Promoting Bipartisanship in an era of Polarization: The House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress
In 2019, amid record high levels of political polarization, the US House of Representatives established a Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress. The committee’s goal was to “make Congress work better for the American people,” and from the beginning, the chair, Rep. Derek Kilmer, a Democrat from Washington state, was determined to do so in a bipartisan manner. Kilmer and his fellow committee members faced a number of challenges. Some of the challenges were expected, such as figuring out how to do the committee’s work and build consensus. Some were unexpected, such as a global pandemic that kept committee members physically apart and the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, which strained relationships among committee members. The committee wrapped up its work after four years. It accomplished some modest structural and operational reforms, but perhaps more important, it built strong bipartisan relationships among its members and modeled a way of working together in Congress across differences.
Martha Coven and Elliot Mamet drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in July, August, and September 2024. Case published November 2024