Lets allow our government is like an old barn, its been around a couple of hundred years, its foundations are crumbling, its corner posts are eaten away by corporate carpenter ants and lobbiests, some of its bents and girts have horizontal shear checks, it needs new roofing and siding, its sheathing has mildewed, mushrooms are growing in its dark places, the putty in its windows has crumbled to dust and the glass in its panes is now held in place by a pretty red woody fungi that may be an endangered species.
Crawling underneath it to jack up the floor beams where those have settled we can observe previous repair efforts that have rotted away and allowed those parts of its posts that haven't yet settled to dangle from the trunnels that connect them to the upper framing.
Some would suggest renting a cat D9 bulldozer for a day and having done with it, ignoring its historic preservation and just replacing it with the parking lot which may be better suited to its modern legislative function of gridlock.
I think it can be repaired. In a time when money is tight the cost of materials is not so high as the cost of the labor involved. What I envision is a slow, dirty, tedious, sometimes dangerous process that requires both skill and patience.
Replacement tends to be quicker, easier, and to have the advantage of everything being new. Its easier to describe to the contractors doing the work how things should go together, everything you need is right there ready to go in the back of your pickup, but what you end up with in the end isn't the old barn you started with. Its likely framed a lot different to begin with, and some of its members may not be so strong as they were before albeit there may be more of them.
I used the analogy of a barn but I could as easily have been talking about an old boat or a treasured musical instrument held together with good joinery and an expectation that its repair will be entrusted to someone qualified to do the work.