As the Organization of American States gathers its general assembly in Washington this week, a bill drafted by senior U.S. senators is the latest plea for the group to reform its feckless ways or risk being supplanted. Critics and even some OAS members agree that the organization's sluggish parliamentary system, where members nearly always vote by consensus, prevents passage of any significant resolutions.

"Sadly, its culture of consensus has often been the breeding ground of the ideas that reflect the lowest common denominator, rather than the highest ambitions of diplomacy and cooperation," wrote Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., in a statement accompanying their bill. "The long-term relevance and health of the OAS depends on the strength of its underlying processes -- the transparency of its budget, personnel selection and priority-setting," they added.

Central to the debate is the call for more proactive enforcement of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, a 2001 document committing member states to maintaining democratic institutions. But Florida Republican Connie Mack, ranking member of the House subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, said the group has not stood by that document and that "the OAS has run its course and should go away."

"The way the OAS works, it doesn't take a lot to disrupt freedom and democracy in Latin America," Mack said. He introduced a bill last June to completely withdraw the U.S. from the OAS if the group opened the door to readmitting Cuba.

Christopher Sabatini, senior director of policy for the Council of the Americas, praised the OAS's achievements, such as the growth of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights from a charter to an international court system. But he cites examples such as poor election oversight in Bolivia in 2003 and Venezuela in 2004 as evidence that OAS standards are eroding.

"It's demonstrated that it's more and more a toothless tiger," said Sabatini. "It has in the past played a key role in evolving democratic standards, but not lately.... The decision-making mechanism of the group is too cumbersome to be effective."

Speaking at the Brookings Institution on March 15, OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza agreed that there is room for reform but called for financial investment in changes. With a baseline budget last year of $90 million dollars, according to the OAS Web site, OAS had to shrink its staff by one-third since 2000, Insulza said.

"Except one raise we got in 2006 or 2007, we've lived with a frozen budget for over 20 years," he told the Brookings audience.

While Kerry and Menendez seek a more active pursuit of a democratic agenda, member states such as Venezuela and Bolivia claim the OAS is already too dominated by American ideals. There have been a number of efforts to form groups without the U.S. and Canada, the most recent example being an informal agreement to create a Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.

According to Mauricio Cardenas, director of the Brooking Institution's Latin America Initiative, the most powerful counterpart to the OAS is the Brazilian-dominated Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), formed in 2008.

"These groupings are all variations on the same theme -- that Latin America is now mature," Cardenas said. "UNASUR really is Brazil's creation, and it focuses on regional issues. What Brazil is going to try to do is move some of the issues away from the OAS and into UNASUR.... Tensions could arise between these two."

State Department spokesman Charles Luoma-Overstreet countered that the new coalitions are a good thing. "We do not see UNASUR and the OAS as being in competition," Overstreet said. "That this takes place in so many regional fora -- some of which we are part, some not -- is an example of the large scope of our common agenda."

"In the end, having places for dialogue and back channels where we don't have relations or ambassadors is useful," said Shannon O'Neil, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "It's useful to have the OAS building in town where you can run into the Bolivian ambassador, since we don't have an embassy in that country."

Insulza said the greatest threat to the OAS was a lack of political will, stressing that all member states should focus on its reformist mission and avoid hegemony by one member.

"We are not threatened by... the new commonwealth of the Caribbean and Latin American nations, but by somebody who wants to have a OAS without the U.S. or by somebody who wants to have a lot of people out of the OAS and wants to have an OAS with a sword going around the continent creating all kinds of threats and pressures to the countries," Insulza told the audience. "Why not strengthen that organization which is the largest, the oldest, the strongest, and one to which the U.S. belongs?"

This point is a key reason for the U.S. to support the OAS, said Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, alluding to Brazil's other international conference, the Rio Group, which includes Cuba.

"The OAS needs improvement, no doubt," Engel said. "But if you're going to weaken the OAS, you're left with the Rio Group being run by Brazil, which excludes the United States and Canada."