The Path to Dysfunction

Jonathan Ernst for The New York Times

Jared Bernstein is a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington and a former chief economist to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

There are many good articles explaining what might happen if the government shuts down next Tuesday. There are fewer on the impact of breaching the debt ceiling, but that is only because we have never been crazy enough to do so.  But at least from what I’ve seen, there is not much on why we are in this mess in the first place.

So here is a brief and surely incomplete road map of the route we have taken to dysfunction junction, in the hopes that it might provide some guidance back to the main highway.

First, and this is not a recommended route back, a number of friends who work in Congress tell me that the absence of earmarks represents the loss of an effective disciplinary measure by which party leaders could keep members in line.  The idea is that if party leaders cannot promise junior legislators some goodies for their districts in return for their votes, they hold less sway over them.

Still, as Mark Schmitt of the Roosevelt Institute points out, it’s not obvious that restoring earmarks would make much difference, as a key part of the most conservative ideology is simply to oppose things that government does (at least, things that help the disadvantaged â€" food stamps, bad; farm subsidies, O.K.).  He notes the examples of some red states that turned down the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, initially fully paid for by federal dollars (100 percent for the first three years, phasing down to 90 percent by 2020), or infrastructure spending and extended unemployment benefits under the Recovery Act.

Second, gerrymandering is clearly implicated.  The fact of “safe,” noncompetitive districts also robs the political process of a disciplinary force, where members could conceivably be held to task for shutdowns and defaults.

Third is new, nonestablishment money. There exists today a toxic combination between record levels of wealth concentration and the devolution of campaign finance rules such that independent and often anonymous donors have much more influence.  Again, this breaks down party discipline in ways that are most clearly seen by the frustration of Republican leadership in trying to figure out how to develop candidates who can get past radically conservative primaries to more moderate general election voters.  Accounts of the political calculations of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas provide an excellent microcosm of that dilemma.

Fourth, the political scientists Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, writing about this dysfunction, have concluded that “asymmetric polarization and the mismatch between our parties and governing institutions continue to account for the major share of our governing problems.”  The “asymmetric” part represents their view that a disproportionate share of gridlock is due to the fact that the “old conservative G.O.P. has been transformed into a party beholden to ideological zealots, one that sees little need to balance individualism with community, freedom with equality, markets with regulation, state with national power, or policy commitments with respect for facts, evidence, science and a willingness to compromise.”

The mismatch is the ability of the minority bloc with the attributes cited above to shut the system down.

These all seem right to me, but I’d like to add one that I am particularly concerned about: facts on the run.  Like many in the analysis business, I spend a lot of time with my colleagues at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities trying to understand and explain critical facts that should inform key debates.  What is it about health care markets that requires a government presence? (Answer: health care has public-good characteristics, and insurance markets are prone to adverse selection.)  What is the connection between food stamp receipt and work? (Answer: most able-bodied, nonelderly adult recipients are in the work force.)  What are the behavioral reactions to tax rate changes? (Not as large as the debate would have you believe.)  Do fiscal stimulus measures work? (Generally yes, in demand-constrained economies, but design matters.)  Would it hurt the economy to breach the debt ceiling? (Duh …)

But â€" and this gradual process has reached a juggernaut â€" it’s not just that concentrated wealth and lax campaign finance means big money can buy the politics it wants.  It can also buy the facts it wants. For every one of the questions above, you can find competing “think tanks” churning out contrary answers that support the ideology described in the Mann-Ornstein citation. In the middle are journalists, fact checkers and bloggers trying to serve as intermediaries, and many are helpful in that regard. But at the end of the day, most observers will throw up their hands and figure that there is no correct answer, so they might as well go with their gut.

When facts and reason leave the building, however, they are too often replaced with prejudice and skewed judgment, especially when growing racial and ethnic diversity coincides with economic trends that have become increasingly harsh to less-advantaged households.

Put it all together, and you have a pretty clear road map to dysfunction, though one that is admittedly incomplete (please add your suggested explanations in comments). Which of course raises the question: What’s the way back?  One is tempted to use the old Maine quip, “you can’t get there from here,” but that’s too defeatist.

The prescription flows from the above diagnosis, and I’ll dig into it in a later post.  But here’s one hint: even Tea Partiers want to keep government hands off their Medicare. That speaks to the need for better information and better policy. The first step, then, is to put Obamacare into effect â€" if we can do so efficiently and effectively, even in the face of such harsh opposition, it may well have the potential to begin to pave the way back to a better politics.