Ben Sasse: ‘The Senate Is a Broken Institution, the Congress Is a Broken Institution’

EXCERPT:

SASSE: "I have three kids ranging from 7 to 17 and they've learned early on they weren’t going to get a lot out of this. The Senate is a broken institution. The Congress is a broken institution. We don’t deliberate about long-term things. You all have an important role to help narrate what’s happening in American life, but senators shouldn’t aspire to be pundits all day every day. Most people’s goals here are short term popularity and news hits and sort of middle-term reelection. There's very little long-term thinking about what the country needs. And when the data shows high school kids in America can’t pass basic civic tests, they don't know we have three branches of the government, they think the First Amendment is dangerous because you might use your free speech to say something that hurts somebody else's feelings. We have long-term crisis of civics and public trust in this country and these hearings this week haven't made any of that better, we have made it worse."