While guiltily enjoying a night of HBO’s “The Newsroom” on Sunday night, I got angrier than I usually do at creator Aaron Sorkin’s take on the world.
What made me mad in this most recent episode was another tired complaint that Congress doesn’t get anything done. This isn’t a particularly original complaint, it’s one that can be heard from any number of sources that are all bothered by the so-called “gridlock” unique to the current session of Congress.
Here’s how everyone gets that wrong: Congress is supposed to be in a state of perpetual gridlock. This is exactly how the founders intended for it to work.
The founders wanted to protect the people from an excess of legislation – the kind of legislation a partisan majority might try to pass to help them remain in power. The system was set up to ensure that only laws with strong bipartisan consensus, or an overwhelming partisan majority, would be able to pass through a slow, deliberative process. The idea was to make sure that bills that were less than “perfect” would be passed as infrequently as possible.
In that regard, the most recent sessions of Congress are certainly doing their job. In 2010, the highly partisan healthcare law was only able to be passed because of the overwhelming Democratic majority that was present by both houses of Congress. It isn’t supposed to be easy for legislation like that to get through, and it wasn’t. Since Republicans took control of the House in 2011, the majority and minority parties have to come to some form of bipartisan agreement for anything to get passed. This is exactly what should happen. The Republicans are still a governing minority because they have only one half of one branch of government, but they are strong enough to force themselves to be heard.
The legislative branch was intended by the founders to be the most powerful branch of government. Because they wanted many checks on its the branch, they divided it’s power into two houses.
The House acts relatively quickly and can churn out bills the majority supports very easily. This is how Republicans have been able to pass a repeal of the healthcare law close to 40 times since they came to power. The House majority is very powerful within the House, and the minority can do very little except try to become the majority in the next election. The minority puts up with this because they know at some point they’ll have the same power the majority currently has.
The Senate acts slowly and with more bipartisanship because it is very easy for the minority to hold things up – the threat of filibuster being the most prominent example. It isn’t supposed to act with the same swiftness of the House, and it shouldn’t.
The majority endlessly complains about the minority’s power, but will never do anything serious to curb it. At some point, the majority will become the minority and will want those same protections.
You can call Congress the “Do-Nothing Congress” all you like, but it simply isn’t accurate. The things that need to be passed get passed. And as far as the stuff held up by gridlock, those laws are held up for a reason.
Gridlock doesn’t mean Congress is doing nothing, gridlock means Congress is doing exactly the job the founders wanted it to: protecting us from an excess of legislation and keeping us free. And on that front, you can hardly accuse them of doing nothing.
Keene is a senior majoring in political science, economics, and public policy.
