BY BILL PITTS

It has been 20 years since insurgent Republicans in the House of Representatives made a “Contract with America,” promising changes in public policy, but also promising to run the House in a different way.

Now, it is time for Republicans and Democrats in both chambers to pledge anew to a serious review of how the Congress has sunk to such low esteem in the eyes of its constituents and start the lengthy process of regaining their credibility and self-respect.

Patrick Henry referred to history as the “lamp of experience” to see more clearly the past than the present, and also to be used as a guide for the future.

It is again time to reflect on the past as it offers valuable experiences and important lessons for reform. It is not enough for the public to be informed about what is done, but how it is done as well. Any examination must determine whether Congress is representing the will of the people through its actions.

The current Congress again faces the prospect of failing to complete its duty to fully debate how to fund the government before the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year.

The effort and message now for both parties should be clear-cut: Congress, heal thyself.

Legislative procedures have always been difficult for citizens to understand. They are arcane and complex, but are the tools with which legislators exercise power, and the more those procedures are cloaked in mystery, the more they are abused or abrogated and the more unaccountable to their constituents those legislators become.

That was the case with the secrecy and control exercised by the autocratic chairman of the 1950s and 60s. It continues today with the dictates of some in leadership who have assumed dictatorial control over the legislative agenda and discourse.

Both parties have presided over a systemic dismantling of the “regular order,” the application of traditional procedures.

The budget process has been ignored. Consideration of individual appropriation bills has been half-hearted or not done at all. Conference committees between the House and Senate to resolve their differences on legislation have become a relic of the past.

The result has been repeated and excessive reliance on passage of “Continuing Resolutions” or approval of the nation’s entire budget in an “Omnibus Spending Bill” with a single up-or-down vote, and rarely completed by the start of the fiscal year.

It is not enough that Congress cannot complete its basic fiscal responsibilities each year, the emasculation of the budget process makes it impossible for Congress to address the real problem: out-of-control entitlement spending. Instead members fall back on the meat-ax approach of sequestration: across-the-board cuts to restrain so-called discretionary spending. This institutional failure in Congressional budgeting is adversely affecting our country’s military and homeland security at a time when dangerous and hostile conflicts dot the globe on nearly every continent.

The authorization process is not faring much better, as House and Senate committees fail to address spending programs under their jurisdiction. The Department of Homeland Security, one of the largest federal agencies with $60 billion in annual spending, hasn’t been “authorized” since its creation in 2002. Congress has failed to direct the department’s activities on immigration, transportation security, cyber security, and protection of the nation against a terrorist attack. This is just one department among many that annually receive several hundred billions of taxpayers’ funds without a statute authorizing how the monies are to be spent.

Whenever Members of Congress fund programs without authorizations, they have all but given the President the power to spend as he wishes.

The authorization process is the mechanism by which congress can evaluate and oversee that programs are properly administered. While diplomatic and consular programs have nearly tripled since the last authorization in 2002, the issues raised over the Benghazi attack have highlighted concern about how much focus there has been on diplomatic security.

Congress historically has examined its organization and procedures on a regular basis. But that last happened in 1993, when a joint committee review was the basis for much of the “Contract’s” procedural changes in the House.

The subcommittee hearing of the House Rules Committee demonstrates that the latest generation of House members desire change as most of the discussion over the rules that should govern next Congress was about a return to regular order.

It is time for the authorizing committees to meet and determine which programs should be authorized, or not. It is past time for the Appropriators to control “the power of the purse” and act on the 12 annual appropriation bills.

It is time for Congress to “heal itself.” Its elected representatives must address how they exercise their constitutional responsibilities in a rapidly changing nation and world, and how they can best express the will of the people.

Editor’s Note: Billy Pitts worked for 28 years in the House of Representatives, as former Staff Director of the House Rules Committee under Chairman Dreier; Floor Assistant and Parliamentary/Policy Expert for House Republican Leader Robert H. Michel; Recipient of the House’s highest staff honor: The McCormack Award of Excellence.