RSS Feed MenuMy latest CNN.com column discusses how the open government reforms of the 1970s led to an unintended side-effect: more gridlock.
It’s hard to dispute: Congress just got a lot more done in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s than in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.
Why?
You hear many grand, sweeping explanations. Let’s try just one simple one.
Congress in the first period was controlled by a handful of committee chairmen, who owed their positions to seniority. The committees did their work in secret. Bills written in committee typically could not be amended on the floor of Congress. The institution was authoritarian, hierarchical, opaque. And stuff passed.
In the mid-1970s, Congress underwent a revolution. The power of the committee chairmen was broken. The number of subcommittees proliferated. The committees met in public. Amendments multiplied. Congress become more open, more egalitarian, more responsive. And stuff ceased to pass.
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sinz54 // Mar 2, 2010 at 9:42 am
Governing Principles: Surely, if the system was not broken then the overly ambitious executive would have been forced to compromise/drop its agenda. I don’t see this happening currently.
It’s happening, little by little:
Gone is the public option from ObamaCare.
Obama has come out strongly for nuclear power, against all the greenies who voted for him, in order to compromise on a climate change bill.
Obama has given up on trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City.
Given that Obama still enjoys a 59 seat majority in the Senate, that’s a significant amount of compromise.
LFC // Mar 2, 2010 at 11:50 am
sinz54 said… I would like to see the GOP this year push for eliminating the Postal Service’s monopoly on delivery of first-class letters. Right now, FedEx and UPS are forbidden by law from delivering letters, they can only deliver packages.
I would only agree with you if any competitor is required to provide service to every household for the same price, just as the Post Office does. This is an enormous infrastructure advantage, and it would be short-sighted to throw it away in the name of privatization.
GOProud // Mar 2, 2010 at 7:12 pm
LFC, on any given day, the majority of mail that reaches our mailbox is pure, utter junk… save Christmas time cards and family/friend letters.
Our bills are taken care online. Our packages come UPS or FedEx –never by the USPS.
Grocery store flyers, catalogs we can access online, unsolicited solicitations from various interests, political material, our preprinted tax forms and –every 10 yrs– the Census… that’s what comes to our mailbox.
I say the USPS is an institution that supports over paid, under performing unionized workers with massive legacy costs. You want to level the playing field? Let’s get rid of the union there. Let’s mandate anyone over $60,000 donate their salaries back to the US Treasury. Mandate health care benefits to match FedEx or UPS standards.
And make the people who use the USPS pay for the frickin’ service via pricing of product(s) that reflect the costs of running the operation or providing the service.
Why drive all competitors to the lowest, least efficient level of service just so the USPS can stay around.
People who use it should pay for it. It’s time to cut off any federal subsidy of the post office and stop the Congressional/federal bribe of “franking privileges”.
SpartacusIsNotDead // Mar 3, 2010 at 6:55 pm
Sinz wrote: “Gone is the public option from ObamaCare.”
You are either disingenuous, incredibly unintelligent or too ignorant about the facts to bother to opine on them. Obama NEVER proposed a public option, which is why so many Democrats have been disappointed. And, of course, the Senate proposal does not include a public option either. So how can you possibly say that he’s had to compromise?
Churl // Mar 3, 2010 at 8:54 pm
When the President and the leaders of both houses of Congress are pushing legislation like the bloated, ill-defined, open ended health care debacle-in-the making, the economy crippling cap and trade capitulation to fear mongering, industrial nationalization, and deficit spending of a hitherto undreamed of magnitude, then grid lock is a very good thing indeed.