Washington D.C. is broken.

I am currently a parli debater in college, so my style is probably a mix of old c-x'er. So with that being said, I am open to any real type of debate. Just tell me. Now for my actual argumentation. I will define Washington D. C. as being our nation's government. This includes all three branches. Broken is defined as needing repair. My reason for defining it this way is because if something is needing repair, it certainly isn't working to perfection. If it isn't working to perfection, then it needs to be fixed to make it so. My first criterion is that voter turnout has been very low. Even with the recent spike in voter turnout, we are still far below the average. Iraq had their first election ever, and there was much controversy. People were standing in front of voting places picketing and causing much violence. Last I checked, America doesn't have that problem. But still, Iraq had an 80% voter turnout. America in the 2004 election had just over seventy percent. This is an extreme problem. The way america's government is built to work, is so that everyone has a say in what happens to them. This worked very well during the first years of our country for a couple reasons. One of those reasons is that people actually cared. To say that people today actually care is absurd. People will vote for Barack Obama because he is black, or Hillary because she is a woman. They don't need to know anything about their actual stance on issues. Another reason it worked so well is because it was on a small scale. In order for a democratic republic to work, everyone needs to participate. With a country this large, It is nearly impossible to have everyone participate. We see this with the history of voter turnouts. This leads me to my second contention. America has the wrong type of government. Don't get me wrong, I am a patriot through and through. I have just as much american pride as the next, but there is a trend that is running through our country, and it is a trend of failure. There was a failure after 9/11 to correctly respond to the situation. We declared a war based on false information about weapons of mass destruction. There was a failure after Hurricane Katrina devastated the south eastern part of America. There was a failure when we started torturing "enemy combatants. " There was a failure when the government started taking our rights to privacy away. There was a failure when tax cuts were given to companies that were making billions of dollars, and not given to the needy. There was a failure when Bush vetoed a bill to extend medicare coverage to the lower middle class because it cost too much, after proposing more money be spent on "National Security" aka the war in Iraq. These failures prove that America is not where it should be. Let's look at what is happening in the election right now. Every single candidate is saying that he/she is a candidate of change. There's an old saying that says "If it aint broke, don't fix it. " If everyone says it needs to be changed, then it's broken. Our forefathers were correct when they said that if the government isn't doing it's job, then it is the people's job to fix it. As of now, nobody is doing anything to fix the problem that is our government. Please don't think that I am saying we should start a revolution and overthrow our government. There are definitely some good things happening. But ask yourself this question. Do you actually believe that the people your state elected to represent you actually represents you? Do you think that if you called them up tomorrow and said that they should do this that they would listen to you? I think you would be hard-pressed to truthfully answer yes. My third and final contention is that our government has become an entity to itself. Our government, for the most part, has stopped trying to benefit our country, and has started to make itself look better in it's own eyes. Instead of saying this is what our country needs, they are saying, this is what our party lines say I should believe. George Washington was a ferven opposer of political factions. I say it is for this very reason. Political parties are there for their own benefit. They are there to have power, and not actually help others. Our government is supposed to be making our lives better. And for those of you who believe that, look at the national debt right now. Then look at the national debt under Clinton. Once again, I am certainly not a Clinton supporter, but he did a good job running the country. For that he should be commended. But our debt is running out of control. We have started spending money like it is monopoly money. Our dollar is now only half of the pound, and the euro is over one and a half times our dollar. This is preposterous. For the worlds largest superpower, we shouldn't have that problem. But instead, we are in a recession because our government forgot that the money we give them should be going to protect US. Not the Iraqis. I know that sounds extremely selfish. But there is a reason the UN was formed. It was to be the world's "police officer" if you will. Yes, I realize that the UN may not be doing it's job too well, but that is a different debate. So our government has lost sight of what it is supposed to be doing. For the reasons mentioned above, I can only see a propositional vote. Thank you and good luck to my future opponent. I wish for a very educational round.