JPMorgan Chase, the $2 trillion bank and financial services firm, predicts that the newly Republican-controlled U.S. House will clash with the still-Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate to the point where progress on large legislation is completely halted, according to a confidential memorandum dated Nov. 3 and obtained by OpenSecrets Blog.
"Many expect the next two years may be heavy on rhetoric but light on legislative achievements,” states the 11-page memo, which is authored by the bank’s “government relations” department, another term for the lobbying arm of the company. “The 112th Congress could be remembered as a gridlocked one without any landmark legislation.”
“If you look back to the ’60s and ’70s, how could a divided government be so productive? Well, 30-40 percent of the chamber were ideological moderates,” Binder said. “If you need large bipartisan majorities to get much done, and you don’t have 60 votes by yourself, then moderates in the middle make a big difference. And we don’t have any of that today.” ...
Some Republicans have been blunt about their intentions not to bend, and the Tea Party is sending candidates to town explicitly with a no-compromise mandate. The best hope may be that the parties begrudgingly work together, each in search of the credit for reviving the economy.
But an energy bill, immigration reform, a deficit solution — history says they’re not likely.
The current Congress—the 111th—is the most ideologically polarized in modern history. In both the House and the Senate, the most conservative Democrat is more liberal than is the most liberal Republican. If one defines the congressional “center” as the overlap between the two parties, the center has disappeared. ...
Morris Fiorina and colleagues have suggested that this increased polarization is mostly confined to party elites and elected representatives and that the ideological center of gravity of the people has not changed much in the past generation. But an analysis of National Election Study data challenges this view. Alan Abramowitz finds that in 1984, 41 percent of voters were located at or near the ideological center, versus only 10 percent at or near the left and right extremes. By 2004, only 28 percent remained at or near the center, while the left and right extremes had more than doubled to 23 percent. Indeed, Abramowitz suggests, polarization actually rose faster in the electorate than among elites between 1972 and 2004. ...
Over the past decade, the costs of increased political polarization have been mounting. We are unable to deal with large questions—such as our fiscal crisis—that cannot be solved without bipartisan cooperation and mutual compromise. Staffing our governing institutions has become more difficult: many judicial nominations have gotten caught in the partisan cross-fire, and even executive branch appointments have bogged down, making it hard for incoming presidents to deal with pressing problems. When one party dominates both the executive and legislative branches, polarization often moves policy in directions that moderate and independent voters find troubling, which tends to produce abrupt lurches from one off-center majority to another. When power is divided, polarized parties find it hard to agree on much of significance. Polarization means that our debates no longer stop at the water’s edge, which makes it harder for the United States to maintain a steady stance on defense and foreign policy. And perhaps worst of all, polarization undermines public trust in government, now languishing near record lows.
One should not assume that Obama will get everything he wants from congressional Democrats any more than they will succeed in getting him to sign off on all their pent-up demands. Not only does the spike in deficits from the financial bailout and economic recession impose severe constraints, but the history of unified party government suggests that it is no more a guarantor of success than divided government is of failure. Indeed, American chief executives from Harry S. Truman to Ronald Reagan enjoyed some of their greatest successes in periods of divided government. In the end, what the people want and are willing to speak up for usually matters more than all the frantic maneuvering in Washington.
Washington can seem like a Venn diagram where the two circles—Republicans and Democrats—will never touch. But on the issue of education reform, the two parties may be able to come together. The Republican agenda of reform—imposing standardized test-based accountability for schools and teachers and fostering competition among schools—has been embraced and aggressively promoted by the Obama administration. President George W. Bush’s signature achievement on this front, No Child Left Behind, has been due for renewal since 2007. Democrats are gearing up to pass a revised version of the law, possibly as soon as next year [2011], and they think this is one issue where Republicans will work with them.
1/25/2011--Introduced.Political Reform and Gridlock Elimination Act - Expresses the sense of the Senate that Congress should:
(1) pass the DISCLOSE Act to prevent a corporate takeover of our elections and ensure that our democracy is open, transparent, and controlled by the people; and
(2) reform Senate rules and procedures to reduce excessive obstruction and delay, while protecting the legitimate rights of individual Senators and the minority.
1"gridlock" A Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Edited by Elizabeth Knowles. Oxford University Press, 2006. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. David Weller. 27 April 2011
