Gridlock

As an addendum to the previous post, I want to make it clear that my point is that although people may be strongly critical of what the government is or is not doing, the basic form of the government is not questioned. To continue...

The Senate has established itself, with unlimited debate and the filibuster, as the opposition to the House, and to national government action. It has been the source of Congressional gridlock; this gridlock is the primary cause of the people’s frustrations with Congress today. A common expression of this aggravation, dating back at least to the 1930s, is “What we need is a good dictatorship!”[1]

Gridlock has been a perennial characteristic of our government, and justified as the price we have to pay for democracy. We have accepted repeated gridlock, delay, and distortion of the will of the people.  It is just the way politics work, we are told. These are the checks and balances we have been led to believe we need.

The ongoing battle between the President and Congress and between the House and the Senate has at least wasted time and effort.  Today their stalemate evokes  disrespect from the governed population.   The conflict is basically one of power:  who is in charge.  The legislature wants control over how the legislation it enacts is implemented, and so has tried to exert influence over the executive officers in charge of carrying out the legislation.  At every point, though, and with increasing animosity, the President has resisted these efforts, claiming only he controls the Executive. The courts have largely upheld the President--encouraging and institutionalizing the continuation of the conflicts.

With the beginning of the 20^th century, the tension over who is in charge increased considerably as the role of the federal government became much more complex and influential to the country. As federal agencies were established to regulate national affairs, such as the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Bureau of the Budget, the Federal Reserve System, and the Federal Trade Commission, who is in charge of these agencies, the President, Congress or the judiciary became an issue within the national government.  Fisher’s book on the politics of shared power[2] documents these continual conflicts between the President and Congress, and the mountain of time and effort spent in their quarrels.

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[1] Remini, Robert   The House: The History of the House of Representatives  HarperCollins Publishers: New York, 2006, p 311

[2]  Fisher, Louis   Constitutional Conflicts between Congress and the President, 5^th Edition, Revised  Lawrence, Kansas, University Press of Kansas, 2007