Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson say those who argue that gridlock is a good check on partisanship haven’t examined its policy consequences.
But, as we will learn next year, gridlock is not neutral. It is corrosive. The policy results that follow are neither centrist nor stable. Rather, stalemate in Washington leads to a slow and steady deterioration of governance — deterioration that is at the heart of our present economic crisis.
To see this requires grasping a simple truth: Even if Congress can’t pass new laws, things don’t stay the same. Instead, the role of government will change profoundly as major shifts in the economy and society affect how policies work. We call this process “drift,” and it is anything but benign. Think of how rising inflation erodes the value of the federal minimum wage — an obvious example that highlights a broader dynamic. The failure to update policy as the economic world evolves has in fact been central to the long-term American march toward a vastly more unequal society.