First draft

Congress introduces around 10,000 bills in a session, but only 3-4% are passed. From 1973 to 1974, 772 legislations were enacted, while the current Congress has only enacted 42 this year. The two-party system is a major impediment to passing laws due to polarization and lack of bipartisanship. Democrats and Republicans are moving further apart, making it difficult to find common ground. Congress requires 218 votes in the House to pass a bill, but even that is often a challenge. The lack of agreement is comparable to pre-abolition times. The divided government further complicates law-making. About 10,000 bills are introduced, on an average, in a session of Congress, and only three to four percent are passed. From January 1973 to December 1974, Congress enacted 772 legislations. The current Congress, since January 3rd of this year, has enacted 42 per GovTrack. Welcome to this episode of Gen Z Unlifed, and I am your host, Carter Bacigalupo, a first-year political science student here at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Today, I will be joined by my fellow political science student, Rako Venov, and my close friend Daniel, who is from Ukraine, and his family immigrated to the U.S. prior to his birth. We will be talking about a big issue going on right now, and that is Congress and why they can't pass more laws. They have one job, and I feel it is being done poorly. I believe the root of the problem can be shown by three factors. Lobbying, interest groups, the two-party system, and the foundation of the government itself. Obviously, Congress is not just lazy, and these legislators aren't just sitting on their hands. They're, I think, stopping them from actually getting work done, and I hope to shed some light on them today. All right, first topic on the agenda today is going to be the two-party system, and joining me will be my dear friend and colleague, Rako Venov. Hello, Rako. Hello, Carter. Thank you so much for having me on today. It really is an honor. Oh, well, the honor's all mine. So, Congress and law passage. How do you think the two-party system prevents that? Well, so the two-party system is really just a mixture of bad problems right now. You know, when George Washington originally left office as the president, he warned everyone else that having parties was just not going to be good for the United States. And now, as we can look at it, both parties are moving more, the Democrats are moving more left, Republicans are moving more right. And with this kind of polarization that we're having right now in views and ideologies, it makes it extremely hard to pass any kind of law, and it makes bipartisanship extremely hard to achieve. And we've seen many presidents try to work at bipartisanship. If we look at Bill Clinton, one of the main things he ran on was bipartisanship, and he tried to do his best. And that was kind of one of the last big results we had of bipartisanship, naturally. And of course, after 9-11, there was, everybody kind of agreed there was a lot of bipartisanship there. And then after that, again, splitting, began splitting. And once Donald Trump got into office, then it really polarized, and then we're kind of at a point now where there's really no going back. And so this just makes it really hard to pass laws, because no one can really agree, because their ideologies have skewed so much farther away than before. Yeah, absolutely. No, your point on they're getting further and further away is very true. There's actually a Pew Research Center study that shows that since the 92nd Congress in 1971 through 1972, the Democrats and Republicans have only gotten more and more splits. And that is a research study done by the Pew Research Center, and then it evaluates the Senate and House, and then it shows how far apart they're getting. So like at the beginning, the Democrats were at about minus .3, then they got to .6, and the Republicans went from plus .3 to plus .28. So it's obvious that they're getting a little further apart, but a ton of political analysis, they're all talking about it. Like Lee Droutman, he said, pragmatic politics reflect the happy confluence of pragmatic politics and political theory, centered on the premise that while a central government was necessary, it should require broad compromise across many competing interests to take decisive action. Now I see sort of the main issues that come across, especially like I had a little statistic earlier that Congress this year has only passed 42 laws. I know. And where has our country gotten to a point where we can barely agree on a president, let alone how are we supposed to agree on laws that we pass that will affect the masses? So it's just kind of an issue with figuring out where people stand. Yeah, I just, it's not fun. It's kind of sucks. Yeah, it's a crazy world we live in now. I mean, like you said, 42 laws being passed is crazy. If we look at both Biden and Trump administrations, even compared to Obama, they've passed so little laws. It's crazy. If you look at it purely just from a foundational standpoint, you need 218 votes in the House to pass a bill. That's 218 of 435. Now, is that a majority? Yes, that's a simple majority. But most of the time that simple majority can't even be decided on. Like even, let's talk about the speaker election, Kevin McCarthy, 15 ballots, the most since pre-Civil War times. And it's kind of fascinating to me that we couldn't even decide on our speaker and we are so divided to a point where it's comparable to pre-abolition. It really is crazy. Even like, like right now we have a Democratic president and usually Americans tend to elect the more Republican Congress. So that just like, then the vetoes go up and then it just, it gets crazier from there. Yeah, it's ridiculous. Well, Rocco, I'm not going to take more of your precious time from you. I appreciate everything you, I appreciate everything. I hope everything goes well and I hope to have you back on. Of course. Thank you so much for having me on.