Can somebody please provide an overview of the current political situation?

The best way in my opinion is not to fix the political parties, but to totally do away with them. Political parties only lead to political partisanship. Which leads dividing the people through polarizing them into small factions fighting with one another. This is something that George Washington warned against, and didn't want to belong to a political party.

This has been the scenario for roughly the last fourty years. Currently the two parties are traveling down what appears to be different paths, yet in the end they're similar paths, with both leading to one form, or another of socialism. One in the form of government run socialism, and the other is in the form of corporate run socialism. There's no middle road as it stands currently. Both are of the same coin, just each is a different side of that coin.

Another start would be in the form of term limitations. One hundred seventy years ago travel was hard, and this limited someone becoming a career, or spending their life as politician. The advent of the train, was the start of the ability to travel more quickly, and with a bit more ease. Then the automobile further changed things, finally the biggest change came with the airplane, and the ability to travel quickly, and with relative comfort from one part of country to the other part.

Were today's politicians suddenly required to go out, and either saddle up their own horse, or hook up their own buggy, then to travel to the capitol, where they were elected to, fewer would seek re-election, not to mention would soon find that with health issues such trips would not only be hard, but also hard on their health making such a career in politics, to be less desirable, or even prohibitive. Instead of a quick easy flight from say Chicago, in three to four hours, to a three and a half day to four day journey.

As for filibustering, if the shoe so to speak were on the other foot, the Democrats would not hesitate to filibuster something, to press forward their agenda. Same with any other political entity, that might rise to a position of being able to do so.

You can fix Congress . you can fix the senate you can even fix the political parties .Unless you fix Wall St and the big {too big to fail } banks . You will have fixed nothing That is seeing things from here in Australia . Maybe Americans do not care when they see people kicked out of their homes and losing their jobs Fix the crooked Banks to begin with mate As for politics In Australia we say . The punishment of fools is to be ruled by idiots Good Luck

"I'm not a congressman, but I'm aiming to find a logical way to fix congress:"

Except for voting Democratic, there's nothing you can do to fix Congress.