Getting the Job Done

I think that we can stipulate that when one party holds a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives, two-thirds of the seats in the Senate, and the White House, it’s a lot easier to enact legislation. But there are still obstacles. When you hold merely a majority in the Senate it’s harder. And when there is divided government, with one party in control of the House and another controls the Senate and the White House, it’s even harder.

But when you have divided government and compromise is impossible, you’ve reached an impasse. It becomes tremendously difficult to address problems and puts an enormous amount of power into the hands of the president.

It didn’t used to be this way. When both major political parties were truly “catch-all” parties with liberal, moderate, and conservative wings, compromise was normal and expected. With the drift to the right and left of the Republican and Democratic Parties, respectively, compromise not only became unusual but unthinkable. That is a fundamental impediment to republican government since, as Plato pointed out two millennia ago, compromise is essential to republican government.

In his Wall Street Journal column William Galston lament:

The impasse over Covid-19 legislation is a policy failure with constitutional implications. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Sunday that most issues between congressional Democrats and the Trump administration had been resolved, with the exception of aid to states and localities and the extension of supplementary unemployment insurance payments. No doubt differences of degree remain in other areas, but these seem to be the two main fiscal sticking points. If so, compromise should be within reach.

Democrats are demanding nearly $1 trillion of additional assistance for state and local governments, while Republicans are offering more flexibility for $150 billion previously appropriated. The solution: Meet in the middle. Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey have introduced a bill that would distribute $500 billion to states and localities based on a formula that accounts for revenue loss and Covid-19 infection rates, as well as population. The bill has other bipartisan co-sponsors, and so does the companion version introduced in the House.

Led by President Trump, Republicans insist that the federal government should not be in the business of bailing out the budgets and pension funds of profligate states. The Cassidy-Menendez bill would compensate states for a portion of added costs and lower revenues from Covid-19, not for the consequences of past mismanagement. The bill explicitly bars the use of funds to shore up pension funds.

Then there’s the dispute over unemployment benefits. Republicans object to the current $600 weekly federal supplement on the grounds that, when added to state benefits, it can pay unemployed recipients more than they earned on the job and is thus a disincentive to return to work. They have countered with an offer of $200.

Here again, the two sides should be able to compromise. Mr. Trump has signaled his willingness to back a $300 federal contribution. There is some evidence that Democrats may be willing to settle for $400, tapered in stages linked to declining rates of unemployment. These differences can be resolved, assuming the parties want a bill more than a talking point.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is insisting on provisions that protect corporations and other entities against Covid-19 liability claims. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has made these changes a priority. Trial lawyers are dead set against them.

A compromise proposal from the bipartisan New Center would give Republicans the protection their business supporters want. In return, employers would be required to meet clear, strong and enforceable workplace safety standards. There would be no verbal loopholes such as “good-faith effort” and “to the extent possible.” Immunity from liability would depend on strict compliance, and workers who allege that employers failed to meet the standard would be protected from retaliation.

His account of the impasse is a bit lopsided. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is on record as rejecting any compromise on the weekly federal income supplement at the least. It’s a bipartisan impasse.

I see no easy solution to the problem. It would require changes to Senate and House seniority rules, funding rules, and changes in the way districts are apportioned. A larger House would probably help, too. Eliminating the filibuster would enable strict majoritarianism. Impasse is likely on the menu for a long time.

10 comments… add one
  • steve Link

    Changing the rules will help at the margins. The larger problem is that in primaries the more moderate candidate often loses. We now have Qanon candidates being nominated showing how far this has progressed. I think it is a positive sign that neither Bernie nor Warren were nominated, which confirms my belief that most people in the party are not woke progressives. Nominating a former DA confirms that. That said, not sure if it will make a difference. This odd belief that you have to be a fighter who doesnt compromise to successfully represent your voters has taken hold with way too many people. You have to make a deal and that now involves staking out a maximalist position from the very start and not budging. It gets you re-elected so I guess voters prefer a lack of results over compromise.

    Steve

  • jan Link

    I still have not become acquainted with Qanon politics, except that it seems associated with conspiracy memes by democrats. However, what I have observed in politics is that when one party jumps the policy shark, it usually is followed by the other party defensively making the same moves. For example when the democrats obstructed GWB’s judicial picks, the republicans followed suite with Obama’s judicial choices, especially dealing with the DC Circuit Court. Harry Reid responded by enacting the nuclear option, enabling Obama’s judicial nominees to sail through on a simply majority vote. The republicans then felt justified to use the nuclear option for the SCOTUS, after the dems assured them there would be maximum resistance to DJT’s nominees. Now the Dems are making sounds about eliminating the filibuster, should they win in 2020. Messing with the filibuster has been a step the R’s could have taken, but didn’t. However, with Obama throwing down the gauntlet during Lewis’s funeral, the race is on as to who will do it first.

    In 2018, the democrats elected 4 “fringe,” highly polarizing figures to the House, re-naming them “The Squad” – AOC, Ayanne Presley, Rashida Tiaib, IIhan Omar. They quickly inflamed politics by both their rhetoric, ideological slants, and ethical misadventures. Now, the right is having a counter balance of woman, from GA, FL, CO, unafraid and vocal to slam the left’s untoward antics and the people pushing them – like Nancy Pelosi. Will they be able to create equal doses of havoc like the Squad has?

    Nonetheless, there is a political dance in play that seems to usually be initiated by democrats, mimicked by Republicans, then roundly criticized by the Dems for participating in such unfair tactics. What a continued display of political hubris and hypocrisy!

  • jan Link

    I will add to Kamala’s questionable past. When she ran as San Francisco DA, there was an ongoing investigation into allegations of sexual abuse by the Catholic Church. The previous DA (a democrat) had collected evidence to be used to prosecute cases against the church. This is where law firms, lawyers, and friends of the church hierarchy stepped in with donations planted on Harris‘ campaign. When she won, the Church evidence disappeared, and no cases were prosecuted under her tenure as D.A.

    When one really looks closely at Kamala Harris’s career it’s littered with cover-ups, malfeasance, and self-serving acts thwarting justice not supporting it. That’s Biden’s VP choice. Good luck America!

  • steve Link

    Since you have a short memory jan.

    “During President Bill Clinton’s first and second terms of office, he nominated 24 people for 20 federal appellate judgeships but the nominees were not processed by the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee. Three of the nominees who were not processed (Christine Arguello, Andre M. Davis and S. Elizabeth Gibson) were nominated after July 1, 2000, the traditional start date of the unofficial Thurmond Rule during a presidential election year. Democrats claim that Senate Republicans of the 106th Congress purposely tried to keep open particular judgeships as a political maneuver to allow a future Republican president to fill them. Of the 20 seats in question, four were eventually filled with different Clinton nominees, fourteen were later filled with Republican nominees by President George W. Bush and two continued to stay open during Bush’s presidency. Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader of the United States Senate during the 110th Congress, and Senator Patrick Leahy, the Democratic leader of the Senate Judiciary Committee under Reid, repeatedly mentioned the controversy over President Clinton’s court of appeals nominees during the controversy involving the confirmation of Republican court of appeals nominees during the last two years of Bush’s second term. Republicans claimed that Democrats were refusing to confirm certain longstanding Bush nominees in order to allow a future Democratic president in 2009 to fill those judgeships.

    During his presidency, Clinton also nominated 45 people for 42 federal district judgeships who were never confirmed by the United States Senate.”

  • Grey Shambler Link

    “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions”
    Chicagoans know where Barrack Obama learned this.
    But his success using the Rules for Radicals caught the attention of another power seeker with a different mentor. Donald Trump.
    “I bring out the worst in my enemies and that’s how I get them to defeat themselves.”–Roy Cohn
    It’s going to take a special kind of leader to put this genie back in the bottle. Neither of these dirty fighting political advisors are good for our country, yes, they’re both gone, but their beliefs and tactics live on.

  • bob sykes Link

    The separation of Congress into two houses (only one of which was popularly elected) and the Presidential veto were intended to make legislation hard. The Founders didn’t trust anyone, especially not the People. When the Democrats and Republicans are ideological parties, as they are now, impasse is preferable.

    In the case of covid, I am now convinced it is not worth the lockdowns. The economic devastation is far worse than the disease. If the idiotic lockdowns were ended, the so-called covid impasse would be an irrelevancy.

    If you really want efficient government, then scrap the Constitution, and adopt a European-style parliamentary system. That system unifies the executive and legislative functions and subordinates the courts to the cabinet. That system also eliminates any Bill of Rights: e.g., no parliamentary system recognizes freedom of speech, of the press, or anything in any of the first ten Amendments to the US Constitution.

    All that simplifies government.

    The American people are so deeply divided on so many issues that a parliamentary could not be peacefully adopted. It would have to be imposed by violence.

  • jan Link

    Steve, it’s not that I have a short memory, but rather I didn’t follow or get into the weeds of politics until after 9/11. Even then, my attention continued to drift until the ACA came along. That’s when I started to regularly become involved with blogs, political details and nuances.

  • steve Link

    jan- Then you just need to read. There has always been some gamesmanship around judge appointments, but it really took off with Clinton AFAICT. You could point to Sessions but the GOP actually controlled the Senate then.

    Steve

  • MBcomber Link

    I disagree that the ‘structural’ challenges in the make up of the Congress and White House is the root of an uncompromising divided government. Although the model and the rules under which it operates may benefit from change, external factors serve to polarize the political parties and poison their ability to reach a compromise.

    The two biggest obstacles to compromise in government are the news media (and the tools they rely on) and technology (including the changes to communication brought by social media).

    As a preface, my undergraduate degree was in journalism and I am an ardent believer in the 1st Amendment and freedom of the press. However, the news media is uniformly obsessed on the spectacle of divided government which is fodder for content used by their talking head ‘talent’ to profess controversy and outrage. Compromise apparently does not yield good sound bites (or quotes). With the advent of the 24-7 news cycle that came with cable news, satisfying the appetite for content is now more important than development of news stories from a variety of sources. Statistics (without analysis), poll results (without context), and Tweets provide for the substitute content what is now labeled news. Grey Shambler’s initial quote aptly describes how this contributes to political polarization.

    Technology has created a maze of mirrors and prisms from which today’s elected officials cannot escape. Vast amounts of data can be stored, catalogued and quickly retrieved by the media and private interest groups. As evident in the current election, a video clip or record which may question the credibility of a person is readily retrievable, even if it is years old. So, if a politician compromises now, he or she will pay for it later when challenged for selling out. The social media prism has the more immediate effect of shaming a politician from compromising on a special interest issue.

    Of course, these factors also contribute to the polarization of people across America. At some point, my hope is that the people realize that our collective strength is in unification.

  • While I agree that the media including social media are factors in polarization, I think you need to consider some other factors as well, namely, structures in the House and funding.

    How did Nancy Pelosi become speaker? Seniority is a major factor not only in choosing the speaker but in choosing committee and subcommittee chairmen and the speaker, committee, and subcommittee chairmen wield enormous power. Practices in districting favor concentrating ideological, racial, and ethnic minorities into single gerrymandered districts rather than distributing them among multiple districts. An unforeseen effect of that is that over time more extreme representatives gain power.

    Additionally, fundraising now favors pursuing large organizations or very wealthy individuals for contributions. Being motivated to contribute large sums requires greater commitment and that is more common among more radicalized contributors.

    Tars Tarkas:

    When corrupt politicians’ aspirations were limited to being wealthier through corrupt practices than their working class constituents it was one thing but today’s corrupt politicians have aimed their sites higher. Today’s Tammany Hall equivalents aren’t just trying to be wealthier than Average Joe, they’re trying to be as wealthy as Jay Gould. Cf. the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation.

    That’s the problem with greed: it is not self-limiting.

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