What’s so great about bipartisanship? As a thing unto itself, perhaps nothing. We hardly need agreement for agreement’s sake. Though the Founding Fathers may not have envisioned the two-party system we have today, our political system has long accommodated rival ideas – even thrived on them. (The Civil War being an exception to prove the rule.)
Partisanship serves useful functions. It can help voters understand their choices more clearly. When legislation passes or fails along a party-line (or a near party-line) vote, citizens learn where members of a party most likely stand on the issue at hand. Having two (or more) political parties competing helps root out corruption as rivals keep an eye on one another.
But today many of us wonder if partisanship has become so extreme that it is doing more harm than good. In 2011, a partisan standoff over federal spending nearly led the United States to default on its debt payments; Standard & Poor’s downgraded the nation’s credit rating for the first time in history. Earlier this year, across-the-board spending cuts kicked in (“sequestration”) after Democrats and Republicans failed to reach agreement on budget priorities. Today, as the parties dig in their heels once again, the Treasury Department is already shifting money within government accounts to keep the government solvent.
Statistical analysis backs up anecdotal impressions. Longtime congressional observers Tom Mann (of the left-leaning Brookings Institute) and Norm Ornstein’s (of the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute) Vital Statistics shows a long-term trend from the 80th Congress (1947-1948) through the 112th Congress (2011-2012)) toward increased partisanship on both sides of the aisle, with the result a growing ideological divide between Democrats and Republicans in both the House and Senate.
Each party blames the other. Some people blame campaign finance rules, others the Internet, and still others the culture of Washington, D.C. Maybe it’s a perfect storm of factors. Whatever the cause, the result is dysfunction.
And it isn’t just about the budget. The last major legislative attempt to address climate change went down in partisan flames. The American Clean Energy Security Act of 2009 (aka “Waxman-Markey”) passed the House 219 to 212 with only 8 Republicans voting in favor of the act. The bill was declared dead in the Senate in 2010. (Though it was sometimes referred to as “cap-and-trade” legislation,” Waxman-Markey was, to put it charitably, a hodge-podge of policy measures and a far cry from Pure Cap-and-Dividend.)
It doesn’t have to be this way, certainly not with respect to environmental issues. The National Environmental Policy Act passed the Senate unanimously and the House overwhelmingly (372-15) in 1969, and was signed by President Nixon on January 1, 1970. In December 1970, Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency.
President Nixon was hardly an environmental maverick among Republicans – environmentalism was a mainstream Republican value. After Nixon vetoed the Clean Water Act of 1972 (formally, the Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972) based on his view that the legislation had become too expensive, Congress overrode his veto 52 to 12 in the Senate and 247 to 23 in the House. 17 Senate Republicans and 96 House Republicans supported the override. Representative Bill Harsha, Republican of Ohio, chided the president: “Furthermore, the President maintained that a vote to override the veto … was a vote to increase the likelihood of higher taxes. So be it, the public is prepared to pay for it. To say we can’t afford this sum of money is to say we can’t afford to support life on earth.”
When the clean water rules were amended in 1977, The New York Times reported that the “controversial legislation” had passed the House by a vote of 346 to 2 and passed the Senate by voice vote. If only we had such “controversy” around the climate change debate.
How about Republican hero Ronald “Government Is the Problem” Reagan? Well, in 1988, President Reagan supported the Montreal Protocol (after some prodding from Margaret Thatcher), declaring, “The protocol is the result of an extraordinary process of scientific study, negotiations among representatives of the business and environmental communities, and international diplomacy. It is a monumental achievement.” The protocol phased out the production of CFCs, which damage the ozone layer. (They were also a contributor to climate change, so a side benefit of the Montreal Protocol has been that it has slowed climate change.) The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 which established the cap-and-trade program that lead to massive reductions in sulphur oxides (SOx) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) which were causing acid rain passed the House 401 to 25 and passed the Senate 89 to10. President George H.W. Bush signed the bill. The amendments established a cap-and-trade program for SOx and NOx emissions. The program lead to huge reductions in emissions and a corresponding reduction in acid rain – all for a fraction of the price industry expected. (Though modeled on the SOx and NOx cap-and-trade system, a Pure Cap-and-Dividend program would be both more progressive and more strongly oriented to the free-market.)
There’s a pattern here, right?
Bipartisan legislation often comes hand-in-hand with transformational change in other policy realms as well, in many cases marking some of our finest moments as a nation. The Social Security Act of 1935 passed both chambers of congress with overwhelming majority support from both sides of the aisle. After the House and Senate versions were reconciled, the legislation passed by voice vote in both chambers. The final version of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed the Senate 73-27 and passed the House 289-126, in each case with majorities of both parties. The Voting Rights act of 1965 had similarly lopsided victories, again with majorities of both parties. And while Medicare failed to win the support of a majority of Republicans in the Senate, it still passed with the support of 13 Republican senators (17 voted against and 2 did not vote).
While bills passed with large, bipartisan majorities do not have any more legal force than bills that squeak through along party lines, the lopsided legislative victories tend to establish more enduring legislation. Consider, in contrast, the current political assault on Obamacare. The bill passed 219 to 212 in 2010, without a single Republican vote (and 34 Democrats opposing the bill). Today, as the new law is being implemented, its success is hardly guaranteed. Republicans in Congress are threatening to cut funding while many Republican governors are opting to minimize the program’s coverage in their state. In other words, the partisan struggle continues.
The fact that bipartisan votes come with transformational change does not, of course, mean that bipartisanship creates transformational change. It is more likely the other way around: overwhelming public support for an issue brings both parties into line with one another. Still, we can and should seek out areas where bipartisan agreement already exists or can be more easily achieved.
If we want bipartisan agreement on climate, Pure Cap-and-Dividend is our best hope. Pure Cap-and-Dividend embraces the best of both conservative thinking and progressive thinking. And not only does it provide conservatives and liberals with common ground, it promises us the greatest amount of greenhouse gas reductions at the lowest cost. But that is a topic for another day.