Bipartisanship’s Last Stand: What does the Debt Deal mean for Legislators?

Like many, I have serious reservations about elements of the debt deal. But from a standpoint concerned only with the legislative process, the debate in Washington has not been “business as usual.”  In recent months we have witnessed two primary, parallel attempts at compromise: The “Gang of 6” in the Senate, and the Obama-Boehner-Cantor talks at The White House. To me, the failure of the “Gang,” and the ultimate success of the White House talks, is a sign that our government is undergoing a significant shift in the way it legislates.

Change in the legislative paradigm is not a radical event – it has been the norm in our Congress’ history. Compromise, specifically over “perceived truths,” as Jeffrey Goldfarb notes, is the heart of the legislative process. Among the oldest approaches to compromise was John C. Calhoun’s “doctrine of the concurrent majority,” where the goal of legislation was to accommodate all ideas. During the “Golden Age,” Henry Clay championed the idea that “all legislation…is founded upon the principle of mutual concession.” Now, Obama’s inability to strike a “Grand Bargain” should not be seen as an unqualified failure; grand bargains can only be made within a legislative framework where both sides are willing to sacrifice equally, a point I will return to shortly.

Turning to the present day, we find two curious episodes in the Senate. First, we have an attempt by the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to cede portions of the Senate’s power to the Democratic President. The Senate has always fiercely defended its own sovereignty with a ferocity that can only equal debates over world-shattering policy changes. William S. White, perhaps the most eminent scholar on Senate history, noted that it is “harder to change a [standing] rule than to vote to take a country to war.” For McConnell to suggest that the Democratic president takes the reigns is a clear act of desperation, a sign that the existing framework of compromise familiar to McConnell no longer applies.

Second, we have the “Gang of 6.” The Gang represents the driving force of contemporary compromise: bipartisanship. All too often, however, bipartisanship simply means party parity. Seven Democrats and seven Republicans negotiating becomes a ‘”compromise.” Nothing needs to be conceded by either party, and concessions need not be equal. The Gang of 6 at least attempted to include a spectrum of political opinion, including Southern conservatives like Saxby Chambliss and Northern liberals like Dick Durbin, whereas the “Gang of 14” was almost entirely composed of centrists from the Southwest and Midwest. But in an age of unprecedented partisanship, the gang model seems increasingly unsuited to its environment. The Gang of 6 proposed sweeping spending cuts and revenue increases: cut the deficit by $4 trillion in a decade, overhaul the tax code, and ensure the solvency of social security. The proposal provided significantly more spending cuts than revenue measures, but, even as Senate Republicans lined up in support, the House summarily dismissed it. The Gang did not receive the adulations that its predecessors enjoyed – it was derided by the Tea Party as the “Gang of 666.”

Contrast the effort of the Gang of 6 with the deal just reached. Substantively, there are similarities in the legislation and the Gang’s proposal. Where they differ, the latter tends to be more moderate. Both are worded so as to ensure both domestic non-discretionary spending and military budgets are cut, and both ensure deficit reductions in the trillions. In fact, the current deal presents a much more modest goal of $2.7 trillion in cuts. However, many large issues, including where the bulk of the cuts come from, have been deferred to a joint Congressional “supercommittee.” In very real ways, the substance of the deal will not be known until the supercommittee submits its legislation on December 23^rd.  But, at this early stage, it appears the White House deal achieved what the Gang could not.

When President Obama was elected, I had hoped that Washington might move past the ‘bipartisan’ era into a “nonpartisan” era. Democrats and Republicans would still fiercely compete to enact their agendas, but the legislative process would not be determined solely by party strength. The old cliché “be careful what you wish for” holds true. More often than not, we saw Cantor and his “Young Guns” undermining Boehner, Tea Partiers versus chamber deans, and the Senate versus the House. Obama played this advantage to the hilt and showed a shrewd control over the process of compromise that had eluded him during previous big-ticket debates. Gary Alan Fine correctly observed, for instance, missed opportunities in ARRA). Obama stayed firm to several core values. He was insistent on vetoing a short-term deal, and appalled at the idea of forcing students to pay interest on loans without deferral. Lo and behold, the final deal includes a long-term fix, if not the grand bargain he initially wished for, and an increase in Pell grants. In contrast, Republican negotiators drew a line in the sand in front of every issue; if everything is a core value, can one really stand for anything? Boehner and his colleagues succeeded in framing much of the debate, but it came at the cost of ceding their bargaining power to parties that were actually willing to solve the problem in good faith.

What this means for the future of the legislative process rests largely in the hands of the supercommittee. Composed of six members from each party, it still has significant differences with the “gang” model. It will force members of each chamber and faction to directly engage with each other. It gives a national platform where voices of reason and conciliation might be heard. This is only the second joint committee in history with the authority to write legislation. Its mere existence will change the landscape. As a couple of ABC News bloggers write, paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin, for now we only have “a deal – if they can keep it.”