The United States Congress is broken. Be it the sequester, the debt ceiling or the government shutdown, Congress always seems to be flirting with disaster and it is always their own fault. While some of the blame belongs to the American electorate for choosing such poor representation in the House and the Senate, the lion’s share of the problem lies with the system.
Political gamesmanship is holding back the most recent attempts at avoiding complete government shutdown. The last government shutdown, in 1996, reflects the current situation in many ways. The 1996 shutdown was caused by debate between a Democratic president (former President Bill Clinton) and a Republican-controlled Congress. It resulted in a loss of tourism revenue, unprocessed immigration forms and millions of dollars lost in payments and furloughed government employees. A repeat should be avoided if at all possible.
Yet partisanship has reared its ugly head again. Congress is gridlocked and unwilling to make concessions regarding the Affordable Care Act. The Republican-controlled House is holding the government hostage if Obamacare emerges unscathed, while the Democratic-majority Senate will amend every bill thrown at it until the current health care plan is allowed to continue as written.
It is painfully obvious that the government should not be shut down, health care bill or not. Budget earmarks slow down the political process. Were the healthcare debate detached from the imminent threat of government stoppage, there would be no crisis. Unfortunately, concession of the healthcare debate would be widely viewed as a Republican failure, despite the ultimate aversion of disaster.
The ultimate problem is partisanship. The competition between two parties results in a misalignment of priorities. Congress is ultimately obsessed with political victories because the end goal is reelection, rather than the successful management of a functional government. It is impossible to say that these problems wouldn’t arise in a single party format, but it is definitely an issue in the current system.
Congress is not doing a good job. Their sub-20 percent approval rating is evidence of that. However, the body’s near-annual brush with financial meltdown implies a problem with the game rather than the players. Members of Congress can’t help but fight for political victories — they lose their jobs if they don’t. Unfortunately their competition always seems to come at the expense of an American public that ironically pays their salaries.
This system is unsustainable. Financially, a government is meant to provide stability in an unpredictable and dangerous economic system. This is an unachievable goal when the government is as unpredictable and dangerous as capitalism itself. The U.S. government has handled close calls in the past, but it cannot be depended on to do so forever.
The impending government shutdown seems to be a problem without a solution. While the current crisis will eventually be overcome, the system is setup to run into the same issue months down the road. It is going to take a priority shift by political leadership to eventually shift the paradigm itself. After that, voters must be responsible enough not to throw out those who are trying to fix the system.