Congress put up the gone campaigning sign

There is something profoundly wrong with Washington when the people elected to legislate decide that legislating has become an inconvenience.

The House has effectively ended its legislative work until after Election Day, sending members home with weeks remaining before voters cast their ballots. Election-year recesses are nothing new, but Congress canceling additional scheduled voting days before that recess only reinforces the perception that campaigning has become more important than governing.

Americans do not get to tell their employers they need weeks away from work because they are trying to keep their jobs. Congress apparently operates differently.

Meanwhile, the national debt keeps growing. Inflation does not take a recess. International crises do not consult the congressional calendar. Immigration, housing, energy, government spending and countless other issues remain unresolved.

Yet lawmakers went home.

This also exposes a fundamental misunderstanding about presidential power. Americans increasingly blame presidents for everything Washington fails to accomplish. But presidents cannot manufacture 218 votes in the House or the votes necessary to move legislation through the Senate.

Congress has to actually show up and legislate.

When lawmakers choose campaigning over governing, they make any president's legislative agenda exponentially harder to accomplish. Then Washington wonders why Americans have so little confidence in their institutions.

Congress was never intended to become a permanent campaign organization that occasionally legislates between elections and fundraisers. Article I gives Congress enormous power because lawmakers are supposed to debate, vote and make difficult decisions.

If Congress wants to remain a coequal branch of government, it needs to start behaving like one.

Show up. Vote. Pass legislation. Conduct oversight. Do the job taxpayers are paying you to do.

Confidence in government is not restored through speeches about democracy or institutions.

It is restored when those institutions actually work.

Right now, Congress is giving Americans another reason to wonder whether theirs does.