The end of bipartisanship

There were 11 minutes left of the vote when I tuned in to C-SPAN. Superimposed onto the multi-tiered House of Representatives chamber was a grid displaying the support for the Affordable Health Care for America Act. The left column displayed the “yea” votes (210), the middle column displayed the “nay” votes (208), and the right column displayed the votes yet to be cast (17). Knowing that these last minutes could represent final moments for a bill dominating the news for the past eight months, I sat glued to the countdown clock.

With only three minutes left, the previously lethargic pace of responses sped up, and nine Democrats cast their votes in favor of the bill. Flirting with the last seconds of the voting period, the remaining voters cast their decisions, and the final numbers stared me in the face—220 for, 215 against.

Though I was not surprised with the end result, I could not help noticing the imbalance that the numbers represented. Of those 220 supporting votes, only one came from outside of the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, the “nays” included not only the 179 other Republicans, but also 39 Democrats. The bill had passed, but with only two votes over the needed majority and almost no support from the minority party.

We find ourselves in an era of rabid partisanship perpetrated at every end of the spectrum. From the Republican-controlled Congress of the early 2000s to today, whichever political party is in charge has considered its majority a blank check for whatever it can get passed. While the election of a specific party does provide a legitimate legislative upper hand to an extent, the trend today is to take significant liberties with an ambiguous “mandate.”

I am not concerned that the majority party has the ability to single-handedly pass policies that strictly adhere to its platform. What concerns me is that even when bills with great societal consequences or far-reaching effects go up for vote, compromise is abandoned, and passage is assured through one party. Even though a bill promises to significantly affect the average American’s life, the two parties take their usual positions of opposition and abandon the bargaining table in favor of the more utilitarian “just get it passed” mentality. The result is not only the passage of a narrow-minded piece of legislation, but also the growth of divisions within the public.

To remind myself that bipartisan effort in the passage of important bills is possible, I look to the past. In the 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented his New Deal reforms as critical to the improvement of public life. He could have passed the Social Security Act relying solely on his own party, which had a significant majority. Despite this option, executive and legislative leaders alike opted for a bill that would fulfill its original purpose but also boasted enough compromise to attract the other party. In the end, 81 of the 102 Republicans voted for the Social Security Act.

Again in the 1960s, the alleged necessity of a bill did not negate the need for bipartisan compromise. When President Lyndon B. Johnson presented the idea for Medicare, one of the more influential socially-minded bills in our history, he did not depend on his party’s majority. Instead, he and his colleagues in Congress put a bill on the floor that garnered 70 Republican votes—more than half of the Grand Old Party members in Congress.

The fact is that we have entered a chilling period of separation between our nation’s political parties. Any hint of making real attempts to get opposition support for a major bill has disappeared because of the majority’s unwillingness to adequately consider the priorities of the minority as well as the minority’s stubborn refusal to compromise. Instead of looking for a consensus and solutions that appeal to a broad cross-section of the American public, each party is looking out only for its own ideological interests. With this attitude, it is not surprising that bills pass through Congress supported by just one party. This approach serves only to polarize the public and sabotage constructive dialogue.
All last year we heard promises of bipartisanship from almost every candidate, especially our current president. Now, though, it seems that those promises weren’t made seriously. There is a growing cancer of partisanship on Capitol Hill, and it needs to be addressed.

Necessity for a bill is no excuse for blatant partisanship. Yes, there needs to be health care reform, but when a $1.2 trillion dollar bill passes through the House with only two votes over the halfway mark, something is wrong. The point isn’t getting the bill from point A to point B. The point is making that journey with as much support and as many different contributing voices as possible. Compromise has been attained in the past with issues just as critical, and it can be achieved again.

Derek Turner is a Columbia College sophomore. Opening Remarks runs alternate Tuesdays. opinion@columbiaspectator.com