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A record number of lawmakers are calling it quits ahead of the midterm elections next year. More than 40 people in the House won't be running for reelection in their current seats, but more than a dozen former members from both parties told NPR congressional correspondent Barbara Sprunt that legislative stagnation and low morale aren't new. They've been building over time.
BARBARA SPRUNT, BYLINE: Democrat Jim Cooper of Tennessee has seen Congress go through a lot. He was first elected during the Reagan administration and retired two years ago. And he has a pretty blunt diagnosis for the House.
JIM COOPER: Congress is in a coma. It has a pulse but not many brain waves.
SPRUNT: And the proof, he says, is a historic 43-day shutdown, where members of the House were sent back home. But Cooper says this is about more than just a shutdown.
COOPER: The Constitution intended Congress to be the most important branch of the government. But now Congress is so functionless. It's taken itself out of the game.
SPRUNT: He's not alone in that concern. Former members say Congress is not fulfilling its core constitutional duties, like declaring war, power of the purse and oversight of the executive branch. They say executive overreach has been happening over time, but it's gotten worse under President Trump who has gone further than past presidents to usurp congressional power.
DANIEL LIPINSKI: I love Congress, and it pains me what has become of it.
SPRUNT: That's Daniel Lipinski, an Illinois Democrat. He recently met with current members who said they're upset that the power in Congress is increasingly top down.
LIPINSKI: The speaker's office will tell a committee chair this is what we want to see in this bill. This is what we don't want in this bill. And there's just a lot of frustration over that amongst members 'cause they know that's where they can have an impact. And if the committees aren't working, then they don't have an opportunity to be a legislator.
SPRUNT: Wisconsin Republican Reid Ribble agrees.
REID RIBBLE: Being a member of the House of Representatives today is more like an honorary position with no actual authority whatsoever.
SPRUNT: Because of Senate budget rules, increasingly, the majority party tries to cram as much of its agenda into big bills. And if a measure isn't in it, it's hard for it to succeed later. And Ribble says, in the meantime, the House just votes on other bills they know have no real future.
RIBBLE: I got tired of just voting on a bunch of messaging bills that were never going to be taken up by the Senate, that were all pretend.
SPRUNT: Members say the job has a personal toll, too. Here's Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican.
FRED UPTON: If you're in a district like mine, 650 miles away from D.C., you're gone half the time. So you're missing you know, birthdays, school events, you know, reading the paper or taking a walk with your spouse.
SPRUNT: Michigan Democrat Dan Kildee says there's always been trade-offs.
DAN KILDEE: Many of us were willing to do that because we saw a purpose. You know, you can actually feel like, at the end of a week or end of a month, you can look at what you did and see that you made a difference in somebody's life. And it was you making it happen, whereas now, it's much more difficult to see that.
SPRUNT: Adding to this are rising threats against lawmakers. The Capitol Police estimates it investigated 14,000 threats against members this year alone. Here's Democrat Cheri Bustos of Illinois.
CHERI BUSTOS: Look, my husband was a sheriff of our county. Every time we went out, he was armed. You know, so I had a level of security, at least when I was with my husband, that I didn't have to pay for. But those are the realities of what families have to live with, what elected officials have to live with. And you have to make a decision, you know, are you OK with that?
SPRUNT: Democrat Anna Eshoo of California says the rise of threats has tracked with the rise of hyper partisanship, something she says makes the work of Congress even harder.
ANNA ESHOO: I got to the point where I wanted to have a conversation with a Republican colleague. When I approached them, I want you to know that I don't view you as my enemy. I mean, isn't that something that I felt like I needed to say that?
SPRUNT: Members say it's all of these things combined - the gridlock, the threats, the lack of bipartisanship - that creates an environment that leads to people leaving. But Cooper, the longtime Tennessee Democrat, says despite all these challenges, he still encourages people to run for Congress.
COOPER: We need more good people to run, and it takes energy. It takes caring. It takes good ideas for how to fix problems. But our country is worth fixing.
SPRUNT: Barbara Sprunt, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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