Social Democratic America (27 page)

While conservative southerners have been moving to the Republican Party, liberals in the rest of the country have been switching to the Democrats.
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The ideological purification of the two parties is now complete: in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the leftmost Republican is to the right of the rightmost Democrat.
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In prior eras, proponents of policy change often succeeded by fashioning a coalition across party lines. While this was seldom an easy task, it is now an extremely difficult one.
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From the perspective of democracy, there is a benefit to party cohesiveness: it provides voters with clear information about how a candidate will behave in office. But in a political system with multiple veto points, party cohesiveness increases the likelihood of gridlock. As long as the minority party controls one of the three lawmaking bodies—the presidency, the House, or the Senate—it can veto virtually any proposed policy change. Indeed, given the filibuster practice in the Senate, the minority doesn't actually need to control any of the three; it simply needs forty-one of the hundred seats in the Senate. The majority can circumvent the filibuster via a procedure known as “reconciliation,” but this can be used only for a narrow range of bills.

The polarization of America's two political parties has been asymmetrical: the Republicans have moved farther to the right than the Democrats have moved to the left.
Figure 5.7
shows the average voting position on economic issues (broadly defined) among members of each party in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Both parties have shifted away from the center as they've become more cohesive. But Republicans in the House, and recently those in the Senate too, have moved farther from the center than have Democrats in either chamber.

Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein point to another indicator of the rightward shift among Republican legislators:

the size of the House GOP's right-wing caucus, the Republican Study Committee, or RSC. Paul Weyrich and other conservative activists created the committee in 1973 as an informal group to pull the center-right party much further to the right. It had only 10 to 20 percent of Republican representatives as members as recently as the 1980s, a small fringe group. In the 112th Congress [2011–12], the RSC had 166 members, or nearly seven-tenths of the caucus.
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FIGURE
5.7 Voting by Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate

Average “dimension 1 DW-nominate” scores for Republican legislators and Democratic legislators in the House of Representatives and the Senate. The range shown here is 0 (center) to –1 or +1 (extreme left or right).
Data source
: Keith Poole and Christopher Hare, “An Update on Political Polarization through the 112th Congress,”
Voteview
, January 16, 2013.

Republicans have become more unified in voting as well. Keith Poole has measured the share of party members who follow their party on votes in which a majority in one party votes opposite to a majority in the other party (in other words, leaving out votes on which there is significant bipartisan support). The share has risen from 75 percent in 1970 to 90–95 percent in recent years.
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The Republicans' unity and their oppositional temperament were on display during the debate on President Obama's proposed economic stimulus package in early 2009. Not a single Republican in the House voted in favor of the package, even though many had voted for a stimulus measure a year earlier when the economy was in far less dire shape.
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In the Senate, both parties have made more frequent use of the filibuster to block legislative proposals when they've been in the minority. The best indicator of filibuster use is the number of cloture motions—motions to cut off filibuster attempts—that are filed. As
figure 5.8
shows, the rise in filibustering began in the 1970s. Large jumps occurred in 1971, 1991, and 2007, with the latter being especially pronounced. In each case, Republicans initiated the rise.

FIGURE
5.8 Use of the filibuster in the Senate

Number of cloture filings. The line is a loess curve.
Data source
:
www.senate.gov
, “Senate Action on Cloture Motions.”

Have these developments made it more difficult to pass legislation?
Figure 5.9
shows the number of laws passed by Congress in each term since the early 1930s. Although there has been a decline, it began before the 1970s. And there was no acceleration in the 1970s when the polarization of the parties and increased use of the filibuster began, or in the 1990s when Republicans in the House began their sharp turn to the right and filibuster use jumped, or in the past few years as Republicans became especially obstructionist.

Even if we don't see a clear impact of the new Republican obstructionism, it could have an effect in the future. Will it? I suspect the Republican leadership in Congress will sooner or later turn away from the staunch antigovernment orientation that has dominated its approach of late. I see three potential triggers. One is a bad loss in an otherwise winnable election. This nearly happened in 2012, as Republican voters in the presidential primaries flirted with a series of unelectable conservative candidates—Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, and Rick Santorum—before settling on Mitt Romney as the party's nominee. If it eventually does happen, it will prompt a move back toward the center, some key defections from the party, or a more frequent occurrence of Democrats holding the presidency, the House, and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

FIGURE
5.9 Number of laws passed by Congress

The line is a loess curve.
Data source
: Tobin Grant, personal communication.

Another push toward Republican moderation could come from the growing importance of working-class whites as a constituency for the party. Some thoughtful and prominent voices on America's right—David Brooks, Ross Douthat, David Frum, Charles Murray, Ramesh Ponnuru, Reihan Salam—have noted that this group is struggling economically and could benefit from government help.
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Finally, clear thinkers on the right will eventually realize that the key question isn't how
much
government should intervene but
how
it should do so. As I pointed out in
chapter 4
, an expansion of public social programs doesn't necessarily mean more government interference in markets and weaker competition. If Americans want protection and support and the choice is between social insurance and regulation, the former usually is preferable.

The Tea Party could forestall the Republican leadership's shift back to the center. It is an important force in elections to the House of Representatives in several dozen districts. If the Tea Party remains vibrant, it will continue to push Republicans toward the extreme.
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The same is true of Grover Norquist and his “taxpayer protection” pledge, which most congressional Republicans have felt obliged to sign. But if history is any guide, these barriers to moderation eventually will be eclipsed or disappear. In the long run, the center of gravity in the Republican Party probably will be similar to that of center-right parties in Western Europe, most of which accept a generous welfare state and relatively high taxes.

In the race to the good society, America is a tortoise.
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We advance slowly, but we do advance. While our veto-point-heavy political system impedes progressive change, it also makes it difficult for opponents of government social programs to dilute or do away with them once they are in place. Consequently, social policy advances tend to endure. The long-run trend in American social policy has been one of slow but steady ratcheting upward, and the most likely scenario going forward is a continuation of this trend.

The notion of a social democratic America will strike some observers of US politics as a pipe dream. But consider this: in the realm of public social policy, the distance between the United States today and Denmark or Sweden today is smaller than the distance between the United States a century ago and the United States today. In the past one hundred years we've put in place a host of public programs that contribute to economic security, opportunity, and shared prosperity. Getting closer to the good society doesn't require a radical break from our
historical path. It simply requires continuing along that path. In all likelihood, that is exactly what we will do.

This doesn't mean the future is predetermined. The trajectory I've laid out here is the most likely one, in my view, but it is by no means the only possibility. Moreover, even if we do move toward expanded government social programs, there will be plenty of space for actors to shape the timing, scope, and nature of future policy. My aim in writing this book is, above all else, to help inform those who seek to do so.

AMERICA CAN DO
better at ensuring economic security, opportunity, and shared prosperity by expanding some of our existing public social programs and adding some new ones, and I expect we will. What will the country look like half a century from now?

A larger share of adults will be in paid employment, though for many the workweek will be shorter and there will be more vacation days and holidays. Nearly all jobs will be in services; only 5 percent or so will be in manufacturing or agriculture. Many more Americans will work in helping-caring services—teaching, advising, instructing, aiding, nursing, curing, monitoring, assisting—and more of these services will be personalized. Quite a few of these jobs will be relatively low paying. Most of us will shift between jobs and even occupations more frequently than today.

Our economy will be more globalized. More of the goods and services we purchase will be produced or performed abroad. More of us will work for firms based in other countries. More US companies will employ workers in other nations or outsource tasks to firms located abroad. We will continue to attract lots of immigrants.
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