By David Gushee
Thinking it’s been a while since I wrote about public policy, I remembered why: no one in Washington is actually making public policy right now.
A more precise way to say it is the legislative branch of the federal government is proving unable to move bills through the legislative process so that any of them end up on the president’s desk.
Nothing that the president proposes can make it through the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Nothing that the House passes can make it through the Democratic-controlled Senate. Nothing that the Senate passes can make it through the House. Ergo, no legislation gets to the president’s desk.
This will probably be yet another year in which no real federal budget will be passed. No progress will be made on solving basic problems like our aging infrastructure, underwhelming school performance, feeble economy, high unemployment rate, underfunded social security programs, chronic poverty, massive budget deficits and growing federal debt.
There will of course be occasional headlines out of Washington. The Republican House will pass bills that evoke cries of outrage from the Democrats and their chorus of activist friends. The Senate will pass bills that evoke cries of outrage from the Republicans and their chorus of activist friends. Sign-on letters will circulate about how utterly outrageous it is that this-or-that bill was being considered or passed. These will be earnestly discussed at press conferences and photo ops.
But it will all be posturing, because none of the bills has any real chance of becoming law. Both sides will be able to pass as many of these “message bills” as they want. They will be perfectly crafted according to some consultant’s idea of what might be politically effective in this-or-that election campaign.
The main news will be campaign news. We will learn about swing states, get-out-the-vote efforts, campaign-rhetoric strategies, Super PACs and attack ads. We might learn more than we ever wanted to know about Mitt Romney’s high school days or about how Joe Biden and Barack Obama are getting along. We might even hear about who is positioning to run for president in 2016.
So we will spend yet another year not solving any of our nation’s problems. Such a task will be seen by all the wise old political hands as simply impossible in an election year.
This is how a great nation slowly kills itself.