Americans Don’t Expect Much From the New Congress - Horowitz

Americans Don’t Expect Much From the New Congress - Horowitz

With the 118th Congress kicking off today, Americans aren’t expecting much in the way of progress, according to a Pew Research Center national poll. These low expectations are on target. With Democrats in control of the Senate and Republicans in control of the House--both by slim margins in an era of partisan polarization in which it is more difficult to achieve principled bipartisan compromises--it is hard to see many new initiatives becoming law. 

 

This is even before we get to the dysfunction of the House Republicans where Kevin McCarthy(R-CA) in an increasingly desperate effort to win the Speakership that may still fall short today, has already given away the store to members affiliated with the far right. These members, most of whom embraced and worked to advance the “Big Lie,” are far more interested in getting social media clicks by “owning the liberals” and promoting grievances than in getting anything done.  In fact, to some of these members, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Andy Biggs(R-AZ), compromise is a dirty word.

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The public’s intuitive grasp of the difficulties presented by divided government, even though many prefer it, should at least serve as a brake on disappointment with congressional performance over the next two years.   “Most U.S. adults say President Joe Biden (65%) and Republican leaders in Congress (61%) will be unsuccessful getting their agendas enacted in the next two years; only about a third say the president (33%) and GOP leaders (36%) will be successful,” Pew reports. There were similar expectations of gridlock after the 2018 and 2014 elections, both of which also produced divided government, Pew notes.

 

Along the same lines, Americans are not expecting an improvement in the partisan acrimony that characterizes so much of today’s politics.  Less than 1-in-10 Americans expect relations between Republicans and Democrats to get better next year, while nearly 4 in 10 expect they will get worse.  More than half say relations will “stay about the same as they are now.”

 

Recognizing the difficulties in getting more legislation passed, given the composition of the new Congress, the Biden administration is planning to focus most heavily on implementing the sweeping legislation that it won adoption of over the past two years, including a large-scale infrastructure upgrade and landmark incentives to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to non-carbon producing renewable energy.  The lion’s share of its legislative work over the next two years will likely focus more on preventing the rollback of its hard-won major legislative accomplishments and on fending off investigations launched by the new Republican House majority.

 

There are still a narrow set of topics where bipartisan cooperation is possible, including continuing military assistance to Ukraine, action on the opioid epidemic and additional restrictions on TikTok. These are likely to be exceptions, however, to the stalemate that will very likely predominate.

 

Let us hope that this Congress at least mainly adheres to the first tenet of the Hippocratic Oath: “do no harm.”  Unfortunately, this is probably the best we can expect. The good news is that Americans firmly grasp this hard reality.