Malpractice

Illustration by Michael DiMilo

By Geoff Carter

A close family member is finishing up her first year of medical residency, and I am simply amazed at the sheer volume of knowledge and skills she has had to absorb in order to complete the process of being a doctor. She had to endure four years of pre-med, four more years of medical school, is presently working through three years of residency, which also includes countless hours of clinical and hospital practice. Barring any fellowships after residency, this process will take eleven years to complete. This is the commitment to hard work and dedication needed to become an MD.

Attorneys earn their law degrees, and the privilege to be a jurist, after finishing three years of law school. Professors must earn a PhD in their academic area before entering the world of academia, which can take up to ten years of hard work. High school teachers have to pass certifications in their subject areas along with their BAs in order to obtain a teaching license, Carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and masons also need licenses to ply their trade. 

Yet politicians alone do not need to be licensed, certified, or even demonstrate minimum qualifications to practice their profession. All one needs to become a U.S. Senator is to be thirty years old, to be a citizen of this country for at least nine years, to demonstrate residency, and to garner a majority of the votes in an election. To be a U.S. House Representative, all a candidate needs is to be twenty-five years old, to be a citizen for seven years, and to demonstrate residency. The requirements to be a state senator or representative varies from region to region. 

That’s it. No license, no certification, no qualifying examination—no nothing. Twenty-five years old and citizenship—that’s it, so, literally, anybody, no matter how unqualified or unfit for office, can run for office. And they have. The United States House of Representatives is now populated by the likes of Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Green, both former business owners. That’s their qualifications. That’s it. Green earned a BA in Business Administration from the University of Georgia while Boebert earned her high school GED in 2020, shortly before entering her first primary. These are their only qualifications. No prior public service. No training in political science or public policy.

Since they’ve been in office, Ms. Boebert and Ms. Green have joined a far-right coalition bent on perpetuating the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and forcing through their hard-core agenda. They were behind the expulsion of then Speaker Kevin McCarthy—a fellow Republican—and have relentlessly stalled any legislation they disagree with—including funding the government. They have done everything except govern.

According to the New York Times, three hundred and fifteen of the five hundred and thirty-five members of Congress are lawyers or have some training in the law, but there is no minimum requirement for incoming members to have a working knowledge of parliamentary procedure, policy development, political science, or even American history. It seems odd that citizens occupying some of the most powerful positions in the country have the same qualifications necessary to become a waiter or a dishwasher. 

Members of other professions are accountable for certain standards of conduct. Attorneys are bound to avoid all appearances of impropriety or conflicts of interests in cases before them—and if such a conflict exists—they are expected to recuse themselves from the case. Doctors are bound by the Hippocratic Oath. Teachers are expected to uphold high moral standards and are reprimanded or even terminated when found in violation of those rules. The same is true of police, firefighters, accountants, and academics. Professionals who fall short of their standards of practice can be sued for malpractice, but legislators, senators, governors, and even presidents rarely face serious consequences for nonprofessional or incompetent practice. 

Why can’t senators or representatives be sued for failing to uphold the standards of the Constitution? If they don’t, as stated in the Constitution, work to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare,” and instead pursue personal political ambitions, aren’t they failing in their professional responsibilities? Aren’t they being incompetent or deliberately negligent?

If a surgeon botched an operation—or deliberately refused to give a patient life-saving surgery, or an attorney didn’t show up for a trial date, or a teacher teaches her students that the world is flat, wouldn’t they have to face reprisals from their peers? 

Not politicians. Although there is a Congressional Code of Official Conduct addressing various misbehaviors and which requires members to comport themselves at all times in a manner befitting members of the House, many of these guidelines seem to simply be lip service. 

Ms. Boebert allegedly engaged in audacious and shameful behaviors. She was ejected from a Denver theater for vaping and publicly groping her date—all of which was caught on security camera footage. During the 2024 State of the Union Address, Marjorie Taylor Green rudely confronted President Biden on the Senate floor, shouting the name of a young woman killed by an immigrant. She has also threatened to start the process of removing Speaker Johnson because he pushed through a bill sending military aid to the Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, simply because she disagreed with the policy. Not very professional.

These behaviors are typical of our current House of Representatives. A far-right minority, consisting of Green, Boebert, and others, has engaged in willfully stalling and sabotaging legislation supported by the majority in Congress and in the electorate. They seem to be taking this course of action to please ex-president Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, and to aid and abet his 2024 presidential campaign. 

A case in point is Oklahoma Senator James Lankford’s immigration bill which he created, shepherded through committee, and attempted to bring to a vote at the behest of the Republican majority. The bill had enough bipartisan votes and would have been signed by President Biden, but because ex-president Trump wanted the immigration crisis to be a keystone issue of his campaign, he allegedly instructed his MAGA cohort to torpedo the bill. 

As a result, security forces at the border remained woefully undermanned, thousands of undocumented immigrants are still crossing the border, and thousands more are waiting for months for their cases to be processed through immigration courts.

These are just a few examples of congressional malpractice. A few years ago, then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked the nomination process of Obama Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, proclaiming that the appointment was too close to the presidential election (almost a full year away) and that the people should decide. 

Then, after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg passed away, McConnell lost no time pushing through Donald Trump’s nominee, although the 2020 presidential election was only thirty-eight days away. This was a blatant and overt case of political gamesmanship—and a transparently hypocritical power play—and yet another case of legislative malpractice.

Since there seems to be no outside agency or internal mechanism to regulate these renegade politicians, and they seem to be unable, or unwilling, to regulate themselves, and since the law seems mostly pitifully inadequate to deal with their transgressions, the onus on us, the electorate, is doubly important. If we want a government to truly represent our interests and not engage in self-serving, politically motivated, and greedy enterprises, we have to recognize, reject, and expel those members who care about nothing but themselves, their brand, and their bank accounts.

Or we could try filing a malpractice suit. How does this sound?

The People of the United States -v- The United States Congress