Posted on 07/18/2017 7:48:15 AM PDT by Kaslin
Just six months ago, it looked like the Republican Party was about to go on a legislative blitzkrieg, shredding law after law passed by the Obama administration. ObamaCare would be vaporized and replaced with a nickel rattling inside an empty Mountain Dew can. Dodd-Frank was sure to be tossed aside for a transparent giveaway to Wall Street. And Republicans would pass their regressive tax reform, their perplexing border-adjustment tax, and so much more. The GOP hadn't held total power in American politics since 2006, and the party had become much more conservative in the interim. And instead of George W. Bush, a man who recognized at least some theoretical limits on free market fundamentalism, the new Congress would work with a sub-literate tabula rasa named Donald Trump, a man who could probably be persuaded to inject himself with experimental medication if an important-seeming person whispered "do it" in his ear.
But a funny thing happened on the way to libertarian utopia. Indeed, it turns out that the GOP-controlled Congress can't seem to pass any meaningful laws at all. Either they have forgotten how, or the divisions in their own increasingly radicalized caucus are proving too difficult to surmount. Whatever the explanation, thus far these GOP legislators are on track to be the least productive group since at least the Civil War.
Now, okay, technically the Ryan-McConnell 115th Congress is so far actually a bit more active than recent Congresses, if you measure by the 43 laws that President Trump has adorned with his garish signature. Obama was at 40 at this point in 2009. George W. Bush had signed even fewer midway through 2001. But sheer number is not the best way to think about how much is being achieved. As The Washington Post's Philip Bump pointed out, a majority of the bills signed by Trump thus far have been one page long, meaning many are just symbolic or ceremonial.
Some of this very brief legislation has also been passed under the Congressional Review Act, a previously obscure statute that allows Congress to nullify recently enacted federal regulations. The CRA had been used just once before Trump took office, and yet 14 of the 43 bills signed into law by the president have been CRAs. Most of them roll back Obama-era protections against various kinds of transparent evildoing, like preventing coal mining within 100 feet of streams. They're not meaningless, but the Voting Rights Act they are not.
So what's the holdup on important bills getting to Trump's desk? Both Obama and Bush had passed extraordinarily consequential legislation by this point in their first terms. The Bush tax cuts were signed in June 2001, and the massive stimulus that some economists credit with preventing another Great Depression was inked by Obama in February 2009. This Congress has not yet forwarded any legislation to the president that will significantly alter the trajectory of our politics or economics. Feel free to review the whole list yourself here and argue differently, unless you think the "U.S. Wants To Compete For a World Expo Act" (H.R. 534) is going to be the subject of debate by future historians.
One major problem for the GOP's lack of progress is polarization — just not the kind you're thinking of.
Over the past few years, journalists have given significant attention to the data maintained by political scientists at the University of California Los Angeles, which tracks the ideological makeup of individual members of Congress over time. The most important finding they've uncovered is that over the past 30 years, congressional Republicans have become substantially more ideologically extreme, while congressional Democrats have moved marginally to the left but are not much different as a group than they were in 1980, a process known as "asymmetric polarization." For most of the post-war period, there were Democrats who were more conservative than the most liberal Republican, and vice versa. The last time this happened in the Senate was in the 108th Congress, when soon-to-be-ex-Democrat Zell Miller sat to the right of several liberal Republicans, including Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and future party-switching Republicans Lincoln Chafee and Arlen Specter.
The slow decline of this ideological overlap has led inexorably to gridlock and dysfunction when one party controls the presidency and the other leads at least one chamber of Congress. There is is simply less to talk about. It's not like disagreeing about whether to get a Border Collie or a Boston Terrier; it's like if you want a dog and only a dog and nothing but a dog and your partner despises animals of all kinds.
But you would think that this sorting would make for more coherent ideological blocs more capable of making policy when one party controls Congress and the presidency, as Republicans do now. That was surely what Republican voters expected when they woke up triumphant on Nov. 9 last year. But the divide within the Republican Party is proving to be as problematic as polarization between the parties. The ideological distance between the Senate's most liberal member (Maine's Susan Collins) and the most hard-right senator (Utah's Mike Lee) is the same as the chasm between a middle-of-the-pack Democrat like Maryland's Ben Cardin and a conservative like Iowa's Joni Ernst.
If you want to understand how much harder it is going to be for Republicans to get anything done than it was for the Democrats in 2009-2011, your best bet is to look at this intra-Republican distance. When Democrats were toiling away on what was to become the Affordable Care Act, the total distance between the most left-wing elected Democratic senator (Bernie Sanders) and the most right-wing (Nebraska's Ben Nelson) was barely half the size of the canyon between Susan Collins and Mike Lee. Think about that for a second.
And it's not like Collins is alone. She's part of a cluster of three GOP senators, along with Lisa Murkowski and Shelly Moore Capito, who are much more liberal than the rest of the caucus. (By the way, it is not a coincidence that the GOP's three most reasonable senators are women). Moreover, Mike Lee is part of a bloc of five far-right radicals — along with Jeff Flake, Rand Paul, Ben Sasse, and Ted Cruz — who are all substantially more conservative than anyone in the Senate during Barack Obama's first two years in office. In a sane political system, there is a zero percent chance that Mike Lee and Susan Collins would be members of the same political party.
To make matters worse, Republicans control only 52 seats in the Senate and as of yet seem unwilling to nuke the legislative filibuster (something they could do at any time by changing the rules of the Senate). Republicans no longer have conservative Democrats to lean on to get to 60 votes when their own most liberal members are beyond reach, because GOP behavior during the Obama years taught Democrats the electoral value of party unity. That means that even some very conservative pieces of legislation that have already passed the House, including the Financial CHOICE Act (H.R. 10), which guts Dodd-Frank, stand very little chance of becoming law. House leaders, including Speaker Ryan, either aren't particularly interested in crafting bills that could actually get through the Senate or they have given up trying to forge the necessary compromises.
Or they are delusional.
The result, regardless, is that this Congress is going to be historically unproductive. How can I be so sure of this? One measure of what Congress is likely to do the rest of the year is to look at bills that have already passed the House but are awaiting action in the Senate. There are 238 of them. Amazingly, GovTrack gives only 13 a better than 50 percent chance of actually arriving on President Trump's desk in their current form. If that holds up, Trump will have signed just 56 laws by the beginning of the 2018 congressional session. If this tortoise-like pace continues, he will preside over the least productive Congress since Millard Fillmore signed just 74 bills sent to him by the brink-of-war 32nd Congress between 1851 and 1853.
Maybe that will change. But if it doesn't, the Republican Party's problems are far bigger than Trump — and will probably get worse before they get better.
Of course; during the Clinton years when nothing could get through Congress, the markets loved the gridlock.
I’m very happy to have Congress “accomplish” nothing, but there *is* in this case serious work to do undoing plenty of ill deeds done during the 0bama admin.
Since Obamas second term Congress has abdicated their duties to the American People. The coporate cronyism is mind boggling as only a handful of senators said no to a 70 Billion dollar insurance bailout.
Unless the GOP rids themselves of these clowns
Nov 2018 will be a bloodbath and they'll have no one but themselves to blame.
If only past Congresses had been this “unproductive!” We wouldn’t have this horrible mess called “Obamacare” to deal with in the first place. We wouldn’t be $20 TRILLION in debt, with over $100 TRILLION in unfunded government liabilities,federal pensions accounting for most of those promises we can’t keep. If only past Congresses would have refrained from buying votes with welfare we would have a vast population of productive citizens instead of leeches sucking the life out of our economy. If past Congresses had been “unproductive,” trillions of dollars wouldn’t have been wasted on fraudulent projects by well-connected cronies of those in power, and K St. lobbyists would have starved.
Since when is the number of laws passed through the Congress in any way a measure of how well they are doing?
About the dumbest article I have read in a while.
Richard Viguerie Retweeted John K Stahl @JohnKStahlUSA 2h2 hours ago
In this guy worked in the private sector, he would have been gone long time ago. 8 years of promises and no results. #tcot #ccot #gop #maga
Do nothing Congress, PLEASE!
The belief that the Democrats aren’t much different than they were in 1980 is absurd. Pray tell me what is left of the old extreme left that the left even considers extreme anymore? I’ll give you a clue: they were able to run Bernie Sanders.
The Democrats are so far to the left that the old “middle” is now right wing to them.
They ARE cultural Marxist. The fruits and nuts created by the Frankfurt School festering into even worse and worse. There is no lawlessness they cannot hope for, no murder of the innocent, no perversion nor madness they cannot celebrate. They will wrap themselves in a flag to burn the country. They spend what we do not have even better than Republicans. They treat Christians who will not lop off their heads as the enemy and import Muslims who will.
Does that sound like the party of the 1980s to you?
If it does it is only because they can no longer hide it.
Because they are REPUBLICAN POLITICIANS before they are Americans.
No doubt McConnell is the bigger problem and he’s proven to be as worthless as we feared he’d be. Ryan really isn’t much better. Ryan has a much bigger majority of course. They are both an embarrassment. The worst part is Trump is handcuffed because these bastards stand by and let the Rats and MSM keep their feet on Trumps throat with the Russia BS. Trump has done a lot despite it but his agenda has been stymied which is fine by these two losers.
Please define “unproductive”
>>the least productive Congress since Millard Fillmore signed just 74 bills sent to him by the brink-of-war 32nd Congress between 1851 and 1853.
Brink of war is the key phrase. Same problem today.
There is no point in exercising the nuclear option for legislation that can't even get 50 Republican votes.
The main point of this article is correct, but I think the author overlooks an important point. What has happened over time is that the Republican Party has slowly lost its ideological consensus on many issues. This isn't because the party is filled with dishonest people who hide their real agenda from their voters. It's because the Republican Party is filled with political figures who would have been Democrats in prior generations, but ended up in the GOP because the Democrat Party has come to be dominated by misfits and ideological lunatics who have no grassroots appeal outside of certain racial/ethnic groups and outside the country's large urban centers.
What does it even mean for a legislature to be “productive” and is that really a desirable thing?
I also believe there are elected representatives that have a career goal to become a congressman for all the perks and profit of the position. If you are one of these people in a red district, you are going to present yourself as a Republican, run as a Republican and all the while may be a flaming liberal behind the curtains. In short, many of Republican caucus members are not conservatives nor Republicans.
Look at what happened in 2016 -- in a good way -- for example. You had a Republican presidential candidate running at the top of the ticket even while he was openly campaigning on a couple of key issues (protectionism and strict immigration controls) that directly contradicted the national party platform.
I've been saying here for months that political party affiliation means less today than it ever has in my lifetime. Forget about the Democrat and Republican parties. Every political figure in Federal office today is either a Globalist, a Nationalist, or a Marxist.
I would prefer QUALITY of the bills as opposed to the numbers... that said the perception is still bad for Repubs as they constantly debate amongst themselves. I find this at least honest. As for the Democrats they all look to a chosen few whom lock themselves in a room and the rest just follow their lead thus getting more bills passed.... many of them do not even understand what they are voting for.
Your assessment of the current Republican Party seems about right. McConnell fits right though in so I would not say we are not being to harsh on him, not that he gives a damn. And yes, the Nuclear option may not work. I can think of 4-6 “GOP” Senators who are totally untrustworthy.
Obama care is on its way to destroying itself. It maybe that is the way to get rid of it. When it becomes so apparent that so many people are hurting and can't pay for it, then something will get done.
"Whether that be good or bad is anyone's guess.
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