About a year ago, I wrote here about Political parties and government dysfunction.

I have been a believer that much of the problem in Washington is due to the excessive power we give to our 2 major political parties. This shutdown is just an example of that.

The leader of the dominant party in each part of Congress sets the agenda in his part of Congress and the 2 parts of Congress are controlled by different political parties now. Therefore each part of Congress does not always get to vote on what the other part has passed. For example, yesterday night the House passed some bills to fund parts of the government including NIH and the National Parks.

I think the National Parks are certainly not the one of the most critical functions of government. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying they are unimportant, just less important or maybe just less urgent than other things.

On the other hand, there is a considerable humanitarian aspect to funding the NIH. The shutdown prevents NIH from enrolling new patients in clinical trials and patients could die as a result. Should not the Senate be able to vote as soon as possible on these bills?

My understanding is that there will not be a vote because the Majority Leader does not want to consider partial measures, just a clean continuing resolution. I think the clean continuing resolution would be the ideal solution but should not the Senate be able to consider all options?

Should each part of Congress have a nonpartisan officer who sets the agenda, perhaps with a set of rules and oversight of some sort. Both the Senate and the House already have some nonpartisan officers but should we consider adding one who sets the agenda for votes? Or maybe we could keep the existing leadership structure but limit the discretion of the leader?

The group No Labels is trying to help move us past this political gridlock. Check out the website of No Labels to see some of their ideas.