Government Can't Get Anything Done Because It's Designed That Way

After the failure of the congressional supercommittee to decide how to reduce our nation's deficits and debts, or take meaningful steps to foster economic growth and create much needed jobs, the obvious question is "Why can't government get anything done?".

Americans all know that we need to change our ways with respect to how we manage our nation's fiscal affairs. We've lived beyond our means for far too long now, and we don't want to end up in the same boat with most European countries. More importantly, we don't want to fail future generations of Americans who are counting on us to do the right thing.

Nevertheless, government can't seem to get anything done that will put us on the real road to economic recovery, stability, growth and a prosperous future for our children and grandchildren. So why did Congress fail yet again, and why does this happen all too regularly?

Here's another way of putting the question. Why does Congress as a whole have a pitiful 9% approval rating and still perform, or fail to perform, as it does? Better yet, why do we keep re-electing the same people over and over and over again? Is there not a price for failure?

Partisanship Set Deficit Panel on Path to Failure answers the foregoing questions in lucid detail.

It argues that the 12-member congressional supercommittee's failure to act in the best interests of the American people was a logical, albeit sickening, response to the incentives and rewards which almost all congressmen share:

"Is there any political price to be paid for failure? . . . . There are many reasons for the partisanship that produces this dysfunction, but the most basic one is this: Voters have yet to show that they will punish lawmakers for failing to come together to get something done.

To the contrary, the rewards today tend to go to politicians who remain intransigent, while the pain is meted out to those who attempt to compromise with the other party. Members of Congress are only human, and they respond logically to the incentives and rewards they see before them.

Until that changes, dysfunction is likely to persist. Voters proclaim they hate the hyperpartisanship in Congress—congressional job approval hovers near 10%—yet the same voters regularly reward that hyper-partisanship by re-electing those responsible for it, while occasionally tossing out those who dare to cross party lines to seek compromise. What is the incentive for lawmakers to break the pattern?"

It's even worse than that. Our incumbent legislators actually pick the voters who will elect them by selectively drawing the specific voting districts in which voters will elect their congressional representatives. That's why we have a tendency to hate congress as a whole while loving our own individual congressman. That's the way the system works.

Read on.

"The explanation for this seemingly counterintuitive dynamic starts with how Congress is put together in the first place—that is, the process by which congressional districts are drawn up, a ritual now under way anew all around the country. Every 10 years, after the Census, state legislatures redraw their state's allotment of the 435 districts in the House of Representatives, thereby composing the political DNA of Congress.

Thanks to computerized tracking of voters block-by-block, this process of redistricting has become an ever more precise exercise in drawing up partisan districts in which voters are segregated into colonies that are safe for Republicans or safe for Democrats, creating a big incentive for lawmakers to stay on a partisan track. In a sense, political leaders now choose their voters rather than the other way around . . . ."

The 'safely partisan' system, albeit a screwed up one at that, works as intended. Here's an example from California:

"If you want to know how effectively this system works to create safely partisan districts, look at the state of California. In the last four election cycles, California, with its 53 House districts that are up for re-election every two years, has held 212 elections for House seats. In all those elections, there has been exactly one case in which a seat changed party hands.

That means the Democratic and Republican parties held onto their seats 99.5% of the time. Usually the same representative was simply re-elected, while other times faces changed but party affiliation remained the same. In one case, a California lawmaker was sent to jail for taking bribes, but his party held the seat anyway.

As that suggests, House members increasingly are elected not by appealing to a cross-section of voters, but rather by appealing to a carefully selected group of voters from their own party. Then, the way to stay in office is to cater to partisans at the base of your own party, rather than by angering those partisans by attempting to compromise with the other side.

So while control of the House has changed hands twice in the last six years, that's because a small subset of House seats—perhaps 15% of the 435—are truly competitive swing districts that move between the parties. In the majority of districts, members live on by staying safely in their partisan foxholes, voting the party line and never risking engagement with the other side."

That's the system, and that's why government can't get anything done.

We elect people who are incentivized and rewarded not to compromise. They also know not to try to make things better for America as a whole. They simply are there to represent the parochial and partisan voters who sent them there and will send them home if they don't do what's expected.

But that's the House. What about the Senate and the President? The same logic applies. Senators represent red or blue states because they know which base elected them. They know who not to cross and who doesn't count. Same with the President.

Unfortunately, every politician tries overly hard to please his base. By so doing, his reward is that he wins elections and re-elections as well.

The big picture? That isn't often seen. It simply doesn't matter to the politician.

Accordingly, he doesn't mind making enemies of those people who didn't or otherwise aren't likely to vote for him. They're pretty much a waste of time politically.

So our government can't get anything done because its partisan members have designed it that way. That's my take.

Thanks. Bob.