Introduction

Congress is broken. The House and Senate do not deliberate—much less legislate—on the issues most important to voters. On the rare occasions when Congress works, it does so by relying on a centralized process dominated by party leaders that makes it harder for rank-and-file lawmakers to influence the legislative process. Instead of an inclusive and deliberative process, party leaders work with committee chairs and their staff, as well as with administration officials, to craft major bills behind closed doors with little or no input from most lawmakers. Rank-and-file lawmakers—Democrat and Republican alike—often don’t know what’s happening in negotiations until party leaders unveil the final product of their private deliberations. Leaders then rely on deadlines, or “cliffs,” to force quick floor action on the legislation. And they structure floor debate to limit rank-and-file participation and therefore make final approval likely using special rules in the House and by filling the tree and filing cloture preemptively in the Senate.

This paper is written for members of Congress, congressional staff, and donors who want Congress to function as a deliberative, legislative institution—and who are looking for practical ways to engage that do not bypass or weaken it. Healthy and robust factions are a key tool for Congress to organize disagreement and decision-making.

For lawmakers and staff, the paper explains how factions operate inside the House and Senate, when they matter most in the legislative process, and how they can be used to expand participation, influence outcomes, and navigate internal party divisions. For donors and philanthropic organizations, it offers a framework for understanding factions not as partisan obstacles, but as institutional infrastructure that channels political energy into legislating rather than around it.

The central claim is that Congress’s dysfunction is not primarily a failure of expertise or goodwill, but a failure of internal organization. Factions are one of the few tools available—within existing rules and incentives—to address that failure. The sections that follow are intended to help readers evaluate when factions are likely to be effective, how they interact with parties, committees, and outside groups, and what kinds of support strengthen Congress rather than substitute for it.

This paper considers how factions can help decentralize Congress’s decision-making process. Factions have a proven record of empowering lawmakers to participate in the legislative process in both parties and in both chambers. To that end, the paper defines factions, outlines the conditions in which they form, and details how they empower lawmakers to influence policy outcomes and win elections. The paper then reviews the relationship between factions and outside advocacy groups. The paper concludes by considering the ways in which philanthropy can help solve Congress’s gridlock problem—and reduce dysfunction in the House and Senate—by encouraging factions.