![]() Members serving alongside one another for decades have strong incentives to develop productive working relationships. Indeed, Congress is less susceptible to gridlock than President Wilson suggested. But it “stood against attempts to use the war to reorder American society” through lasting nationalizations and price controls. Wallach notes that, during the Second World War, Congress was “responsible for figuring out how to distribute the immense burdens imposed by the war,” and successfully phased in an enormous tax hike to fund the fight. ![]() This produces a better balance between goals. A deliberative legislative process serves to bring proposals’ flaws to the surface, to clarify the trade-offs associated with them, and to make clear who bears the burden of paying for them. By contrast, the fragmentation of power in Congress has traditionally meant that expenditures are assessed bill by bill, with members having time to consider feedback from constituents before deciding how to vote. Under parliamentary systems, the majority party can easily force such things through in annual budget legislation or under the threat of calling fresh elections. Once in power, politicians often try to push sweeping policy changes that are subsequently hard to reverse, even if they originally lack popular support. Wallach is skeptical of the claim that empowering a single party to enact its agenda wholesale would free politics from the corrupting influence of low motives, noting that Wilson was “far from clear on how parties themselves could overcome factions.” “Americans disagree with each other.” Legislative politics, Wallach suggests, should force politicians to abandon their pure preconceived schemes in order to accommodate “disparate interests, conflicting visions of the good, and divergent judgments about prudent policy.” ![]() “Political work is not just policy engineering,” Wallach notes. But a new book, Why Congress by Philip Wallach, focuses more on the opposite concern: that Congress is failing adequately to deliberate on and improve legislation. Instead, he endorsed Britain’s parliamentary system, which gives majority parties the full power to implement whatever sweeping reforms they propose.įrustrated by Congress’s unwillingness to ratify their preferred schemes, progressives have repeatedly echoed Wilson’s critique. Criticizing the Founders’ ideal of checks and balances-which had fragmented legislative power among the House of Representatives, Senate, the states, and the federal government-Wilson argued that “the more power is divided the more irresponsible it becomes.” He lamented that Congress provided special interests and political bosses a multitude of opportunities to block legislation without being held accountable for doing so. In 1884, the political scientist and future president Woodrow Wilson launched his career with a book attacking Congressional Government. The problem is that Congress appears increasingly unable to produce them. They often favor divided government and tend to prefer that legislation be the product of congressional compromises. ![]() Over the past 15 years, Congress’s approval rating has averaged 19 percent.īut voters are wary of the unchecked imposition of either party’s wish lists. It is where dreams die amid low-minded wrangling. Whereas presidents win office by mobilizing millions with promises of transformative change, the business of Congress is often inscrutable and disillusioning. Wallach (Oxford University Press, 336 pp., $29.95)Ĭongress is not a popular institution. ![]()
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