the next election—sometimes before the previous one is even over.
Again, none of this is unique to a single political party.
Both Republicans and Democrats operate within the same system and face the same fundraising pressures.
Both know that a single television appearance or viral video can generate attention that once required months of traveling across a district.
Technology has changed politics, and not always for the better.
It’s become so much easier to communicate and connect with voters now, which makes it easier for them to perform for us, and performance isn't governance.
I don’t want a television personality. I want a legislator.
Legislative work often happens far from television cameras unless you watch CSPAN.
The foundation of good law that benefits the American people happens inside committee rooms discussing problems and negotiating with one another to solve those problems.
Through careful review of budgets, regulations, and proposed legislation.
Those tasks rarely produce dramatic headlines.
But they're where governing actually takes place.
The frustration many Americans feel today isn't simply that Washington argues too much.
It's that too often the arguments seem to replace the work.
When every disagreement becomes a political battlefield, compromise begins to look like weakness instead of leadership.
As a young man, I still remember the days of Ronald Ragen and Tip Oneal. I remember both men reaching across the aisle to make compromises for the benefit of the American People. Two completely different ideologies and philosophies of governance, but willing to give a little and take a little until a solution to a problem is found. I don’t see that now. I just see the posturing, gridlock, and finger pointing instead of governing.
That's a dangerous shift away from representative democracy.
The Founders expected vigorous debate.
They also expected Congress to eventually make decisions.
Americans can disagree over taxes, immigration, healthcare, spending, or national security and still expect their elected officials to move the country forward.
But doing nothing is also a decision.
And increasingly, that's the decision voters believe Washington is making.
If legislative gridlock were the only issue, Americans might be more willing to accept it as the price of democracy.
After all, disagreement is healthy.
Our system of government was designed to encourage debate, prevent rash decisions, and require competing viewpoints to work toward common ground. The Framers never intended Congress to function as a rubber stamp.
But debate eventually has to produce results.
When months become years and years become decades, frustration begins to replace patience.
That's where public trust enters the conversation.
Trust is one of those things that's difficult to measure but easy to recognize when it's gone.
Americans don't expect Congress to solve every problem.
They don't expect every vote to go their way.
What we do expect is honesty, transparency, and the confidence that decisions are being made in the public's best interest.
Unfortunately, confidence in Congress has steadily eroded over the years.
There isn't one single reason for that decline.
It's the accumulation of many things.
Missed deadlines.
Political brinkmanship.
Budget crises.
Government shutdowns or the threat of one.
Campaign promises that quietly disappear after Election Day.
The perception that political victories sometimes matter more than practical solutions.
Then there's the issue that continues to fuel debate across party lines—congressional stock trading.
To be clear, members of Congress are not prohibited from owning stocks.
The STOCK Act, enacted in 2012, requires lawmakers to publicly disclose many securities transactions and was intended to increase transparency and discourage the misuse of nonpublic information. It did not ban members of Congress from buying or selling individual stocks.
The issue isn't simply whether a transaction is legal.
The larger issue is whether the public believes the rules inspire confidence.
Over the past several years, lawmakers from both political parties have introduced legislation that would prohibit members of Congress from trading individual stocks while serving in office or require those investments to be placed into qualified blind trusts.
Those proposals have gained bipartisan attention because they recognize something larger than financial disclosures.
They understand that appearances matter.
Imagine if a county supervisor purchased land immediately before voting on a project that increased its value.
Imagine if a city council member bought stock in a company immediately before helping approve a major local contract.
Even if every action were technically legal, most citizens would still ask questions.
Government doesn't function on legality alone.
It functions on credibility.
That's why judges recuse themselves from cases iinvolving personal conflicts.
It's why jurors are screened before trials.
It's why journalists disclose potential conflicts of interest.
The public deserves confidence that decisions are being made fairly.
Congress should be held to that same standard.
This isn't about accusing every member of Congress of wrongdoing.
In fact, many lawmakers have publicly supported stronger ethics rules, including restrictions on individual stock trading.
The point is much broader than any one person or any one political party.
Public confidence is one of government's most valuable assets.
Once it's lost, every decision becomes suspect.
Every vote is questioned.
Every budget debate is viewed through a lens of skepticism.
Every request for higher compensation becomes more difficult for taxpayers to accept.
That brings us back to where this conversation began.
When Americans hear that members of Congress may receive substantial back pay while the institution itself struggles with declining public confidence, it's understandable why many people react the way they do.
It’s not just about the money.
It's about whether Congress has done enough to convince the public that it deserves greater compensation before restoring greater confidence.
Perhaps that's the wrong order. Maybe trust should come first.
After all, every profession depends upon credibility. Doctors rely on a patient's trust. Teachers rely on parents' trust. Police officers rely on community trust. Businesses depend on customer trust. So government should be no different.
When trust declines, every other conversation becomes more difficult—including conversations about salaries.
Maybe before asking Americans to invest more in Congress by throwing more money at them, Congress should first invest more in earning the confidence of the American people by stopping the constant gridlock and doing what they were elected to do. Govern.
Next week in the conclusion of this Straight Talk Special Series…
Higher salaries won't restore public confidence.
Neither will another campaign promise.
Next week we'll look at what genuine public service should look like, why accountability matters more than compensation, and why the strongest examples of servant leadership may not be found inside the halls of Congress—but right here in communities like Sergeant Bluff.
