Former U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe interview at the Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit

[Tx4obama]

Published on Oct 16, 2013
The former Republican senator lambasted the House and Senate for failures of leadership.

p.s. I think the interview was very interesting.

Olympia Snowe to Congress: 'Do your job'

-snip-

Snowe offered a dour assessment of the legislature's recent track record. "We have deferred every major issue for the last two years," she said. "This will be regarded as the lost year."

In order to give Congress a greater incentive to act, Snowe has advocated that lawmakers not get paychecks unless they pass a budget. "Right now, we're in the fourth year in which the United States of America is operating without a budget," she said. Instead of working through the country's challenges, many key issues are simply never discussed, let alone solved.

It was that frustration over Congress's inability to make even simple decisions that drove her to quit, Snowe said Wednesday. It wasn't an easy call. She said she woke up worried in the middle of the night shortly before she had to turn in her signatures to secure a place on the ballot. She was all set for her reelection bid, but she couldn't reconcile the type of work she wanted to do with the type of workplace the Senate had become. Snowe said she ultimately resigned partially to "reaffirm people's frustration, but more than that, to tell America how you can change it." Voters should not "settle for the lowest common denominator in terms of leadership," she said.

The solution? More political engagement. The alternative is little to no accountability, particularly for the more volatile factions within the House and Senate. "We get the government we demand," Snowe said. "If we value bipartisanship and collaboration, we'll get it. But if we don't, we won't."

The choice for voters is stark, she said: "If we allow our political system to be subjugated to the fringe factions or to ideological interests or the podium-thumping belligerents that we're witnessing today, then that's the government we're going to get."

Here: http://management.fortune.cnn.com/tag/olympia-snowe/

[Lucinda]

1. KNR

There have been a lot of things that I have really liked about Snowe over the years. She was often the voice of sanity in the Rep portion of congress. I'm glad she is speaking out about the disfunction in congress.