U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Saks) believes too many members of Congress are more concerned with getting attention on cable news and social media than they are with passing good legislation.
Rogers, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, discussed the gridlock in Washington during a recent appearance on Alabama Public Television’s “Capitol Journal.”
“It’s exasperating I can’t overstate,” Rogers said. “When I first got there in 2002, we were still passing legislation. In fact, we authored the appropriations bills, there are 12, and we’ll pass all 12 of them on time separately every year. That hasn’t been the case since 2010. Now it’s always packages. We’re the only standing committee that passes authorization bills now. They’re all frozen with this gridlock. It is exasperating.”
The congressman blamed the current incentive structure in social media for some of the problems in today’s political process.
“I’m of the opinion cable TV and social media is what’s really driving this problem,” he argued. “Because in cable TV, you know these different cable news networks, and they are so-called news, because they’re really opinion networks, they pick a business model that goes into a certain demographic and they really pander to that and they keep them stirred up to keep the eyeballs on TV.
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“And all that stuff creates some hostility in itself. And in social media, it’s just taking gas and throwing it on the buyer.”
Rogers said one of the main reasons politicians try to get more attention online is because that’s where much of their current fundraising originates.
“We have members that their sole source of fundraising is online,” he said. “And the way they get the online contributions is to do something outrageous on camera, whether it’s on the floor in committee or whatever, that they can tweet out, X out I guess, to get the small dollar donors, and they raised enormous sums of money doing it.”
He also admitted the problems created by social media are probably not going away anytime soon.
“So I don’t know the answer,” he said. “I don’t think social media is going away anytime soon, or our cable TV networks, but it has really distorted the process.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” Weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee
