In our current system, Congress’s crazy behavior is actually rational 

There’s no shortage of vital issues facing our country at the moment: rising gas prices, the ongoing war in Iran, concerns on the unfettered expansion of artificial intelligence. This is to say nothing of longer-term issues like immigration, healthcare and housing affordability, that continue to go untouched. 

Meanwhile, Congress, the institution constitutionally assigned to tackle these vexing national problems, is nowhere to be found. Both the House and Senate are closed, and their members are off campaigning for re-election.  

Unsurprisingly, the disparagement of Congress is unrelenting. Only 16 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. Critics claim that members are either uninterested in doing their job or more focused on showboating and gaining social media impressions than legislating.  

But we may be looking at the problem the wrong way. Yes, legislators have chosen to campaign rather than govern. Yes, many of them devote substantial portions of their time to dishing out insults on social media, playing gotcha in hearings and attending fundraisers with deep-pocketed interests.  

Icky as all those things are, they are rational behaviors designed to improve their odds of being re-elected. As we found in a recent report issued by American Enterprise Institute and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins, members are strategic actors reacting to the incentives before them.

Legislators want to persuade enough voters to pick them on the ballot. This is why they are back in their home states raising money to run campaign ads rather than debating and deciding what to do about our nation’s problems.  

But why are........

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