As a member of the Wet Blanket movement, I’m obviously excited about the prospect of government gridlock resulting from divided government. Here are two other perpectives on why we should be enthusiastic about Congressional inactivity.
First, Ilya Somin:
[D]ivided government tends to restrain the growth of the state, and that when the two parties share power, they curb some of each other’s abuses.
I should also note that nearly all of the major government-restraining legislation of the the last thirty years (e.g. — the 1981 and 1986 tax reforms, the 1996 welfare reform, the deregulations and spending restrictions of the late 1990s) were passed under divided government, whereas nearly all the major expansions of government during that period (e.g. — Bush’s massive prescription drug bill, Obama’s stimulus and health care bills) were enacted under united control (the TARP bailout in late 2008 is the one big exception). This is probably not an accident and is consistent with historical experience. I’m not exactly optimistic about what either Obama or the new Republican House majority will do. But I do think that prospects for limiting government are far better today than they were just a few months ago. And the return of divided government is a crucial reason why. At the very least, we are unlikely to see any massive new government programs enacted, as happened under both united Republican control in the Bush era and united Democratic control under Obama.
Second, Douglas Wilson:
Over the course of the next year or so, you will be told ad nauseum that the nation is suffering from endless gridlock. The American people, it will be said, want things to “get done.” Well, I might want to ask, what things? If I am tied up on the deck of a pirate ship, with a bunch of fellow hostages, and a fight breaks out among the pirates, with one faction wanting us to walk the plank, and the other faction wanting to run us all through, I cast my vote for gridlock. As in, yay, gridlock.
November 8th, 2010 | 10:44 am
What I want Congress to get done is the undoing of the terrible legislation passed in the last two years. It will take new legislation to accomplish the repeal of Obamacare, the return of GM to the private sector, and a lot more, and I would prefer to see those things get done quickly and with no gridlock. It’s not going to happen, though, in this session of Congress. Gridlock is fine for preventing new legislation, but not good for undoing bad legislation.
November 8th, 2010 | 1:28 pm
HEAR, HEAR!
All in favor of gridlock, raise your hands!
[hands raising all over the nation]
I would be in favor of a resolution calling for all of congress to go back to their districts for an extended vacation – with full pay and benefits, – say, until January 2013, after the next election.
If they are not in session they at least are not passing more laws and increasing the size of government.
If they can’t decrease the size of government in their currently divided state, then let them go home and play tiddly-winks or whatever it is that politicians do in their off-time.
November 9th, 2010 | 11:13 am
After hearing the results of the election, I remarked to my wife, “ahh, thank goodness for gridlock.” I’m far from alone, it appears.
November 9th, 2010 | 11:47 am
Are you familiar with the strategy of “positive non-interventionism”?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_non-interventionism
The concept was just recently described on the Ricochet.com podcast by William McGurn. The idea is predicated on the notion that doing nothing connotes a certain passivity which allows the government’s natural propensity toward activism to rule the field, and therefore a deliberate policy of actively doing nothing is required to prevent the perpetual enactment of every tin-pot legislator’s fantasy proscriptions designed to bring about the perfect state.
For my part, I will vote for any party that commits itself to this cause. It seems to be a more developed, more practical governing philosophy along the lines of your well-meaning but debilitatingly vague Coolidge-Gridlock-Wet Blanket notions.
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