Not long ago I got an email from Tom Edsall, the New York Times columnist. He asked me was, “Why is it difficult for Congress to take action in support of national interests?”
Good question.
I wrote him a lengthy reply, and he used some of it in his column, “What’s the Matter With Congress?” But I want to share my full response with you, dear reader, which I have edited for increased clarity and fleshed out.
You ask, “Why is it difficult for Congress to take action in support of national interests?”
Well, first I would say that it is inherent to the enterprise.
Often it is not obvious what is in the national interest. We’re a large pluralistic nation. Assembling a majority among the nation’s legislators (who represent these diverse perspectives) into a particular policy is complex and usually takes a lot of time and energy. And often there’s simply not a sufficient number of legislators (to say nothing of Americans) who can agree on a policy to address a problem.[1]
By the way, problems, as Edward C. Banfield pointed out long ago, are socially constructed. One group of people might think some condition is a problem and one worth remedy by government, and others individuals might not agree.
Second, there also is the matter of entrenched interests that have set up shop in Washington, DC and lobby and pressure Congress to not enact certain reforms. The example of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) lobbying against Social Security reform is illustrative.
Social Security is going broke but AARP opposes policy options that could help. This is an example of a potent and entrenched interest acting as a veto player that stops congressional action, a subject Jonathan Rauch described in his book Demosclerosis three decades ago. And there are thousands upon thousands of interests here in Washington, DC.
Third, the competition between the Democrats and Republicans to win or hold control of the House and Senate produces incentives to block action. If you are a Democrat you often feel pressure to vote against GOP-led bills to stop the other party from succeeding, and vice versa. It’s a re-election strategy. Between 1994 and today we have seen control of the House and Senate switch at a rate that we have not seen since the late 19th century. These “Insecure Majorities,” as Prof. Frances Lee terms them, feel strong incentives to NOT bargain across party lines on high salience issues, like Social Security reform, immigration, etc.
Fourth, the historically narrow partisan majorities in the chambers means that any party majority can fall apart if a few of its members dislike a bill or simply want to stick to their party leadership. Think about how many times the House progressives slowed Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s efforts to pass legislation and how many times the Freedom Caucus thwarted Speaker Mike Johnson’s effort to bring legislation to a vote. Same goes with the Senate where Sen. Rand Paul (R, KY) and former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D then I, AZ) delayed or sank legislation.
Beyond those factors, it certainly is the case that our primary elections frequently send legislators to Washington who are not compromisers who will get things done in the national interest. Prof Andrew Hall, author of the book Who Wants to Run? told me,
“It turns out—and we have lots of data to support this—that the people who stand up and say they want to run, are quite ideologically extreme and are quite unrepresentative of society at large. So, I think if you want to understand why Congress is polarizing so much over time, the fact that the people running are just a lot more extreme than they used to be and they’re quite unrepresentative of voters.”
Primaries also scare the legislators and discourage them from voting for any bills or amendments that might antagonize any of the 20-25% of Americans who vote in primaries, some of whom are hardcore, single-issue partisans who view compromise by senators and congresspersons as surrender.
Our system for choosing US representatives and senators, as Lee Drutman argues in Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop, presents voters in the general elections with a lousy choice: you can vote for one of two candidates, the member of your party who you may not like or the person from the party you despise. (And, make no mistake, an increasing percentage of Americans despise one party or the other, and sometimes both.) Voters seldom have the opportunity to pick amongst three or more choices or to rank them in terms of preferences. The system forces a binary choice.
The good news about partisan polarization is that it isn’t all encompassing. Congress is not crippled. It still passes laws, as New York Times editor, John Guida, and I discussed recently. That is because the issues seized upon by the two parties to burnish and differentiate their brands are limited in number. Topics like immigration, trans’ rights, and SNAP benefits are great grist for campaigning. All the other things Congress deliberates about —the annual defense authorization bill, veterans’ benefits, infrastructure— are not polarized.
Thus, as I have written elsewhere, we have two Congresses: a partisan, polarized Toxic Congress that often fails to pass legislation or does so entirely on party line votes (See the DHS/ICE funding reconciliation act) and a Secret Congress that moves bipartisan bills and even engages in bipartisan oversight.[2]
So, I will close by suggesting that maybe Congress does act in the national interest a bit more often than many of us notice!
Notes
[1] One of the perennial gripes about Congress is that the policy it does produce often is a jumble of policies rather than a wholly rational policy regime. Why do we have five federal programs administered by 3 different agencies that all try to ameliorate Problem X?! (The Government Accountability Office regularly reports on federal program duplication, fragmentation, and overlap, by the way.) Well, that is pluralism for you. Groups through their representatives build statutes that are aggregations of ideas and demands.
[2] To be sure, in some instances the two parties both see advantage in seizing on an issue, like expanding federal efforts to reduce the flow of fentanyl and other synthetic narcotics into the United States. These efforts may get some popular media coverage, so they are not especially hard to notice by the public.
There are many external factors that make legislation difficult. But it is the internal ones that are making it harder to perform the basic requirements of governing. The good news is that the internal ones, given a little bipartisan willpower, can be fixed. Of course, bipartisan willpower is in short supply these days.
You have to admit it is sad the number of the bills you link to at the end that involve naming post offices . . . And the second one, the Social Security Fairness Act, WAS bipartisan but only because it gave away more social security dollars to some people while, more importantly, moving up the date at which the social security trust fund runs out of money. Solving THAT problem is where we need bipartisanship.