THE WASHINGTON UNION PAPERS: NO. 1

A GOVERNMENT THAT WORKS: ENDING POLITICAL DYSFUNCTION

To the People of the United States,

There comes a time in the life of every nation when it must ask itself whether the institutions upon which it was built still serve the cause for which they were created. When a government no longer moves, when its limbs are frozen by inaction, when its voice is drowned out by the clamor of self-interest, when its purpose has been reduced to the simple act of existing rather than governing, then the people have not only the right but the duty to demand its reform. We stand at such a moment now. We are governed, but we are not led. We are represented, but we are not heard. We are a republic in name, but we are no longer a republic in action.

It is no great revelation to say that our system is broken. That much is felt in every corner of the country, in every household that suffers under the weight of a government that cannot seem to legislate, cannot seem to compromise, cannot seem to act. It is a government that fights itself, that wages war not on poverty or injustice or decay, but on its own ability to function. And while the men and women elected to serve bicker and obstruct, the people wait. They wait for the bridges to be repaired, for the cost of medicine to be brought down, for their voices to carry weight beyond the ballot box, for the hope that their government—their government—will at last rise from its paralysis and prove itself worthy of the trust they have placed in it.

This paralysis is not an accident. It is not the result of an unforeseen malfunction in our political machine. It is the direct and predictable consequence of a system that has been allowed to serve itself rather than its people. Our government has not lost its power—it has abandoned its purpose. Those who sit in its halls and chambers have not forgotten how to legislate—they have simply chosen not to, preferring instead the comfort of endless campaigns, the safety of inaction, and the rewards of serving the powerful over the duty of serving the public.

We must make no mistake: A nation that cannot govern itself cannot long endure. And if we wish to endure—not merely as a people, not merely as a land, but as a great and righteous force for justice, progress, and human dignity—then we must confront, without hesitation or apology, the failures that have led us to this hour.

The first and most glaring of these failures is the breakdown of our legislative process. The Congress of the United States, once the beating heart of our democracy, has become a monument to inertia. Legislation that would improve the lives of millions dies before it ever reaches the floor. Essential reforms are abandoned not because they are without merit, but because they are without partisan advantage. The filibuster, once a safeguard for debate, has been transformed into a blockade against progress. Compromise, that great instrument of democratic governance, is now regarded as weakness rather than wisdom. The work of the people is not done because the people’s representatives have found it more convenient not to do it.

And so, the roads crumble. The steel rusts, the bridges sag, and the wires that carry power to the homes of millions remain suspended upon poles that should have been replaced decades ago. The water that runs through lead-lined pipes poisons the children who drink from it, the levees that should hold firm against rising waters weaken with every passing storm, and the hospitals meant to be sanctuaries of healing are overburdened, understaffed, and crumbling beneath the weight of a system that has long since stopped investing in itself. This is the inheritance of a nation whose government has chosen not to govern. This is the reality for a people who have been promised much but delivered little, whose patience has been tested by leaders who speak in grand visions yet leave behind only the ruins of what once was.

It is not for lack of means that we suffer these indignities. It is not for lack of wealth that our roads fracture beneath our feet or our trains crawl upon tracks laid a century ago. No, it is for lack of will. It is for lack of leadership. It is for lack of a government that sees beyond the present, beyond the short-term horizon of election cycles, beyond the comfortable indifference that allows those in power to call inaction prudence, to call neglect responsibility, to call stagnation wisdom. And so, we drive upon highways riddled with potholes that damage our cars and delay our journeys, as our leaders delay the repairs. We cross bridges that groan beneath the weight of time, as our politicians groan at the thought of spending the money required to reinforce them. We suffer through power outages that shut down entire cities, disruptions that in other nations would be deemed catastrophic yet here are accepted as routine, because we have been made to believe that the expectation of modernity is an unreasonable demand.

There was a time when we built. There was a time when we did not simply inherit the works of our forebears but sought to surpass them. There was a time when America laid tracks across an untamed land, when it raised towers into the sky, when it poured concrete and steel not merely to replace the old but to bring forth the new. What happened to that nation? What happened to that ambition? When did we decide that our best days lay behind us? When did we consent to the slow degradation of all that was once grand? For make no mistake—consent is what they require. The people must be made to believe that they cannot demand better, that they must accept the decay, that this decline is natural, inevitable, permanent.

But decline is not natural. It is not an inevitability. It is a choice. And it is a choice that has been made for us, by those who will never suffer the consequences of it. It is not their roads that crack, for they do not drive upon them. It is not their water that poisons, for they drink from sources untouched by contamination. It is not their homes that flood when the dams break, their businesses that fail when the grid collapses, their neighborhoods that are left to crumble when investment is diverted elsewhere. The consequences of inaction do not touch them, and so they feel no urgency to act.

And yet, the cost of inaction is borne by all. The economy slows when goods cannot move across a failing infrastructure. Opportunities dwindle when entire communities remain disconnected from the power of modern transit. Lives are lost when the systems meant to sustain them fail at the moment they are needed most. And through it all, the nation that once led the world in engineering, in ambition, in the unshakable belief that progress was not merely possible but necessary, finds itself slipping further behind, watching as others build what we have refused to maintain.

Who benefits from this? Who prospers when nothing moves? The answer is not the American worker, who loses time and wages to broken roads and unreliable transportation. It is not the small business owner, whose goods cannot reach markets fast enough to compete. It is not the student, whose school crumbles around them, nor the parent, who fears the safety of the infrastructure their children must navigate. No, the ones who benefit are those who profit from inertia. The ones who stand to gain are those who see in decay not a crisis but an opportunity—an opportunity to extract, to privatize, to hold hostage the very functions of government they have refused to allow to operate. For when the public sphere is left to rot, the private interests step in, not to fix, not to restore, but to sell back to the people what should have been theirs all along.

The question before us is not whether we have the resources to repair what is broken. The question is whether we have the will to demand it, whether we have the courage to reject the slow march toward decay and declare, with unmistakable resolve, that this nation will not fall into ruin simply because those who have been entrusted with its care have failed to do their duty. The time for hesitation has passed. The work of rebuilding must begin now, or we will be left with nothing but the memory of what might have been.

And yet, inaction alone does not account for the full scope of our predicament. For we are not merely burdened by a government that refuses to act—we are burdened by a government that actively undermines itself. The weaponization of government shutdowns has turned our own institutions against us, transforming the simple act of funding the republic into a contest of brinkmanship, where the livelihoods of federal workers, the stability of our economy, and the security of our nation are treated as bargaining chips in an endless game of political leverage. There is no justification—none—for allowing the operations of the people’s government to be halted by those who are charged with its preservation. And yet, time and time again, we see our leaders willingly, even eagerly, march us toward the cliff’s edge, confident that they will not be the ones who fall.

Let us be clear: A government that shuts itself down is not a government at all. It is an institution that has abdicated its most basic responsibility, a body that has chosen to surrender rather than govern. It is a monument to failure, a declaration that those who have been elected to lead have instead chosen paralysis. And yet, we have been made to believe that this dysfunction is natural, that government shutdowns are an unavoidable occurrence, that they are merely the consequence of political disagreement. But there is nothing natural about a government that ceases to function. There is nothing inevitable about the manufactured crisis of a shutdown. It is a choice—one made deliberately by those who would rather wield chaos as a weapon than engage in the hard work of governing.

A shutdown is not a moment of pause, not a brief interlude in the business of governance. It is an act of sabotage. It is a deliberate decision to grind the gears of government to a halt, to leave the people stranded in uncertainty, to demonstrate, in the clearest terms possible, that those entrusted with power would rather see the nation falter than find a path forward. And who suffers for it? Not those who orchestrate it, not those who, from the comfort of their well-insulated offices, declare their refusal to fund the very system they were elected to maintain. No, it is the workers who rely on their paychecks, the families who depend on public services, the small businesses that lose customers when uncertainty spreads like a disease through the economy. It is the traveler whose flight is delayed because air traffic controllers are stretched beyond their limits. It is the scientist whose research is put on hold because the funds that sustain their work have been frozen in the throes of political posturing. It is the veteran waiting for benefits that are now trapped in bureaucratic limbo. These are the victims of a government that chooses to abandon its post.

The architects of these shutdowns will tell you that they are acts of principle, that they are necessary battles in the struggle for fiscal discipline or ideological purity. But this is a lie. The shutdown is not a weapon of the principled; it is the refuge of the incompetent. It is the tactic of those who lack the ability to govern through consensus, who lack the will to do the work that governance requires. It is, in essence, an admission of failure. It is the declaration of those in power that they would rather let the nation suffer than compromise, that they would rather see hardship spread across the land than seek common ground.

There are nations that do not have a word for "government shutdown" because the concept itself is unthinkable. To them, the idea that a government, entrusted with the wellbeing of its people, would voluntarily cease its operations is as absurd as a doctor walking away from the operating table in the middle of surgery, as laughable as a firefighter abandoning a blaze because they cannot agree on which hose to use. And yet, in the United States, shutdowns have become a fixture of political life, a tool as common as a filibuster, as accepted as the next election cycle. We have been conditioned to believe that this is simply how things work. But this is not how things work—this is how things break.

And break they have. With each shutdown, the damage spreads. Trust in government erodes, not only among the people but within the very institutions that are meant to uphold the republic. Civil servants, who once entered their professions with a sense of duty, now see their work as uncertain, their livelihoods at the mercy of politicians who treat them as collateral. Investors grow wary, knowing that the economy itself can be thrown into turmoil at the whim of legislative deadlock. International allies and adversaries alike watch with astonishment, seeing in our dysfunction not the image of a strong and stable superpower but that of a nation that cannot even keep its own doors open.

If a government cannot guarantee its own continuity, if it cannot assure its people that the services upon which they rely will remain intact, then it is no longer a government but an unstable regime, a fragile institution that can collapse not from external attack, but from its own internal decay. And if we are to be honest, if we are to look at this crisis for what it truly is, then we must admit that this is not a crisis of funding, nor is it a crisis of partisanship. It is a crisis of competence. It is a crisis of accountability. It is a crisis of will.

It is said that a house divided against itself cannot stand, but I say that a house that does not function is no house at all. And no nation, not even one as great as ours, can afford to be governed by such a house. For governance is not a game. It is not a spectacle. It is not a performance designed for the benefit of television audiences and campaign strategists. It is an obligation. It is a duty. And those who shirk that duty, those who turn governance into theater and shutdowns into weapons, are unworthy of the offices they hold.

But beyond the paralysis, beyond the manufactured crises, there exists a still greater danger, one that infects every level of our government and every aspect of our politics. Corruption—both the kind that is spoken of in whispers and the kind that is paraded openly as if it were virtue—has made a business of governance. Money flows through Washington like a great river, shaping policy, buying influence, ensuring that those who sit in the seats of power answer not to the people, but to the wealthy few who fund their campaigns, who offer them lucrative positions when they leave office, who whisper into their ears while the people cry out in vain.

We are told that this is simply the way of things. That money will always find its way into politics, that those who can afford to have influence will always wield it. But such excuses are the refuge of the complacent, the justification of those who benefit from a system designed to exclude the very people it claims to represent. We cannot accept this. We must not accept this. If we are to reclaim our government, if we are to restore the sacred trust between the governed and those who govern, then we must sever the ties between power and profit. We must ban the trading of stocks by members of Congress who write the very laws that shape the market. We must end the ability of corporations and billionaires to buy elections through dark money. We must impose term limits so that public service remains a duty, not a career path to wealth and influence. We must ensure that the halls of power belong not to the highest bidder, but to the people whose voices have too long been drowned out.

If we fail to act, if we resign ourselves to the belief that nothing can change, then we will have accepted the slow death of our republic. But if we stand, if we demand better, if we refuse to be governed by dysfunction, then we will prove that the promise of this nation has not yet been broken. We will prove that our government can serve once more, that our representatives can legislate once more, that the machinery of democracy can turn once more, not for the benefit of the few, but for the welfare of all.

The moment for timidity has passed. The hour has come for those who still believe in the promise of this republic to rise, not in anger alone, but in conviction, in resolve, in the clear and unwavering determination that a government of the people must, at last, return to the people. We have seen what happens when leadership is abdicated, when duty is set aside in favor of political theatrics, when the mechanisms of governance are neglected until they rust and break under their own weight. We have seen the consequences of delay, of evasion, of empty words spoken into the void while roads collapse, while power grids fail, while costs rise and wages stagnate, while trust erodes, not in a slow and steady march, but in an avalanche of disillusionment. The American people have waited long enough.

No longer can we accept excuses from those who hold power yet refuse to wield it for the good of the nation. No longer can we accept the notion that governance must be paralyzed by partisan infighting, that we must resign ourselves to cycles of dysfunction that serve only the ambitions of those who profit from chaos. If government is to serve, it must do so deliberately, with purpose, with discipline, and with an unshakable commitment to progress. The time has come for action, not in the form of hollow slogans or symbolic gestures, but through systemic, structural change that reclaims our institutions from those who have twisted them into instruments of stagnation.

If government is to be worthy of the trust of its people, then it must prove itself. It must break free from the self-imposed shackles of short-term thinking and commit itself once again to the grand and noble task of nation-building. It must see beyond the narrow confines of the election cycle, beyond the demands of donors and lobbyists, beyond the petty battles of partisan theater, and look instead toward the great horizon of the future, where the well-being of generations yet unborn depends upon the choices we make now. This is not a matter of left or right, nor of faction or ideology—it is a matter of survival. It is a matter of whether this republic will endure as a beacon of democratic strength, or whether it will collapse under the weight of its own neglected foundation.

There will be those who say that reform is impossible, that the system is too entrenched, that the levers of power are too firmly held in the grip of those who benefit from inaction. But such voices are not the voices of history-makers; they are not the voices of those who have ever changed the world. For every great transformation, for every leap forward in the cause of justice and prosperity, there have been those who doubted, those who dismissed, those who said it could not be done. But the course of human progress is written not by the doubters, but by those who defy them. By those who see the decay and demand renewal. By those who refuse to accept that decline is inevitable, that injustice must be tolerated, that the failures of today must be the failures of tomorrow. This is the creed of those who build, who push forward, who shape history with their hands and their will. It must be our creed now.

We must demand, with a voice too strong to be ignored, that our government function as it was intended. That it pass laws not as a rare feat, but as a regular and expected duty. That it safeguard the economy not through crisis-to-crisis brinkmanship, but through foresight and responsibility. That it refuse to bow to the influence of moneyed interests that have turned democracy into an auction. That it hold itself accountable not merely in word, but in action, and that those who fail to govern be cast aside so that those who will may rise in their place. We must demand that government not merely exist, but that it serve—that it be not a spectator to the nation’s struggles, but the hand that builds, that repairs, that strengthens.

This is the work before us. This is the task that history has placed upon our shoulders. And though it may be great, though the road ahead may be difficult, it is not beyond us. For the American people have never shrunk from the call of duty, have never turned away from the hard work of progress, have never accepted that what is broken must remain so. And we will not accept it now. The renewal of our republic is not a thing to be wished for—it is a thing to be won. And win it, we shall. But before victory, there must be understanding. Before we can rebuild, we must examine the roots of our decline, not merely its symptoms. The work ahead is long, but the time to begin is now.