Too often it is one party power and sticks it to the other party. And then secondly i know you mentioned geographic concerns. We try to putt some other limitations on the map drawing process by requiring districts to be drawn more according to county lines or natural geographic features rather than just these crazy districts that squiggle around. Thats not you know not easy to do but one thing it does is makes it possible impossible for people to be too key yative. Some of the districts are very, very creative and having little bit more limitation on the process, open process about how to redistrict we are for. We werent willing to go as some people say to go to california or arizona which have models which are more completely out of the political process. They have turned it over to citizens. They dont want the legislature or the parties involved. Our commission really believed that having both parties have a say in those maps made sense but we did agree with you in many ways redistricting the lines are part of the solution. Talking with john fortier the democracy project director for the bipart son policy center. The group put together recommendations to improve congress. Theyre now out with an index of how this 114th congress has done in the first six months. So were now turning to all of you to have you take part in the conversation, as well. What do you think . How do you improve congress . Pennsylvania, sharon is next, a republican. Caller hello and thank you, cspan, for taking my call. I think we could limit the terms that they run for. Like, two terms and that is it. I think most of these congressmen have been in office for 15 years 25 years. I mean they get too comfortable with the lobby. And to be honest, im really disgusted with congress. I dont think theyve done anything, anything in the eight years that this president has been in office. Its a continual fight. And its really frustrating to watch them every day. They absolutely do nothing. And i feel sorry for obama. Okay. Lets i mean, part of this point that you do in this index is for people to be able to have metrics to measure congress. She said theyve done nothing. How many bills have they passed . We dont actually measure that. Were too early to say. Theres a number out there. I dont know it. Were measuring more the proeszcess of getting through committee. There have been successes. Major deals on trade. A framework for debating iran even though the parties will disagree on that. We have seen changes in education. Elementary and secondary education act passing surprising people. We have seen a little bit more hope in this congress. If i turn to the question about term limits which the caller brought up, you know, i think here our commission debated this and we didnt we didnt share your concern for term limits. We were worry edied somewhat in the other direction. The court said you have to amend the constitution to limit the terms of members. That is hard to do. We have seen it in some state legislatures and one worry is you take away the expertise of members that they build up over a long period of time. Some would say, boy the system is corrupt and lobbyists are too in bed with members of the congress or legislature and what the research has shown is opposite. If you have members of Congress Brand new and dont know as much and experienced theyre much more subject to the influences of a few lobbying or a few interest who have their ear. We did not we didnt come down against it strongly but we certainly were not for term limits on the commission. We think having experience in the legislature is valuable in terms of getting things done. Citizen on twitter says this, congress always lags behind publics common sense awareness. Congressional outrage emerges suddenly after an event. Where were they . Stan in baltimore, democrat, you are next, good morning. Caller the previous caller has my complete opinion and i still believe that term limits would make a difference. Yes, it could be a small issue with inexperience, but everybody going to be inexperienced. And youve got people going in the congress and in the senate who have been there for 25 30 or more years. Thats ridiculous. I do not believe that the Founding Fathers that i hear these people talk about all the time wanted these people to make a career out of being a senator or congressman. There is no way that anybody could prove that to me. All right. Thats stan in baltimore. Eric is next, democrat in virginia. Hi. Caller hi. Term limits are a horrible idea. It is like telling a doctor to retire after 20 years of learning the trade. And people just dont understand how complex the legislative process is but you definitely need the expertise. Second, i think the most fundamental problem that i have observed in congress is particularly in the house. Its structured in such a way that you cant build consensus. So much power is vested in the majority that the minority has no incentive to cut deals or to reach compromise or consensus. Their objective has to be to get in power again because they have virtually no control. We have seen the senate headed in that direction, also, and skrult we have seen reduced. So i think its a structural problem with respect to how congress is arranged. John fortier. I think your analysis is good in a way and goes back to the very beginnings of our country and how we conceived of the igs tuitions. The house always thought of much mf of a majority institution. Elected every two years on short terms. React to public opinion. Could really change in one election. The senate has to change over several elections smaller body, often requires more consensus. Part of the frarmmers genius is two bodies, being in the moibt in the house is not a great experience because you are really subject much more to the whims of the majority who are able to pass things over your objection. But we do call for the committee process, a more open debate process on the floor the conference committees, thats all a place where the majority and minority could have more input. Within that framework, i dont think you ever see the house be quite the place that has the ability to debate or the role of the minority that the senate does but we think it could be improved in a legislative and we think we have seen some directions in that process. Thats a place where minority members can make their views heard. Lailany democrat. Good morning to you. Caller hi, good morning. Basically congress is just become a cash cow for people who lie to us around election time or whether its every two or six years. With the United States senate races or quite frankly whether its every four years for the presidency. I just dont understand how the American People can put up with this. This is just absolutely its just horrible. Horrible to fit in be subjected to the amount of gridlock that we the people dont belong dealing with. I mean its just horrible. And i i dont think theres any solution. I mean the constitutional amendment process is almost impossible. Its just people have given up really. They have given up. All right. Well take those sentiments. Congress is very unpopular. Your views is not uncommon. We have seen Approval Ratings as low as 9 or so. It is up a little bit from that now. I think congress suffers from the way its built, that it is not one voice. The president you may like the president s policies or not like the president s policies but the president speaks with one voice. The congress with many. It is difficult. The framers made it difficult to get minorities, different elections and two bodies and then the president s cignasignature to get something done. Thats not as easy as some countries with more of a single parliament where the executive is part of that. So i think thats part of the frustration. Given that, though i think that there are ways to work within that. Again, what we are calling for here is some process where all of those voices are better heard. Getting the voices of 100 senators and 435 representatives from 2 different parties that disagree on a lot of things to come to a common agreement is a hard thing. But some common sense measures how the process could work better would make the process better. I dont expect congress to jump way up in Approval Ratings but i do see some hope now and i see the process will allow the legislative process to go forward and never always be considered messier than the executive branch. Question for all of you, how would you improve congress . Doug in new york, what are your thoughts . Caller my thoughts would be to amend the constitution and have president obama serve a third term. And as far as this commission or this gentleman, im wondering about him having senator lott as a part of that commission when he is quite a divisive person. And was he convicted of some political shenanigans . Im not clear on that one. But i do wish that the constitution would be amended so that the president could serve a third term. Its the only chance we have as a nation. Okay. Im not sure what you were referring to coming the former senator trent lott. We did have members of both parties. We thought it was commission that this be broadly representative and your viewers may find some of the members were more conservative than they were or liberal than they were but that was the point really. We didnt want a commission of people that just agreed with each other but across the spectrum spectrum. The point of term limits for the president , we didnt take it up but i think its a good one. We put in a amendment to the constitution after Franklin Roosevelt won four terms thinking that was too much. Soopz you start a second term everyone knows that you cant run for a third term. And some of your power as president , power of persuasive, the power to come back and win another election is gone. So i our commission didnt take that on. I personally agree with you. I think its better to run for a third term or maybe even a fourth term and let the people decide. I think you would find very few people going that far. Running for three terms. We had for many years a tradition started by washington and jefferson that they would serve a couple of terms but they wouldnt go longer than that. I think that was a better situation than we are today where theres the tradition and there was no fixed rule to run again. The president really can amass more persuasive power if he may run again, may have to go to the people and congress will who also goes to the people has to deal with the president in a different way. Dry creek, west virginia, john, a republican, you are next, john. Caller yes. Thank you for taking my call. I think as a former schoolteacher, as a retired schoolteacher, we have taught our kids that compromise was the best way to get something mutually agreed upon. But we have a president now that demands everything his way and still instead of compromising. All right john. Ill leave it there. Well again the system that we have of a separation of powers is frustrating if for one of the players you feel is not willing to go along. And so for those who dont like what congress is doing or those who dont like the president its a messy, messy process. I do think that again forcing the players to have a more open debate that is in Congress Getting more input from across the aisle getting something before it gets to the president s desk will give it a greater chance of getting it done. May bring the president to the table, this president or another president. It is not the end all, be all answer, process. Theres still the strong feelings and strongly held convictions of the players in the various positions. But we do think that the president does play an Important Role here and for the president to come, we mentioned earlier on certain days to meet with congress, to spend more time in the legislative process and for the congress to have a more robust process would mitigate that problem a bit. New york, kyle, independent what are your thoughts . Caller yeah, hi. I think we have heard a lot of the same thoughts and frustrations and i think the people are concentrating on the actual election instead of the legislative process. I think thats right. I think one way we could take away the incumbents damage is to make it illegal to directly solicit campaign contributions. We could call it the grahamtrump bill. What do you think of that . Well you know, our commission did take up this issue of money and politics or Campaign Finance. We had a broadbased participation and some smaller agreement on the problems and the solution. We did not have a grand set of recommendations on Campaign Finance. One thing our members agreed on this was really true of republicans and democrats, members of congress are spending too much time raising money. Theres always a balance between how much time you spend legislating, homeland constituents and the need to run for election. Part is raising money. But our members thought that balance shifted too far. Now, as to what to do about it, some states in the legislatures will say that you can only raise money when the legislature is not in session, not wanting to make the connection of people passing laws and receiving campaign contributions. We didnt decide that. For or against. And we really didnt find a way to come to a solution because the parties i think have some different views of Campaign Finance reform whens the right way to go, but they felt it was a problem and finding a way to get members spending more time legislating and less time raising money and more time concentrated here in washington was important. All right. A couple of minutes left here. Monica in baltimore democrat good morning. Youre on the air. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. Going back to what the guest speaker said, Campaign Finance, the elected officials spend time raising money and not surprised you didnt find a solution on that issue because they were elected with these corporations money and so why would they want to vote against or find a solution against the thing, the money thats putting them in power . You know . I think we need to look at Citizens United again and see, like, money is really corrupting our political system. It is impairing our ability to pass legislation. Even though we have all these voices, you know we have so many systems and checks and systems and thrown off by all of these other interests for Economic Development and okay. So, monocar, ill leave it there to squeeze in judy in new york, a democrat, good morning. Go ahead. Share your thoughts. Caller yes, good morning. Ill go down my list. No term limits. Up to the people to vote people out. Makes people lazy. We need to get rid of the republicans out of congress because theyre obstructing. We should be listening to elizabeth warrens speech i heard the other day. At net roots. It should be 51 votes in the senate. We need to change the way we do elections. Money should not be speech. That means somebody with a lot of money has more speech pan i do with very little money. You know what . Listen to the people. When 70 want gun control and let Different Things that theyre not listening to the people. Thats because of gerrymandering. Million more republicans i mean, democrats voted for in our last congress and yet the republicans had the majority. Thats just ridiculous. Okay. John fortier, what did you hear there . From your list, ill take the Campaign Finance question again. I think the caller illustrates different opinions on how to reform the system. Some would be and more on the left, public financing, money to campaign and not private sources or equalizing the amounts limiting the amounts to equal amounts of people to raise. I think certainly on the more republican and libertarian side you have some worries that maybe the limits are too low that we should have higher limit that is alaw people to go out and raise some disclosed amounts of money but at larger chunks and maybe not spend so much time raising as worried about raising lots and lots of 2,000 checks and less time with higher limits and the parties were stronger. We did worry you mentioned outside groups. That was a concern of our members. That the outside independent groups are spending a lot of money on campaigns. We didnt have a solution for that but i think both parties worried about this. We have to leave it there. John fortier direct of the democracy project. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Secretary of state john kerry and treasury secretary jack lew on capitol hill to testify about the iran nuclear agreement. Since the deal was announced last week, the focus of many republicans members of congress has been on whether inspections of facilities in iran within 24 hours would be enough to detect any nuclear activity. Some of them think the deal should include anywhere any time inspection access. The 60day clock for congress to review the accord began on monday. And the Senate ForeignRelations Committee holds the hearing live at 10 00 a. M. Here on cspan3. Considered underrated by many first lady historians, Caroline Harrison was an artist that took up china painting and establishing the china collection. She was interested in womens issues and helped raise funds for Johns Hopkins university on the condition it admit women and the first president general of the daughters of the American Revolution until she died in the white house from tuberculosis. Caroline harrison, this sunday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspans original series first lady influence and image examining the public and private lives of the women that filled the position of first lady and the influence on the presidency. Sundays at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan3. A new epa rule gives federal Agencies Authority to protect some streams, wetdlands and tributaries under the clean water act. Until the rule, small bodies of water under state jurisdiction. Some farmers and Agricultural Operations say this could force them to obtain expensive federal permits or face stiff civil penalties. Up next the House Agriculture Committee with a hearing about the impact of agriculture secretary tom vilsack. This is two hours 15 minutes. Well good morning. This is a committee onhearing on the committee of agriculture. Rick . Thank you, mr. Chairman. Father i bow humbly before you thankful for every blessing of life, this country that you have given us and m