Philip A. Wallach at Law & Liberty:
We should dispassionately take stock of Congress’s current position on foreign and domestic policy, on taxing and spending, and on the deeper question of what role our elected representatives play in our Constitutional system. We will see our lawmakers choosing acquiescence repeatedly, because it is a winning strategy for them in the context of a thoroughly nationalized, thoroughly apocalypticized political environment. If we are careful, we will discern limits to their passivity, though the precise boundaries remain quite murky, as much to the participants as to outside observers. What we will not see is any obvious reason to expect this dynamic to reverse itself in the immediate future. If there are heroes of a legislative revival already on the scene, they have concealed themselves quite masterfully. Congress may well transform itself—its current leader-dominant structure is a historical anomaly—but it will take some kind of shock (bigger than Trump himself) to begin that process.
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One-party legislation, most often possible through the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process, has become the main event of twenty-first-century legislating..
That is bad news for the country, because it promotes zero-sum thinking and cuts out the kind of broad coalition-building needed if policy investments are to endure for generations. The giveaways necessary to get partisan allies to hold their nose and vote yes are often appallingly corrupt. There is little room for public reasoning in a process that will terminate in the question of: “Are you with us or against us?” We get negotiations but not much serious deliberation; there are lots of people keeping track of whose ox is being gored, but not so many worrying about writing good law. These laws reverse each other as each side tries to serve its core constituents, enshrine all manner of pandering policies, and (not coincidentally) blow up America’s budget deficit.
Members know how this process will play out, and plenty of them don’t like it, but they nevertheless play along. (Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, one of the only dissidents in action as well as word, offers Massie’s Law: “Where N = number of Republicans required to stop a bad bill, number of Republicans voting Nay = N-1.”) Members of the HFC, in particular, understood (as early as December) that even a two-bill strategy would create more room for maneuver, while a one-bill strategy would preclude their taking a stand. Though they threatened and grumbled to no end, they nevertheless gave their votes at every procedural crossroads, including final passage of a Senate-reworked bill they claimed was a degradation of the House’s version.