Congress Is Doing Better Than You Think

Congress Is Doing Better Than You Think

Yes, the current wrangling is complex and unseemly. But democracy is messy.

Could be worse.

Could be worse.

Photographer: Samuel Corum/Getty

Sometimes, I just can’t get my head around the extent to which American political culture is at odds with U.S. political institutions. And the current wrangling over the Democrats’ legislative agenda is one of those times. 

The U.S. system is highly unusual. There are just so many policy makers, all with a legitimate ability to influence outcomes: the president, a bicameral Congress, the courts, the bureaucracy, political parties, interest groups — and that’s just at the national level. We get all of that again at the state level, and then all sorts of other policy makers at various local levels. It’s a sprawling system that defies easy understanding — a system with an enormous number of veto points, but also many access points for ordinary citizens. Even when it’s working well, it looks messy and disorganized.

And we hate it. Well, more or less. Many of us agree with Mark Twain, who said: “There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” Oh, and my favorite: “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” We have no patience for the delicate dance of legislating, with different lawmakers, representing different constituencies, fighting for what they think is best. We’re apt to jump to the conclusion that no one could sincerely hold those views; someone must be corrupt. 

And then there’s the actual mechanics of things, which were highlighted on Thursday. President Joe Biden started the day by setting an artificial deadline … sort of. Rather than say the moment had come for everyone to make their final offer and move to a vote, Biden simply proclaimed that everyone had agreed. Not to a bill, exactly, but to a framework. Except as the day wore on, it was clear that agreeing to a framework on the Democrats’ partisan social-spending proposal — one part of their two-bill strategy — still left quite a lot of questions unanswered. And that with things still unsettled, Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin weren’t willing to say they’d vote for the framework, which meant that the House Progressive Caucus still wasn’t ready to vote for the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which meant lots more meetings and eventually everyone going home for the weekend.

Oh, sorry: A lot of you may have been lost there because I didn’t stop to explain several steps, and so unless you’ve been following all of this more closely than anyone needs to, it probably seems very confusing. Which is one reason people really dislike Congress. Why can’t they just cut the deal that, at this point, they are extremely likely to conclude? Why can’t Manchin say that he’s going to vote for a bill that he’s presumably going to vote for? Why is it okay for the Progressive Caucus to hold the infrastructure bill hostage? Can’t they just get on with it? Can’t Biden tell them to get it done?

Nope. No one can tell a member of Congress to do anything. It’s all bargaining, and once people are empowered to bargain they’re going to use leverage where they can, even if it seems messy, takes more time and achieves results that no rational expert would’ve ever produced. I understand why people want to put politics aside and just do what’s best.

But I strongly disagree. I love Congress, in all its messiness and interest-mongering and political machinations. It’s the core of U.S. democracy, in the best sense possible. It’s imperfect at best, and it’s rarely at its best. But what it’s doing right now? This two-bill convoluted multipart negotiation, with proposals getting added and taken away and some senators refusing to bargain publicly and others seemingly reveling in their key positions and all the rest of it? Perhaps it’s not quite Congress at its best. But there’s a lot of democracy going on.

What we’re seeing here is representatives of the people making decisions on behalf of the nation, and that’s an inherently messy process — at least if it’s going to retain all those influence and access points and respect all the interests that 330 million citizens bring with them. I’ll stick up for Congress as the institution designed to do just that. And I wish that its virtues were just a little bit better appreciated.

1. Anne Joseph O’Connell at the Monkey Cage on the broken nomination and confirmation process. Important.

2. Seth Masket at Mischiefs of Faction on why parties don’t always do popular things.

3. Catherine Rampell on Democratic cowardice on taxes.

4. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Karl W. Smith on the GDP report.

5. And William Saletan on a Republican coverup.

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