You could choose any number of marquee dilemmas to illustrate how broken Congressional politics has become. Guns, Russian interference, climate change — Americans want progress on all of them and get little from Capitol Hill. But to my mind, nothing illustrates the dire state of our politics better than how we act on the federal […]
You could choose any number of marquee dilemmas to illustrate how broken Congressional politics has become. Guns, Russian interference, climate change — Americans want progress on all of them and get little from Capitol Hill. But to my mind, nothing illustrates the dire state of our politics better than how we act on the federal budget.
The budget is our operating system; it determines what the government does. Yet, we are saddled these days with an irresponsible process that produces irresponsible budgets. Congressional leaders have managed to push both the experts and the vast majority of their own members out of the loop. We pay an enormous price for this.
Federal departments and agencies cannot plan effectively. People, businesses, and organizations that receive federal money cannot plan ahead — eroding their confidence in the system. And year after year, we fail to face up to the problems confronting us, such as an aging population, the security of our nation, our inability to deal with the changing speed and technology of warfare, rising health-care costs, slow wage and productivity growth, natural disasters, and huge increases in the national debt. Punting on the budget means that the meaningful solutions we need don’t get crafted.
Why have we set aside a process that was developed over more than two centuries and that for many decades enabled the government to do what it ought and to pay for it responsibly? Extreme partisanship bears much blame. We don’t work together to solve problems; respectful deliberation and civil discourse have come to a halt. I don’t think the president and the Congress can function effectively unless they work across partisan, ideological, and geographic divisions to restore compromise and negotiation to a central role in governing.
That’s because the budget is where all our differences on the major issues come to a focus. It’s where our political leaders establish priorities, debate them, and ought to resolve them. There is no more crucial test of the ability to govern.
So, we’ve set aside a process that worked reasonably well and substituted a process that falls short in every way. Congress is now basically populated by politicians who have never experienced a good process — let alone developed the skills to make it work. What may be most worrisome is that few people on Capitol Hill seem to care about this.
But if they don’t, you should. And you should let them know that you do.
Lee Hamilton is a senior advisor for the Indiana University (IU) Center on Representative Government, distinguished scholar at the IU School of Global and International Studies, and professor of practice at the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Hamilton, a Democrat, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years, representing a district in south central Indiana.
