Passing along an interesting read on the epic dysfunction of our current Congress, courtesy of Esquire:
Not long ago, animated by the public mood about Congress and its current historic ineptitude and extremism, we decided to talk to members of Congress, from both houses and both parties, to find out what their problem was. And they started talking, often at length and in surprisingly thoughtful ways, about their jobs. I ended up talking to ninety members—a third of the Senate, more than a tenth of the House. They have all been eager to talk, as if they wanted to get something off their chest. They represent the full ideological spectrum, and the full florid bouquet of American accents, and an almost astonishing variety of biography. There are women combat veterans and Hindus and members who take their oath of office with left hand on the Bhagavad Gita—and all of that is just one congresswoman, Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. There are preachers and physicists and car salesmen and former All-Pro tackles and civil-rights heroes. There are hard ideologues and conciliators, partisan warriors and declared independents. Some are voluble, some are terse, some are jovial and defiant, some have just about had it and seem depressed. "That's what happens when you don't have meaningful work," says a Democratic congresswoman from New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham.
The big takeaway is that many Congresscritters - both Dem and Repub - know Congress is messed up, know what went wrong and even know how it all could be fixed but lack the courage and selflessness to do so.
Oh, and that Senator Ted Cruz is despised by his fellow politicians on both sides of the aisle:
There is plenty of blame to go around, he says—the Democrats in the Senate, for instance, what a disaster—but there is only one guy this conservative Republican congressman does acknowledge enmity for by name, and it's not Harry Reid or Barack Obama. "If you talk to Ted Cruz," he says, "tell him to stay on his side of the Capitol. We have enough problems without that idiot coming over here and screwing things up."
[...] From many members in both houses of Congress, I have heard bipartisan loathing for Senator Cruz of Texas. Hardly an era of good feeling, but it's a start. "No one here respects that guy," Congressman Kurt Schrader of Oregon, a Democrat, tells me. "And yet he has this great following outside the building. And no one respects him in his own party in the Senate."
Lengthy article, but worth your time.