Democrats need to make government work

Democrats need to make government work

Opinion by Paul Waldman

Feb. 23, 2021 at 6:12 a.m. GMT+9

President Biden speaks at the White House on Feb. 10. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

Former president Barack Obama has had a lot of time to think about his successes and failures. The experience of the Affordable Care Act in particular taught Obama about obstacles to effective legislating and governing, some of which are inevitable, but some of which are particular to this moment.

As Obama explained to Jonathan Cohn of HuffPost in a just-published interview, the GOP’s ability to use its congressional power to stop legislative change is enormously corrosive to our entire system:

“You can have something that 70% of the country wants and it can’t pass,” Obama said. “And that can’t be how any democracy functions over time. If you ask me what has contributed to the cynicism ― of government, and to some degree what contributed to the cynicism around the health care initiative ― it’s the fact that a small minority of people can put a halt to everything.”

In other words, the problem is not just cynicism around particular policy questions. There’s something more fundamental at work, something Democrats have to confront: Gridlock destroys people’s faith in government.

It convinces them that nothing works, we shouldn’t bother coming up with new government solutions to problems, we shouldn’t expect good governance, and it would be best if government did as little as possible.

Which is why, when Republicans manage to kill a hugely popular Democratic proposal, they get two rewards: the immediate policy outcome they want, and a reinforcement of the idea that you shouldn’t expect anything from government. The lower people’s expectations are, the more likely they are to vote Republican.

The flip side is that if President Biden and congressional Democrats can succeed, they get a twofer as well: the particular policy outcome they’re trying to achieve, plus proof that government really can solve problems.

Right now expectations are high, not only because we have a new president who ran on an ambitious agenda, but also because we’re still experiencing twin public health and economic crises. But it’s also true that there’s a baseline level of hope that government can do better — which Democrats need to take advantage of.

Consider this: The Pew Research Center regularly asks whether “Government should do more to solve problems” or “Government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals.” When Pew last asked in the summer of 2020, 59 percent of respondents said government should do more, while only 39 percent said it’s doing too much.

Results like that show that Americans aren’t actually as disillusioned as many people think. They don’t simply accept all that Republican rhetoric about how government can’t accomplish anything. They want government to help solve their problems. They value government programs.

Republicans found that out when they tried to repeal the ACA in 2017. They had spent years saying they’d repeal it, but never bothered to come up with something to replace it, so they threw a plan together in a matter of weeks, without holding hearings or any real public debate.

And they were shocked to confront angry protests about the fact that their plan would toss millions of people off Medicaid. They assumed that most of the public viewed the program, which serves low-income Americans, with the same contempt they do. But it turned out that Americans love Medicaid — both the people who use it and the people who don’t. Which helped kill Republicans’ repeal plan.

The fact that there are lots of popular existing programs doesn’t make passing new programs any easier, unfortunately. But Democrats have to remember that they get elected to do things; people elect Republicans in no small part to stop things.

So now that Democrats are in control, they have to remember that they should be constantly showing the public that they can do things. It sounds almost trite, but it’s vitally important: They have to show, over and over, that government understands the problems people have and is moving to solve them.

In practical terms, that also means not hesitating to accept compromises when the alternative is nothing. Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.V.) refuses to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour, but says he’d be okay with $11? Take the deal! Find every way you can on every issue you can to do something meaningful, then declare victory as loudly as possible.

This is all, of course, a reason Senate Democrats simply must reform the filibuster — at the very least making it possible to pass more legislation without a supermajority, even if they don’t eliminate it completely.

As long as a supermajority is required to pass any legislation, the public is being told in so many words that Republicans are right: Don’t expect too much, don’t count on government being there for you, don’t think that solutions are on their way. The more people who believe that, the more that Republicans are in control.

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