There is no question that the Republican party in Congress,
and especially in the House, has tried to obstruct President Obama’s legislative
initiatives at almost every turn. Some
of this is just hardball politics, some of it is pandering to Republican politician’s
voter base, and some may even be driven by racism against our first black
president. But there is another perspective to this steadfast opposition one
might consider.
In general, a democratic government like ours ought not to implement
major social policies, or major policies of any sort, without a national consensus. Not a complete consensus of course, because
there will always be those who oppose any new idea, however rational it is. But at least a healthy majority of the nation
ought to support any proposed new major government initiative before it is
implemented.
The establishment of Social Security in 1935, in the depths
of the depression, had overwhelming support from both parties at the time. When President Johnson signed Medicare into
law in 1965, there was overwhelming public support for it. These were expensive programs that had a
significant impact on America life, and so it was important that there be
widespread support for them.
Look, by contrast, at passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable
Care Act (aka Obamacare). At its passage less than half the country supported
it, and at no time since, up to today, has its public support (measured by
periodic polls) risen above the low 40% mark.
It is no wonder it continues to be a source of such political friction.
Aside from the fact that almost no one in Congress read the entire 2000+ page
bill before they voted on it, and that it contained a poorly-thought out and
unrealistic funding plan, it simply didn’t have the public backing that such a
disruptive change ought to have had.
Or look at the current stalemate in immigration. Liberals want to give many illegal immigrants
a path to citizenship. Conservatives wonder (a) why we should reward illegal
behavior with citizenship, and (b) why illegal immigrants should get citizenship
ahead of the millions who have waited patiently for legal citizenship through
the quota system. These are hard
questions, and it is by no means clear to anyone yet what the right answer
would be, so it makes sense for the government to do nothing if it can’t yet
figure out the right thing to do.
So I would propose another perspective to the current
Congressional stalemate. President Obama keeps proposing liberal ideas that don’t
(yet) have a national consensus behind them. Maybe they should have, but they
don’t. So in fact perhaps the government is working exactly the way it should
when it blocks such initiatives. Republicans are a majority in the House, and
may soon be a majority in the Senate as well. They are a majority because, for
better or worse, a lot of the nation’s voters elected them. That means they more or less represent the will
of a large portion of the nation, and perhaps it is right that no major
legislative initiative, however rational or “right” it is, ought to be passed
over the opposition of a large portion of the nation.
If a right-wing President were in office and a Democratically-controlled
Congress blocked his minority right-wing initiatives, liberals would think
Congress was just doing its job (and indeed, that is exactly what they thought
during much of the last Bush administration).
So perhaps exactly the same logic applies here – the nation as a whole
is not yet ready (and may never be) for some of the things President Obama is
proposing, and until the nation is ready for them, they ought not to become
law.
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