Factually! with Adam Conover - The Congressional Modernization Committee with Reps. Derek Kilmer and William Timmons

Episode Date: October 12, 2022

Congress is at a historic low point of dysfunction and voter confidence. Today on the show, the Chair and Vice Chair of the Congressional Modernization, Reps. Derek Kilmer and William Timmons, join Adam to make their case for how their committee can help Congress evolve in the face of unprecedented polarization and the upheaval of the events of January 6th. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the truth. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's alright. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me once again as I talk to an incredible expert about all the incredible shit that they know, that I don't know, and that you might not know. Both of our minds are going to get blown together and we are going to have a wonderful time. Now, I do want to remind you that I am on tour. If you

want to see my tour dates, head to adamconover.net slash tour dates or just adamconover.net. Either one works. And if you love the show, please consider supporting it on Patreon where you will get every episode of the show ad free. Plus you can join our community discord and get a whole bunch of other bonus perks for just five bucks a month. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. That's patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Now let's talk about today's episode. Today we're talking about Congress, which is a mess. You know, there's a sense that it can't actually accomplish anything, that it's too polarized, too extreme, and too captured by corporate interests. Now political scientists will tell you that while this is a bipartisan problem,

not both parties are equally responsible for it. One of them is becoming more polarized than the other, and I'll let you guess which one that is. But that does not change the facts on the ground that pretty much everyone in America thinks that Congress sucks. And doesn't just like suck, you know, accidentally, it structurally sucks. Like it's designed to suck. Like even if everybody there had the best intentions and did everything the best way possible, it would still suck because, you know, the blueprint of the place is sort of infused with suckitude. So what can be done about that? Well, our guests today are two congressmen from different sides of the aisle who lead the House

Select Committee on Modernization, aka the Modernization Committee. And this committee's stated job is to find smart solutions to make Congress more functional, which, you know, sounds like a good idea. But before we get into this interview, which is fascinating, let's just have a little chat about how we listen to interviews with politicians differently than we listen to interviews with other types of experts. See, normally when we have an expert on, you know, we're really interested in their perspective and all the things that they know that we don't know, just like I say at the top of

almost every show. And we take what they say at face value, right? If they say something, we generally believe, hey, that's true, or at least they believe it to be true. You know, maybe I push back, we get into it a little bit if I don't agree, but, you know, we're looking to this person with a lot of respect and a lot of deference because they have studied the issue and we haven't, right? Well, when we listen to a politician, we listen to them in an entirely different, much more active, much more critical way. And I, as an interviewer, take a different approach. So let me give you an example. When we had Mayor Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on, I asked him why it was so much more expensive to build rail and other

public transportation projects in the United States than in any comparable country. And interestingly, he didn't answer that question. At least he didn't answer it directly. And you know, some people want an interviewer like me to jump down the politician's throat in that case and say, you didn't answer the question, sir. We, the people, demand an answer. But I personally don't think that that is useful because politicians are constrained by the forces of their office into subtle hedged language. You know, there are pressures operating on them that sometimes prevent them from giving an answer. So when they avoid an issue, it's not a gotcha. It's an opportunity for you

as a listener to ask yourself, why? Why aren't they answering that question? Is it because they don't know? Is it because they can't say? What is happening behind the scenes? And that means that even when politicians are not telling you something, they are telling you something about their priorities, their weaknesses, their limitations, and their constraints. And this can lead you down some really interesting paths. One of our guests today voted with House Republicans to not certify the results of the 2020 election. And I think that's pretty interesting for someone who is on the House Select Committee on Modernization to vote on. And, you know, I asked him about that and his response is, well, it's not direct. I think you should listen to it and judge for yourself

what you think about it. It is at the very least very interesting. The point that I'm making is the way that you listen to political speech is different from how you listen to other speech. It requires active, reflective listening. It's sort of like how I watch SNL as a comedian. You know, I'm not just watching to listen to the jokes and laugh. I'm watching to get a sense of the state of American comedy. What does Lorne Michaels feel like saying this week? Who's up? Who's down? Etc. I'm not watching for the content, but for the story behind the content. And look, the reason I preface all of this is because this podcast is rising in stature. We are getting more and more requests from elected officials to come on the show. And I am interested in talking

to them because as much as we talk on this show about what policies are best, well, the next step is to figure out how to put those policies in place. And politicians are the ones who can do that. And since we're having more politicians on, I want to make sure that we're all used to listening in that different way that political speech requires. So enough prefacing, though, let's get to it. The Congressional Modernization Committee is doing interesting work to try and get Congress to work better, which everyone wants. But the challenge for this committee is that they're doing their work in a moment of democratic crisis and hyper partisanship as bad as any since before the Civil War. So what can they actually do about it? Well, to try to answer that

question, please welcome modernization chair Derek Kilmer, a Democratic congressman from Washington, and vice chair William Timmons, a Republican congressman from South Carolina. I hope you enjoy this interview. Let's take it away. Representative Kilmer and Representative Timmons, thank you so much for being on the show. You bet. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. Great to be with you. We're starting to dip into getting folks who are elected government officials on the show. This is our first time with two of you at once, so I really appreciate it. I know we've got a bunch of big, it's a lot of egos to have in one room, but we'll manage somehow.

You are both, so you are both chair and vice chair of the Modernization Committee for Congress. Tell me what the heck that committee does. Yeah, about every 20 or 30 years or so, Congress realizes that things aren't working the way they ought to, and they create a committee to do something about it. And the most recent iteration is this committee, the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, which makes it sound a little bit like the IT Help Desk, but we've been nicknamed the Fixed Congress Committee. We've been tasked with trying to make Congress work better for the American people. That's important. I think William and I are both conscious of the fact that, as members of Congress, we're part of an organization that, according to recent polling,

is less popular than head lice, colonoscopies, and the rock band Nickelback. And you've got a pretty good sense of why that's the case. I think the American public is pretty exhausted with some of the dysfunction that they see out of the institution. And so our committee is looking at everything from how Congress uses technology to how it builds more capacity to solve big problems. Even looking at things like civility and collaboration, trying to figure out how do we have an institution that looks less like the Jerry Springer show and more like a deliberative body designed to solve problems for the American people. And just tell me, before we get into what your specific recommendations are, what does the

work of the committee do? You're making recommendations. Are these recommendations binding at all? Well, so there's six Republicans, six Democrats. We're unique in that it requires eight votes to do anything. So it is inherently bipartisan. It's forced. And our recommendations, we've passed 171. Two-thirds of those have had meaningful progress towards being implemented. Some of them are literally just the Speaker of the House snapping your fingers, and some of them require legislation. We're doing whatever we can to move the ball forward on all of our recommendations. And we've had a lot of progress, and I'm really looking forward to the next few months because I think we're going to get everything else done. A lot of progress, and I'm really looking forward to the next few months because I think we're going to get everything else done. That's cool. Congress as an institution, obviously hundreds of years old, designed in the Constitution. In what ways, though, is it unmodern?

In what ways does it need to be modernized? What are some of the things that really stood out to you when you started your work? Well, there's a lot to that. You know, in over the last many decades, Congress has really eroded its capacity to solve big problems. You see massive turnover among staff within the institution. The average tenure in a congressional office is now under three years, you know, because people move on to more lucrative jobs in many instances, and that makes it harder for the institution to solve big problems. You know, Congress, in terms of its use of technology, is often described as an 18th century institution using 20th century technology to solve 21st century problems. You know, that's pretty accurate. And so that is another example. You know, I think as our committee dove into some of the challenges facing the institution, one of the issues that became clear is there's just too much partisan bickering and not enough focus on progress. And so we've,

even though it wasn't a task that was assigned to us, that's an area where our committee has sort of dug in and made some recommendations. I'll also mention, you know, part of our ingoing approach to this was just a recognition that if you want to make Congress work better, if you want it to function differently, you have to do things differently. So our committee has really approached this task of trying to make Congress work better in a way that's very different than most committees function. Generally, when a committee is established, it gets its budget

and you divide by two. Democrats get their part of the money. Republicans get their part of the money. And Democrats use their half to hire people with a Democratic background who put on blue jerseys. And Republicans use their part of the money to hire people with a Republican background who put on red jerseys. And they spend the rest of the time fighting with each other. We didn't do that. We actually decided early on in this process that we would have one team focused on fixing Congress. Some of them would be Democrats, some of them will be Republicans, but they'll all put on jerseys that say, hey, let's fix Congress. You know, if you look at, if you watch one of our

hearings on C-SPAN, it probably means you have too much time on your hands. But if you watch one of our hearings on C-SPAN, you'll notice a few things. We don't sit with Democrats on one side of a dais and Republicans on the other. We sit, stagger our seating. So every Democrat sits next to a Republican and every Republican sits next to a Democrat. Why do we do that? Well, you know, I don't know about you, but when I hear something interesting, my genetic predisposition is to lean over to the person next to me saying, you know, hey, that was pretty interesting. What do you think about that? And in our committee, you're leaning over next to someone from a different party.

We don't even sit on a dais. If you watch one of our hearings, we sit around a round table. Why do we do that? Well, I have never had a good discussion speaking to the back of somebody's head. And so we sit around a round circle. We actually have dialogue as a committee, and it's just very different. And as a consequence, we've been able to make the 171 bipartisan recommendations that you heard William speak to. I've been in Congress three and a half years, and we really don't defend our ideas. We don't have an exchange of ideas. We talk past each other

using political talking points, and there's not a lot of progress being made from a policy perspective. And I think one of the biggest challenges is time. Let's go back to 2019 pre-COVID. We had 65 full working days and 66 travel days. And in those 65 full working days, we're expected to have conference and caucus meetings, floor votes, constituent meetings, committee hearings, subcommittee hearings. The average member of Congress serves on 5.4 committees and subcommittees. So and then you have fundraisers and dinners. And so there's just way too much packed into such a short period of time. And there's also an efficiency issue. My commute is about three, three plus hours. I think, Mr. Chairman, yours is almost triple that. So, you know, we're spending so much time in airports and not enough time actually doing our job.

So we've made recommendations to increase full work days, decrease travel days, and then more importantly, deconflict our time when we're in Washington, which would allow us to be sitting in the chairs, having legitimate policy, substantive conversations, and hopefully learning something from one another and hopefully finding some consensus. So I think time is a critical moment. I assume you're making plenty of recommendations about parliamentary procedure, about, hey, when this comes to a vote or this is proposed and how it goes through that process. But you're also making proposals

about the social dimension as well, of making sure that Congress people are able to actually communicate with each other productively, that they have the amount of time. I mean, look, I serve on uh, I'm new to this. I serve on the board of my union that I'm a member of. And so I've had a little bit of a window under that. And it's given me an insight into how, oh, this, it is so much a social workplace. Like even though we see it on television, you are, it is like individual people who are traveling to and fro who need to talk face to face on occasion.

And it really sounds like you're taking that dimension into account in your work. Absolutely. We began with orientation. Orientation is where it all starts. And when I had orientation three and a half years ago, we left the hotel and they said Republicans on that bus, Democrats on this bus. And that's just the wrong mentality. Wait, was one of them the short bus or were they both the same size? That year they were fairly evenly sized. So, you know, but yeah, so that's the wrong mentality. We need to build relationships.

We need to respect each other from an individual perspective. And then we can have a conversation on policy and we can have differences on policy and be respectful. We have to have legitimate policy conversations. We don't do that right now. Twitter is not going to solve our problems, and we've got major problems as a country, and we need to be collaborative and build consensus on how to address it. If I can, let me just add one piece on this. Both William and I came out of state legislative bodies where, you know, I can speak to the Washington state legislature. When I was in the state legislature, every bill was taken up under what's called an open rule, meaning if you had an amendment, you could put it forward, it would be debated, it would be voted on. voted on. And in eight years in the Washington state legislature, I can really only think of five, maybe six times where that was used for political purposes, where someone did a gotcha amendment to try to jam the other side of the aisle. You know, if you tried to apply that to Congress, it's almost laughable. If you talk to our colleagues and said, what if we took everything up under an open rule?

It would be persistently, consistently gotcha. And that's not an issue of rules. That's an issue of culture. You know, in the Washington State Legislature, there was no rule that said, hey, don't be a jerk. It's just the culture was don't be a jerk. And so a lot of what we've worked on, including, as William mentioned,

some recommendations related to new member orientation, have been trying to foster a different approach. You know, the two parties are always going to have their disagreements and their differences, but being able to engage each other in a more respectful and civil way, making sure that, you know, I think one of the reasons the American people are justifiably frustrated is Congress even struggles to move forward on the things on which there is agreement, in part because of this gotcha approach to our politics. And so, again, that's culture. That's not rules. And so, indeed, our committee has dug into those issues as well.

Yeah. And I'm so glad you said culture, because that's the sort of word I was reaching for before. In my own experience in a sort of voting body, it's one that has a very good culture, and I'm thankful for that. I'm aware of others that don't. And a culture is hard to change once it becomes toxic because even good folks will start responding in weird ways when people start coming at them in strange, aggressive ways. But I have to ask, I mean, it sounds like a valiant effort, but you are not in total control over the culture of politics in America. I mean, you know, let's take a basic problem like, you know, maybe there's a member who is speaking to the cameras rather than to the other folks in the body. That to me,, I would say is a cultural problem in any deliberative body, right?

They're grandstanding rather than, you know, actually trying to get stuff done. Well, if the incentives coming from the media sphere are to do that, and there's a payday at the end if you do it really well, because then you, you know, get a job on cable news once you spend two years and get nothing done, that's a really hard thing for you to change, isn't it? How do you change the overall culture of the country's political culture? We've spent a lot of time thinking about this and trying to figure it out. Cell phones, technology, interconnectedness, social media, really the devaluation of journalism has all

contributed to the current state of affairs in this country. And so what do we do? How do we move past that? That's the question. And honestly, we're not going to fix the challenges associated with journalism and the change between the subscription-based model and clickbait. and the change between the subscription-based model and clickbait, you know, the incentive structures within journalism are challenging. So those same challenges are also addressing Congress. And just like you said, you can say some outlandish things and raise a whole bunch of money as a political candidate, and then you can retire from Congress and go make four or five million dollars a year on cable news. So that's not productive. We're not going to fix immigration that way.

We're not going to address Social Security or health care that way. So we've got to find a way to create incentive structures within the institution that facilitate collaborative policymaking from a position of mutual respect. And so that's what we're trying to do. We've got really a dozen different ways that we are trying to have, I kind of jokingly call it forced family fun. We got to get people to develop relationships where they can have legitimate conversations. You have to have trust. And we on our committee have developed trust on both sides of the aisle. trust. And we on our committee have developed trust on both sides of the aisle. I have become friends with all of my colleagues across the aisle on our committee, and we work together on things that most Republicans and Democrats wouldn't necessarily work on, not because they

don't agree on it, but because they don't have the relationship to actually have that conversation about why something's a good idea. So I really think it all comes down to building relationships and then exchanging ideas in a safe place where you don't think the other person's out to get you. Forced family fun. Are you having members play cards against humanity or something? No. So it's incredible. I've been on financial services for three years now. And I literally do not have a single phone number in my cell phone of anybody on the committee on the other side of the aisle, with the exception of members that are on the modernization committee. I've had no opportunity to interact with them. And so one of the things we're doing is we're giving the chairman and the

ranking member an opportunity at the beginning of each Congress to set the tone, to say, go have dinner at the Library of Congress, bring in people that might be testifying before your committee, invite them, and just have a dinner. And every table has four R's, four D's, and two potential witnesses that might come before, and just break bread. Just break bread and get to know one another. And we also have a bipartisan member retreat that we recommended. We hope to have a lot of bipartisan meeting space in the Capitol. Right now, there's not a lot of options. You either have to go to one person's office or the other, and that's home or away. We need a neutral opportunity. And we're doing the same thing with staff. We're trying to create opportunity for staff to interact, not in a random

coffee shop, but make it a space that people want to go to and want to be in and feel comfortable exchanging ideas and building relationships. I mentioned the committee was not, we were assigned a bunch of topics that we had to look at. We chose to look at this one because it's so critical. And, you know, we had a ton of conversations as we dug into this. We talked to management consultants. We talked to organizational psychologists. We talked to, literally, we talked to the guy, one of the founders of Braver Angels, whose background was as a marriage counselor. We talked to sports coaches who took over dysfunctional teams. I thought about consulting an exorcist just to figure out how do we address some of the challenges facing the institution.

And I think that the takeaway is, you know, we're probably not going to change social media. Our committee certainly is not going to change social media. We're probably not going to change cable news. not going to change cable news. It's kind of become a running joke on our committee that, you know, I think William and I and William's predecessor, Tom Graves, and I were booked on, you know, cable news shows 10 times to talk about the work of our committee. We appeared zero times because we always got bumped for whatever the controversy of the day was. But I think what we realized is you can make some targeted interventions that just kind of change up the incentives a little bit. As William mentioned, to my knowledge, other than our committee, there is not a committee that does bipartisan planning.

I have never in any other job I've had started off on a project and not sat down with the people doing the project to say, hey, what do we want to get done? And what are going to be the hard things to get done? And what are the easy things to get done? And where might we find some common ground? And where is it going to be difficult? You know, our committee, both at the beginning of the last Congress and this Congress, actually did a bipartisan planning retreat and said, okay, you know, we're not going to agree on everything, but let's talk about what we want to try to get done together. That is really unique. And one of our recommendations was committees ought to do that and, you know, and do that in a constructive way. We made a recommendation that the entire institution should do that, that there should be a bipartisan retreat at the beginning

of each Congress. You know, as William mentioned, space matters. Actually having co-working space, you know, there's a ton of research in organizational psychology about the value of kind of spatial relations. And so we've tried to act on that and make some recommendations in that arena too. And then the final thing I'll just, I'll just mention, you know, Congress is the first institution that I've been a part of that, other than freshman orientation, has no professional development opportunities. If you become a committee chair, there is nothing, there is currently nothing that says, hey, here's how to be a good one. Here's how to be an inclusive one. Here's how to be one that doesn't just lead to persistent high conflict. And so among the recommendations that we've made is to actually create a professional development, in essence, sort of what I think they're calling it,

the member academy, to give people opportunities to learn how to do their jobs better. And I think that could be one of the most important recommendations that we've made because it may drive some of the sort of targeted strategic intervention that's necessary for the institution to improve. between the things that you need to be good at to run for Congress and to be elected to Congress and the things you need to be good at to actually perform well within the institution. And I imagine a lot of folks, I mean, hey, folks get elected to Congress who are just like a dentist from somewhere, you know what I mean? And they enter Congress, and they might be good at playing to the folks back home, but when it comes to being a

part of that chamber, I bet it must be hard. There's got to be a learning curve. Absolutely. Before we move on, I want to go back to something the chairman just said. The bipartisan member retreats, we did one at the beginning of the 116th, one at the beginning of the 117th for the Modernization Committee. And as a result of those meetings, which was, I don't know, three hours of our time where we literally just got to know one another, why did you run for Congress? What do you want to do? What's important to you? I've probably spent two to three to 400 hours on issues that were brought to our attention that I agreed with my colleagues across the aisle on. And we literally have worked on the calendar and the schedule

and we've worked on trying to find a way to make it less challenging to serve in Congress. And that's been a bipartisan effort and we've made progress on one and we're going to make progress on the other. So just having that first moment of like, what do you want to do this Congress? What do you want to work on? And be like, oh, I like that idea. I mean, it does work. We do not do it. And we do not know each other. And it's not a good recipe for success. And I think if we can

get different committees to engage in that process, it will. I can imagine people being cynical about what you're describing or say, hey, how is going on a retreat? And, you know, I don't know, playing some ultimate Frisbee going to solve the problems in Congress. But I also know. And again, from my personal experience, it's important to be able to say like, you know, some problem comes up two years down the line and you're like, wait, I know that guy. I know the person who's causing that problem. Let me give him a call. We have a shorthand. We played ultimate Frisbee that one time.

Like, that's not nothing. And that writ large, I mean, you feel that that could make changes here. And I know that's just one piece of your work. I'm thinking more coffee. You don't need to exercise? I'm thinking more coffee and you know Ultimate Frisbee would not go well with the age

I literally just pulled a hammy just during this conversation so yeah How about Mario? I mean our retreat was actually not Ultimate Frisbee it was sitting in a in a room at the Library

of Congress breaking bread together. And, you know, so it was not any great shakes, but it's really rare, Adam. I cannot tell you how unusual that is for Democrats and Republicans. There are just not a lot of avenues for Democrats and Republicans to engage one another outside of the C-SPAN cameras, where the incentive, as you point out, is to, you know, if you want to draw eyeballs, say something outrageous, demonize the other side of the aisle. And listen, none of this is to suggest that there aren't stark differences between the two parties, that there aren't areas of disagreement between the two parties. But what we've, I think what

we've observed and others outside the institution have observed is if it's all about high conflict, if it's all about conflict that simply serves to fuel more conflict, we are not going to solve big problems as a country. And so a lot of the recommendations that our committee has made have been in service of just trying to change that dynamic up. Yeah. Well, I have a follow-up question for you about that, but we have to take a really quick break. We'll be right back with more representative Kilmer and Timmons. Okay. We're back with representatives Kilmer and timmons uh so look i want to press you guys on

bipartisanship a little bit because the words come up a lot um i do often understand why it's important but i think people are also skeptical of that word with uh with reason because you know look there are differences between the two parties and the members of each of those parties do believe about at least some of the stuff on their party's list that their side is the true way to look at it. Right. You know, on some issues like I don't know, I'll just say my position on climate change is not that I'm wearing a blue shirt. It's because I think I understand the science very well, you know, and to the extent that, look, working together is important, but there's not a meet in the middle. Right. On every single issue. That's I think we can agree that we're not going to happen occasionally in a body. So how do you think about, you know, the bipartisanship as a word, as a concept, as a goal? Is it something that we always need to strive for? Because to me, it seems intention. It seems in tension with the idea of getting important things done. Well, one, I agree with everything you just said. The reality is

you can both say we want to have a more civil and collaborative institution and acknowledge there are going to be stark differences between the two parties. So let's think about what we, you know, what success looks like given that dynamic. One, success looks like at least being able to move forward on issues on which there is agreement. And too often what happens is, and both parties get to wear the, you know, the blame jacket on this one. Rather than finding common ground on an issue where there is agreement and moving forward, there's an attempt to politicize it. You know, an amendment is offered, you know, what's called a motion to recommit is offered, and it is simply gotcha politics. It is

simply an effort to jam the other side of the aisle or turn something on which there is agreement into a partisan exercise. I cannot tell you how often that happens. I mean, it's just, it is a brutal, brutal dynamic. And it's part of the reason that Congress is held in such low regard. Beyond that, part of what the committee has focused on is at least trying to drive more evidence-based policymaking so that rather than having policy advanced based on who's for it and who's against it, as you pointed out, kind of the blue shirt or the red shirt dynamic. Trying to lay out, okay, what are actually the facts? How do we use data better in the process of policymaking? And so we've made some recommendations in that regard to say, if we can set up a process that's less about the color of the shirt you're wearing and more about defining an actual problem statement, using data and having that data drive solutions, maybe we will find more areas where the institution can move forward on solving some of these big problems. You are absolutely right. There are some areas of principle where I just, you know, where we're not going to find common ground, you know, and I can give you a long list

of them. You know, I look at my job as two parts. One, standing my ground when there's issues of principle where there's, where I either think there's a, you know, a threat to our values or a threat to the folks that I represent. But the other part of my job, and this is too often missing in the institution of Congress, is to try to find common ground when we can. And so the sort of strategic interventions that our committee has laid out are really in trying to at least make progress on that second goal. So a couple of things. Number one, I would say the biggest challenges facing this country, there is never going to be a partisan solution to fixing them. Debt, immigration, healthcare, social security, it's not possible that we're going to have a scenario where we needing legislation to address them for decades. And most often the problem is that when there is a proposal that is being considered, large portions of one side or the other allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. And so that's part of the issue. The other issue is this.

And so that's part of the issue. The other issue is this, on the issues that are more partisan, that we have strong principles on, we don't even engage in legitimate dialogue. We allow the most extreme versions of whatever the conversation is to dominate the conversation. so you know we have to have dialogue we have to have there's no way that we're going to solve any of these problems if we do not communicate on them and if we message and not actually engage in policymaking and again i think 95 percent of congress is messaging and five percent is policymaking we need it it needs to be at least 50 i just uh what i find so interesting is I think a lot about how people say, oh, back in the middle part of the 20th century, it was a very high time for bipartisanship, especially in the Senate at the time. But then when you go look back at it, you say, well, first of all, the parties are very heterogeneous ideologically. You had conservative

Republicans and liberal Republicans, conservative Democrats democrats and liberal democrats and then you also had like a bipartisan consensus around things that were actual problems like you had um you know there was a bipartisan consensus around jim crow in the deep south for much of the 20th century right and we would look at that now and say oh well that's that's a problem we had a bipartisan congress right that worked together very bipartisanly. And yet there was this massive issue that was disenfranchising millions of Americans that was ignored for decades and decades. And so I guess that's my – I don't have a particular answer. I'm looking for – from either of you.

But the idea of bipartisanship as a goal, I totally hear you on both of these examples of, you know, spots where, yes, we need it and you don't want to have this, you know, this disruptive partisanship. But to me, it's still an open question, like how when we're when we have a two party system and our election system pushes us towards that, it's still an open question for me of whether bipartisanship or the alternative is the better, I don't know, institutional system. I ran out of steam there, but you... Well, functional government is the goal, right? An institution that works for the American people. And when it's just a food fight with the two parties on opposite sides of the gymnasium throwing flaming bags of dog poop at each

other. That's not a functional system. And so, you know, one of our very first hearings that we had, we had an expert named Yuval Levin from the American Enterprise Institute, which is he's a conservative. He said, you know, part of what has happened in terms of Congress's culture has been the shift towards, in essence, performative conflict. has been the shift towards, in essence, performative conflict. And he pointed out that is, in large part,

part of the polarization that we've seen more broadly among the American public. So some of what we've worked on, most of what our committee has worked on, has been focused on trying to change up how Congress engages. You know, William and I have also introduced some legislation that's focused on trying to address some of the divides within our country, too. You know, I had this experience late last year. I got invited to a YMCA in my district, thinking they were going to talk to me about the fact that gymnasiums were losing money during the pandemic. That's not what they wanted to talk to me about.

They said, you know what? All of the polarization that you see in Washington, D.C., all of the conflict that we see on cable news has infiltrated our YMCA. They said, we've had arguments, we've even had fights break out over pick your red or blue issue. And they said, it's become so bad that we can't ignore it anymore. We've actually, they said, we've hired a consultant that's training our staff and training our board in conflict resolution. They said, we've, you know, we're actually trying to pull some events together to have people just engage one another across their differences rather than to have, you know, literally, you know, fights break out when people

are just there to work out. And so, you know, when we had that discussion, they said, just out of curiosity, is there any federal support for something like that? And I said, you know, not really, at least not currently. And because, and I are working on this committee together, we've gotten a report from something called, from the National Academy, is a report called Our Common Purpose, which is focused on strengthening American democracy. And chapter four of it is focused on what they call civic bridge building. And it points out that the United States, through the National Endowment for Democracy, literally spends tens of millions of dollars each year trying to foster social cohesion and support civic bridge building as Maybe part of strengthening democracy, again, is not suggesting that we're going to agree on everything. But it is a problem if fights are breaking out at the YMCA

over pick your red or blue issue. And so the bill that William and I have put forward, we introduced a bill with 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans. It's called the Building Civic Bridges Act that would set up a pilot program to actually support these hyper-local efforts, the local YMCA that's trying to build relationships across lines of difference, the, you know, the interfaith group in my region that hosted a solidarity event after there were attacks on a number of religious institutions, including vandalism and assault and even arson, where one of our religious institutions was burned to the ground. You know, those are the type, you know, I think we understand that part of living in a diverse, pluralistic democracy is we've got to be able to live and work next to people who think and look and pray differently than we do without it coming to violence and conflict. That is something

that's important more broadly in society and is absolutely important in the United States Congress. Thank you for that. And I think that's something you said at the beginning of that kind of answers my question, which is, you said, performative conflict. We have a lot of performative conflict and maybe in a deliberative body, we want some real conflict. We want there to be actual legislative conflict or discussion of ideas. And maybe we want voters to decide which way they want to go on an issue, but we could do with less performative conflict on the way to getting there. Go ahead, sir. And let's go back to, you were talking about the historical analysis of this problem. And I think at the end of the day, our country has been most productive

when the pendulum swang back and forth lightly. You know, the House and the Senate flip, different parties are in the White House, but it was a light swing back and forth. It has gotten more and more of an aggressive swing. And now, I mean, the pendulum swings hard left and right every few years. And again, I think it's because of technology. I think it's because of social media. And we're just as a society trying to figure out how to deal with this new degree of interconnectedness. social media that they would never in a million years stay in the grocery store or at church. I mean, you know, as a society, we're just struggling to deal with it. The keyboard and the internet have really changed the way that we communicate. And I also think it's, I'm going to say this delicately. So, you know, 50 years ago, everybody knew the crazy person in the community. And the crazy person would say something, they'd be like, that person doesn't make a lot of sense. And there's a history of not making a lot of sense. But now that we're all interconnected,

all these different people of all walks of life are literally communicating with each other, and they're reinforcing their ideas. And in many cases, they're just wrong. They're just wrong. And there's a lot of challenges that we're dealing with associated with that. And I don't think we have an answer yet, but we need to find one quick because we got to get back to light adjustments in the political spectrum. We cannot have these heavy swings. Businesses cannot operate. The economy cannot operate. The economy cannot operate. Our society cannot operate if we're engaging in these hard left-right swings where just these enormous corrections do not allow anyone to plan. And it all comes back to our role in the global community and our role in the global economy. And our political structure and our

challenges associated with this are really impeding our ability to compete in the global economy and to lead in the global community. Well, that sets me up nicely for my last question I'll ask you before our next break, which is a little bit of a tricky area. I mean, I'm talking to you folks at a time when, you know, you've been talking a lot about, you know, ways to reform the institution, but a lot of our democratic institutions are being questioned by elected members of Congress in ways that we have not seen in a very long time. I mean, we had a mob storm the Capitol a couple of years ago. Representative Timmons, I know you're one of the representatives who voted against or voted to object to the electoral college results. We're seeing, like I said,

Congress people, you know, sort of questioning the foundations of our democratic institutions in new ways that to me seem a little bit in contradiction with the work that you're doing. So I want to ask, how do you look at your work in that context when that's the environment right now? It seems like a very difficult time to be doing the work you're doing. It is definitely a difficult time to be doing the work we're doing, but there's no better example of a lack of exchange of legitimate ideas than the issue of the last election. We do not have the type of honesty in the conversation. You've got one side saying stop the steal and the other side saying the big lie. And as with everything in politics, the answer is in the middle. So the question is, how have we not been able to address that in a more productive way and not a destructive way? And what do we do to make sure that we do not have these challenges going forward? And I think that's what the work of this committee is designed to do. If this Congress was sitting here saying, what happened?

The COVID changes to election laws in many states were very inappropriate. So what does that impact? And then how do we make sure it doesn't happen again and maintain maximum confidence in the outcome of our elections? Like that's the conversation we should be having. But we don't. We have half half people saying stop stealing. And I'm hopeful and I'm optimistic that this committee's work will facilitate those conversations to to really grow as an institution to where we can make sure that these things never happen. I'll just add, Adam, the dynamic you just mentioned is probably the hardest thing that I've had to navigate in my time in public service. In part because, you know, like a lot of Americans, I was pretty

traumatized by what happened on the 6th of January of last year. And, you know, part of my role as the chair of this committee, you know, when our committee was reconstructed for the 117th Congress, I sat down with every member of our committee and talked to them about what they wanted to get done and what they were hopeful about and what they were fearful of. And what was very striking was nearly every member of the committee said, I'm really worried about how our committee can proceed in a bipartisan way. And remember, our committee was established with six Democrats, six Republicans, and a requirement that we get a supermajority vote to make any recommendations. And so part of the concern

raised by nearly every member of the committee was, I don't know how to do that after the 6th of January. You had members literally saying, I'm not sure I want to get into a room with members of the opposite party. So we did something very unique. I'm not sure any other group in Congress did this. You know, we mentioned that we had a bipartisan planning retreat. The start of our bipartisan planning retreat, we brought in an outside expert in conflict resolution, and we actually talked about January 6th. And members, and it was pretty raw, and we had members who shared their perspectives. And by the end of the conversation, there was not agreement by any means. I have to tell you,

I have very strong opinions about what happened on that day and what preceded that day and what followed that day. But at the end of our conversation, there was an agreement that we would move forward on the issues on which we can find agreement and on the task at hand, which was making Congress work better for the American people. And I got to tell you, it was one of the most productive and constructive blocks of time I've had in public service. And it was one of the hardest things too. Well, thank you for that. With that, we'll take a really quick break. We'll be right back with more representatives Kilmer and Timmons. Okay, we're back with representatives Kilmer and Timmons. I get so stressed when I'm introducing people with titles.

Like, it gets me every time. I always prefer Derek. So if you want to ditch the title, you can, I only make my kids call me representative Kilmer. So. Okay. Well, we'll, we'll include that. Thank you so much, Derek and William for, uh, for, for letting me let my hair down and get a little bit casual. Um, well, we only have a few more minutes with you folks left. Uh. I'd love to talk about, you know, how do you think this impacts the average voter, right? We have a midterm election coming up, not just for the congressional midterms, but you spoke about state legislatures

as well, where a lot of these dynamics are frankly even worse than in some states than in the U.S. House of Representatives. And look, we only get one vote each, but is there a way that we can contribute to modernizing our overall political culture? Is there any recommendation you make? I'll lead off. For better or worse, I'm not sure half of our colleagues know what we're doing. So I don't think the American people are going to be weighing in at the voter at the polls based off of our work. But I take solace in that that doesn't matter. We're making changes to an incredibly important institution that impacts every American's life and really impacts the entire world. And I am confident that we have made progress thus far. We have a lot more progress to make. We're healing Congress. We're literally healing

our institution and we are bringing it into modern times. And while these changes will not be immediate. They will take years. The speaker and the minority leader do not seem like they have a very good relationship because they don't, because they don't. But in 10 years, maybe some of the recommendations we've made will cause the future speaker and the future minority leader to have a better working relationship where they're able to actually communicate and work together where they can agree. And I think that's what it's all about. And so this is a long term impact. And I'm optimistic. As I talk to my constituents, there's a handful of things that they want. They want an economy that works better for them. They want us to do what we can to reduce costs for them. But they also just want a government that works, that actually works, where their elected leaders are actually trying to solve problems with each other rather than doing performance art.

And that is really the work that our committee has been focused on. We're not focused on, you know, making political statements. We're focused on making change. It's like that Saturday Night Live commercial about the bank that only makes change, right? We make change. That's what we do. That's, you know, that's our focus on our committee. And in that regard, we've approached the work very differently than most committees in Congress. And as a consequence, we've had outcomes that are very different. Listen, if you look at these select committees, which our committee is, it's not a standing committee, it's a committee that was created for a discrete period of time. The history of these committees is not great.

You know, most of these committees, certainly in modern history, don't accomplish anything. You know, there was a committee on debt and deficit reduction that passed zero recommendations. There was a committee on budget and appropriations process reform. That passed zero recommendations. You can go all the way back to the early 90s, and nearly every select committee that's been created has done bupkis, nothing. And our committee, as William mentioned at the start, has now passed 171 recommendations, bipartisan. Two-thirds of them have either been implemented or are on a pathway to implementation, and we're going to work like heck to get the others across the finish line too, because the task at hand is to make change.

That may not drive people's votes. That may not inform the decisions that people make at the polls this November. But hopefully over time, it will mean that they have a government that they aren't embarrassed of, that they can be proud of, and that they feel like is working for them and solving their problems. I really like both of your answers. I just want to, and I'm sorry to do it, I want to end by pressing you just a little bit more, because I do find this really interesting. I think the SNL sketch you brought up is very funny, because the thing about the bank that only makes change is that it actually does nothing. That's the joke. The bank serves no purpose and they just give you four quarters with a situation where you have folks saying, hey, guess what? Look, we're all getting together and shaking hands and we've signed a bill. But you've got the experts and the public, the people who really know, the people who are actually experiencing, oh, my God, climate change or I'm not getting my veterans benefits or whatever it is, saying, well, hold on a second. You guys all shook hands for the cameras, but the thing that actually needed to get done didn't get done.

And now that's a hypothetical, but I think there was a lot of that happening in the 40s and 50s, which is why I mentioned it earlier. So I guess that's my question. Do you feel that there is any conflict there between the goal of smoothing out the process and actually making progress on particular issues that you feel are real and salient and true

and not everybody agrees on them? Top three that came to mind. And by the way, these were not smoothing out the edges. These are institutional reforms that are painful and that we've gotten pushback on, you know, being in session. At least 50 percent more is something that's not easy. It's going to take leadership to to to sacrifice certain variables to re empower members to do their jobs. And so time, like I started out with, is huge. If we're in

session 50% more next Congress than we were last Congress, that's not easy to do, but it's important. Another one is staffing. So we got so much, well, I got a lot of grief because we encouraged the appropriators to increase our members' representational allocation, our budgets, our office budgets, to allow us to pay our staff more. And then we can now pay our teams 200 plus thousand dollars, whereas before they could only make 174. That wasn't easy. That was actually really hard. And I had to answer a lot of constituents that are trying to say that we're giving ourselves a pay increase. I'm like, no, no, no. I'm trying to get the most qualified people to be in charge of the most important branch of government. So, you know, that wasn't easy. And we made a big change, like a huge change to where we can pay people what they deserve to stay on the Hill, as opposed to go downtown and

make two or three times more. And again, I don't think that the civility stuff can be under the importance of it is just, it's going to be incredible. When, when in a couple years, more members have a broader friend group, because they've spent time with people on the other side of the aisle. When we remove the next freshman class from a silo of red shirt, blue shirts, where they spend time and they build relationships, that's going to be a generational change and it's going to have a huge impact. And then the stuff we're doing with committees, with space, all these things, a huge impact. And then the stuff we're doing with committees, with space, all these things, this was not easy. And we've gotten a lot of pushback on it because a lot of people have been here for decades and they just want things to continue the way they are because that's just

how people that have been around for 30, 40 years want to continue. And so it hasn't been easy. It was not smoothing out the edges. It was hard work. And I think we've made a lot of progress and I'm looking forward to seeing the impact it makes long term. I would just add, you know, to William's point, I do think that the work we've done on civility and collaboration is helpful. It's not the only thing we've done. I know it's been the bulk of what we've talked about in this discussion with you, Adam, but, you know, the issues related to what you had seen over a long period of time was basically the institution self-lobotomizing. And as a consequence, you watch things like the Facebook hearings from a year or two back, and the American public watches that and says, dear God, my elected officials don't know anything about this topic.

And that's right. Yeah, I was watching. And that is that is not an accident, right? That is because the institution has largely self-lobotomized. And so when you make changes that say, let's improve the ability of a committee to hire and hang on to competent people, When you institute changes that say both staff and members of Congress can have professional development opportunities so that they get smarter and better at their jobs, that's not cosmetic. That actually empowers, that builds capacity for an institution. And listen, we've leaned on management consultants.

We've leaned on political scientists. We've leaned on all sorts of experts who are focused on how do you improve an institution? How do you strengthen organizational performance? And so most of these recommendations were crafted not with, you know, Derek and William, you know, sitting with a whiteboard. They've been crafted leaning on experts who know how to make institutions function better. Yeah. And I really like also your emphasis. You talked about data. You talked about bringing experts into the process. And there are so many, you know, for the issues that I'm concerned about, where there is a fact of the matter,

getting the fact of the matter spread more within the institution and having more agreement on what those facts are, I could see that being a benefit as well. To not have a self-lobotomized institution. So look, thank you for entertaining my skepticism. And I think there's a lot that's really fascinating about the work that you're doing.

And I thank you so much for being here. This is when I normally ask people to plug their book or their Twitter accounts. But I guess you guys have Twitter accounts. Where can people find you to follow? Where can people find the work of the committee if they want to follow the work of the committee? You can follow our work at modernizedcongress.house.gov. You can actually watch our hearings. You can look at the recommendations we've made. You can see the work that we're going to be doing in the weeks and months ahead. And if you want to, on our site, there's a button to follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

I'm Rep. Derek Kilmer on Twitter. And William, go ahead. I'm Rep. Timmons on Twitter. And you can be my 15th or 16th follower. It'll be great. You'll gain two or three from this interview, I'm sure. Thank you so much for being here, Representatives Kilmer and Timmons.

It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Enjoyed it. Thanks for having us. Well, thank you to the congressman for coming on this show. I hope that you enjoyed it. If you have any thoughts, feel free to send me an email

at factually at adamconover.net. And I want to thank our producer, Sam Roudman, our engineer, Kyle McGraw, and everybody who supports this show at the $15 a month level on Patreon. That's Adrian, Alexi Battleov, Allison Lipparato, Alan Liska, Ann Slagle, Antonio LB, Ashley, Aurelio Jimenez, Beth Brevik, Kamu and Lego, Charles Anderson, Chase Thompson-Bowe, Chris Mullins, Chris Staley, Courtney Henderson, David Condry, David Conover, Drill Bill, Dude with Games, Eben Lowe, Ethan Jennings, Hilary Wolkin, Jim Myers, Jim Shelton, Julia Russell,

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