Everyday Politics Blog

The Senate's Collison Course

By Scott Lemieux

A political commentator points out an unusual aspect of the health care bill that recently passed in the Senate:

There’s no real precedent for such a major piece of social policy legislation as this health care bill being enacted into law on a party-line vote.

While in the past we might have expected to see some liberal Republicans vote for the health care bill and some conservative Republicans to oppose it, this didn't happen in 2009.   To use V.O. Key's term, "party in government" is probably at its strongest point in American history.   In large measure, this development is a result of the parties becoming more ideologically coherent -- one reason that the health care bill failed to attract the support of any liberal Republicans in the Senate is that there are so few left.    Even so, historically it would have been much more likely that Maine's Republican Senator Olympia Snowe would have voted for the legislation instead of the conservative Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson, but the latter voted for the bill (after extracting some concessions) and the former didn't.

The rise of "party in government" the health care bill reflects, while often decried by political pundits who emphasize the virtues of bipartisanship, is seen as a good thing by many political scientists.   Disciplined parties have a major obvious advantage: they increase the accountability of government.   Ideologically coherent parties provide more information to voters and are easier to hold responsible for successes and failures.    At a minimum, there's no reason to think of increased party discipline and polarization as inherently bad things.

One potential problem, however, is that party discipline may have unusual effects in the American case.   Consider two of Lowi's principles of politics: "institutions routinely solve collective action problems" and "history matters."   The esoteric rules of the Senate, which allow not only minority parties but individual Senators to obstruct the operations of the body, present an obvious collective action problem, in that routinized minority obstruction would in the long run make everyone worse off by preventing any party from enacting a substantial agenda.    One reason that minority obstructions such as filibusters have been relatively rare is that loose party discipline means that Senators in the minority party may need the support of members of the majority party on another issue, so that the consequences of obstructionism manifested themselves much more quickly.    When there's little possibility of attracting support across party lines, conversely, senators will see much short-term loss from being obstructionist, and if they gain politically in the short term may put less weight on long-term consequences.   

So party realignment may put the Senate's rules and its traditions on a collision course.    If party discipline continues to be strong, it seems likely the recent de facto requirement that the 6o votes required to break a filibuster, rather than the 50 (or 51 if the minority party controls the White House) needed to pass legislation, are necessary to move a bill forward will eventually broken by a majority party willing to change the rules.    Until this happens, however, passing major legislation will be enormously difficult.

Anti-Poverty Laws and Ideology

With the recent downturn in the economy more people are relying on food stamps to feed themselves and their families. Blue collar workers, especially those tied to the auto industry, have been forced to apply for services. (Check out the interactive map in the New York Times to see the numbers of recipients in your county.)

Some facts about Food Stamps:

• 1 in 8 Americans and 1 in 4 children are on Food Stamps
• 36 million Americans receive benefits
• In some counties, half of all children receive benefits.
• Only 2/3rd of those who are eligible have applied for the benefits. 15 to 16 million more could be getting services.
• Now nearly 12 percent of Americans receive aid — 28 percent of blacks, 15 percent of Latinos and 8 percent of whites. Benefits average about $130 a month for each person in the household, but vary with shelter and child care costs.
• Almost 90 percent of beneficiaries nationwide live below the poverty line (about $22,000 a year for a family of four).

Americans are divided about how government should approach anti-poverty programs, such as the Food Stamp program. In general, liberals believe that government should provide services to assist the poor  either by providing direct payments or by providing subsidies for education or job training. Conservatives believe that welfare programs create a class of people dependent on government money and eliminate the incentive to find work. They believe that volunteer organizations and local churches can provide food for the hungriest Americans, and government should not be involved. 

In the 1980s, President Clinton revamped the welfare program in this country. He famously claimed that we were going to end welfare as we know it. Work requirements and time limits were placed upon  welfare beneficiaries. As a result, the number of people on welfare has declined, however little research has been done to examine the full impact on families and children.

The Food Stamp program has been less controversial than other anti-poverty programs, because few people are willing to let people starve in the streets. The actual cash payment per family is relatively small. The debates around the Food Stamp program have largely been about how to eliminate fraud. How do you make sure that a mother is really using the money to buy rice and beans for her children and not trading in the vouchers for money that will spent on drugs or alcohol?

What laws or policies do you believe should be put into place to help the poor in America? Is government or the community responsible for making sure that children aren't starving? Should government be spending more time coming up with laws that get at the root of poverty? Should they be setting up job retraining programs in the neediest areas? Do you believe that fraud is a big problem with Food Stamps? Has your local community been hard hit by the economic downturn? What policies or programs would you like to see in your area?

Obama in Copenhagen: The Domestic/Foreign Policy divide

By David Watkins

In any American Politics Textbook, the distinction between the foreign policy and domestic policy is noted, usually with regard to the president's relatively greater power in the arena of foreign policy. This is, of course, true as a general rule, as anyone following American politics in the years following the terrorist attacks of September 11th will surely recall. But sometimes the picture is less clear.
 
Consider climate change politics. In the 1990's, President Bill Clinton signed the Kyoto protocol, a treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, in 1997 the Senate passed a resolution by the astounding vote of 95-0 indicating they would not entertain ratification until a number of changes (many of which Clinton agreed with) were made--most involving commitments from China and other developing countries to reduce emissions or restrict future emissions growth. Any hope for progress on this issue halted in 2001 when George Bush unsigned the Kyoto protocol and withdrew the United States from negotiations for eight years.

President Obama has made a significant re-entry into global climate change politics a significant part of his early agenda. He strongly supported a "cap and trade" bill which would institute a scheme to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This bill has passed the House of Representatives, but has not yet been considered in the Senate, which will almost certainly prove much more difficult terrain.
 
But Obama is not waiting for the Senate to act. In advance of an important international summit on Climate Change, Obama is making strong commitments on behalf of the United States:

At the international climate meetings in Copenhagen next month, Mr. Obama will tell the delegates that the United States intends to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions “in the range of” 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050, officials said.

The figures reflect targets specified by legislation that passed the House in June but is stalled in the Senate. Congress has never enacted legislation that includes firm emissions limits or ratified an international global warming agreement with binding targets. 

 
One might plausibly argue that Obama is getting ahead of himself here: he's making a commitment that requires the cooperation of the Senate, where a number of necessary votes have, by all accounts, yet to be secured. But Obama is perhaps sending a message to two groups with this commitment: to Congress, and the Senate in particular, that he's making this an international and significant priority, and to the International community, that he's commited to making climate change mitigation a priority. If the latter message is well recieved, that of course makes it more likely that the substantive goal of the policy will be reached, as climate change mitigation requires a high level of global cooperation. It will be a huge challenge, but as economist John Quiggin notes, there's more reasons for optimism around the world than there have been in a long time.