The Decline of Congressional Lawmaking and How Political Polarization Has Changed Congress

Throughout the mid-20th century, Congress has passed major laws pertaining to genres like civil rights, specifically the Civil Rights Acts of 1960 and 1964, or laws on taxes, including the Tax Reform Act of 1969. The question being asked today is, why is modern Congress struggling to produce new legislation? According to GovTrack.us, the success rate of bills in the mid-20th century was around 5–9% and dropped to about 2% in recent Congresses, showing the repeated stalemate in recent issues. The overall decline in lawmaking isn’t because of lawmakers’ carelessness for policy, but rather due to increasing polarization of political parties, the expansion of presidential power, and the pressure on elected officials that has made compromise between parties more difficult.

Congress hasn’t always been this stubborn. In the mid-20th century, Congress was able to find common ground to pass new legislation. Now, we don’t get new lawmaking that often because lawmakers can’t come from different parties to have discussions because of increased polarization. Examples of this lawmaking from the mid-20th century would be the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which eliminated discrimination in voting, or the Social Security Act of 1935, that created the Social Security program. Although there was plenty of controversy behind these laws, political parties were able to build partnership and have some independence from their party. Unfortunately, however, the political atmosphere that allowed for these compromises to happen took a rough turn, making compromises harder.

Before the modern political landscape, both political parties had more diversity in terms of ideologies. This made compromises between the two parties much easier. Now, the Pew Research Center shows that there are only around two dozen moderate members of Congress across both parties. In the modern political atmosphere, members of Congress are pushed to stay loyal to their party, often just pulling for their side rather than finding common ground on big issues. In earlier decades, compromise was necessary to achieve new legislation, but instead, today compromise is seen as a weakness or giving into the enemy rather than being productive. Overall, the biggest difference in how Congress operates today is the rise of partisan polarization, reducing the cooperation between political parties and making it much more difficult to come to new legislation.

Modern lawmakers face pressure and scrutiny from every angle. They get pressure from the voters in the primary, activists of their parties, and from donors supporting their campaign. This makes it harder to come to compromise when there is constant pressure of being influenced to make decisions on the behalf of other peoples’ interests. Mainstream media, such as social media and news outlets, look for conflict and, in a sense, reward it, rather than supporting finding common ground and negotiating. Lawmakers can actually get more out of sticking up against one another instead of working to come up with a solution. According to the Vox report, lawmakers who aggressively attack the other party receive a surge in small-dollar campaign donations. Even though there are lots of ideological differences between members of Congress, it should also be taken into account that this political environment incentivizes conflict more than reward.

With Congress unable to make decisions on policymaking, something has to step in to balance out Congress’s inability to reach agreements. Recent presidents have had a strong reliance on executive orders when Congress can’t act. While Congress has slowed down, the presidents have tried to fill the gap, creating a trend expanding the president’s power. So overall, the large drop in major legislation isn’t due to the mistakes of singular lawmakers, but rather the result of a new political atmosphere that has made compromise a more difficult result, and the expansion of the role of the president.