Barbara Sprunt

And not to mention, you can make a heck of a lot more in the private sector than you can as a member of Congress.

That has transformed the way in which members have related to each other.

Families were much less likely to live in D.C., so you didn't get to know people's families or get together for basketball or barbecues on the weekend.

And so it has just led, I think, steadily over time to increased partisanship, less time that people can spend with one another.

And it affects people, I think, on both a practical level and on a personal level.

Typically, committees have held a lot of power.

You sit on the Transportation Committee or the Energy Committee, you build a level of expertise there, there's healthy debate, and the committee sort of takes charge in writing legislation on that issue.

Well, one member that I spoke with had just gotten back from talking to current members on the Hill about some of their concerns, and

And they basically described to him that these days it's essentially the Speaker's office just tells the committee chair, this is what we want in the bill, this is what we don't want it.

And that degrades the level of agency that members feel in terms of what they can do.

I think someone put it to me this way.

If you don't have a good Congress and good people leave Congress because they're fed up with one or more of the things that we describe, that trickles down to all of us in the country.

You know, as much as we like to think about Capitol Hill being this totally isolated place, the people that get sent there from us to do this work, they do impact all of our lives.

It's been 35 years since a new independent candidate won a House seat.

But the Independence Center wants to change that.

The nonprofit is using AI to find congressional districts where voters are fed up with both parties.

Strategists say they've identified 40 districts like that where independents could break through.

The center plans on backing about a dozen candidates in the midterms next year.

And with the extremely narrow balance of power in the House, just a handful of independents could prevent either party from getting a majority.

Barbara Sprint, NPR News, Washington.