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The Conversation
The Conversation
Politics
Lorelei Kelly, Research Lead, Modernizing Congress, McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University

The technology that runs Congress lags so far behind the modern world that its flag-tracking system just caught up to 2017-era Pizza Hut

Tracking one of these items to your door has been possible since 2017 – tracking the other is all new. FTiare/iStock / Getty Images Plus

On a typical day, you can’t turn on the news without hearing someone say that Congress is broken. The implication is that this dereliction explains why the institution is inert and unresponsive to the American people.

There’s one element often missing from that discussion: Congress is confounding in large part because its members can’t hear the American people, or even each other. I mean that literally. Congressional staff serve in thousands of district offices across the nation, and their communications technology doesn’t match that of most businesses and even many homes.

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