Congress is often accused of failing to execute the business of the nation either effectively or efficiently. This might be true when it comes to matters of legislation, but I’m not here to critique the machinations of party politics. A critical and yet overlooked verdict on the business of the nation lies in the internal leadership and management of congressional offices, which typically suffer from a lack of clear strategy, with no real organizational structure or developmental opportunities.

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Some of the nation's top political commentators, legislators and intellectuals offer insight into the biggest question burning up the blogosphere today.


Today's question:


Will Democrats take a hit in the midterm elections over Rep. Charles Rangel's ethics trial?

Earlier this month, President Obama stated that he would push forward the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, along with those of Panama and South Korea, “as soon as possible.” This announcement came amid a concerted White House effort to appear more pro-business and was touted as an important step to fulfilling the president’s promise to double exports within five years.

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Two man-made disasters have hit the Gulf Coast: the BP oil spill and the president’s moratorium on energy production. A third disaster is scheduled for a vote in the House today.

Two hundred twenty-six days before the Deepwater Horizon rig collapsed, the Consolidated Land, Energy, and Aquatic Resources (CLEAR) Act was introduced in the House. A repackaged version is now being sold as a response to the BP oil spill.

This bill has much less to do with preventing another spill than it does preventing domestic energy production and destroying jobs.

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Across the United States, discussions involving the state of Arizona’s recently enacted immigration enforcement law became very impassioned. Simultaneously, many Americans expressed concern surrounding the lawsuit filed by the Obama administration to prevent the law's implementation. Unfortunately, a very serious point was lost in the discourse.

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It takes 71-year-old Sedoisa a lot of energy to bend down and dig the earth, her wrinkled hands attesting to a long life spent working in the field. Those were other times. Now words are not enough, and with a simple gesture of her hand she expresses that she has nothing to bring to her mouth.

Today, she is one of the 10 million people across Niger, Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and parts of northern Nigeria facing devastating hunger.

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The economy in our home state of Washington relies heavily on exports. Success of this vital economic driver depends on products moving efficiently from farms and factories in Midwestern, Mountain and Western states over various transportation modes to our ports and to markets abroad. One job in three in Washington depends on trade. And in 2009, we exported over $51 billion worth of goods — making us fourth in the nation for exports and first in the nation for exports per capita.

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Congressional Democrats, and the Democratic Party as a whole, are at a real turning point. The stakes are not only control of the public agenda over the next two years but also the possibility of a national political realignment in 2012.

Democrats appear not to recognize what brought them to their present perilous state or to have thought through their tactics for survival in November's off-year elections.

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Today, Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-chair Congresswoman Woolsey and I co-hosted a briefing to discuss the most pressing foreign policy issue facing our country today — the war in Afghanistan.

As the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s Afghanistan Taskforce, I am very interested in ensuring that the Progressive Caucus and the rest of my colleagues in Congress have sufficient information to make informed decisions about this war.

We are at a very dangerous and difficult time in this war.