A Bigly Unpopular Bill
Have I ever noted the Congress is less responsive to the public than it should be?
In writing about the pending budget bill that is currently awaiting a vote in the US Senate, Noah Berlatsky makes an excellent point in a post at Public Notice.
As Republicans have spiraled into fascism, they’ve become less and less concerned about popular opinion.
When confronted with constituents demanding she oppose a bill that would cause mass death, for instance, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst responded callously, “we all are going to die.” Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell argued that the GOP should just ignore public opinion; people who lose Medicaid, he said, would “get over it.”
There is little doubt that this bill is unpopular.
See this clip of Harry Enten discussing these polls here (screenshot above taken from this clip).
I have argued for years that a core problem of American politics is the unresponsive and unrepresentative nature of Congress. (For example, here I am griping about this general issue almost 14 years ago.)
If legislators do not feel the need to be responsive to broad electorates, the system cannot function appropriately.
The House is too small. Seats are not competitive. Single-seat competition distorts citizen preferences. Primaries are more important than generals.
Couple those House dysfunctions with a Senate that allows a minority of Americans to have massively disproportionate sway, and we get a Congress willing to pass a massive spending package that at best has a net support of -19%.
Polls reflect the fact that this bill is a debacle. Democrats hate the bill; when its provisions are explained fully, they oppose it 91 percent to 6 percent. Independents don’t like it either; 80 percent oppose it to 8 percent who support it. But stunningly, even Republicans dislike the massive giveaway to the rich, and oppose the bill 61 percent to 23 percent.
That’s not how representative democracy is supposed to work.
I am not saying that a more representative system would automatically produce just, moral, and good legislation. I am just saying that a more representative legislature would have to better serve the collective needs of the country instead of brazenly cutting needed programs for the least advantaged, so as to help the wealthiest among us.
At a minimum, a more representative system would create a healthier incentive structure for politicians than what we continue to witness.
In this case I don’t think it’s a lack of responsiveness, it’s an epidemic of plain old cowardice. Republicans are paralyzed by fear of Trump. They are not alone. The media are cowards, many corporations have shown themselves to be cowards, law firms and colleges as well.
The United States is not in any way the home of the brave. We are the home of toadies and bootlicks.
@Michael Reynolds: I would note that a main way Trump can hurt them is via the primaries.
And yet the voters, except a tiny cohort, will still vote for the party they voted for last time and the election before and the one…
That’s a significant contributor to why congress is unresponsive. I you ask the R voters who oppose the BUB who they’ll vote for in the 26 election, it will be the same congress critter.
There’s no reason for the GOP to think that their voters will punish them for this, so they might as well go ahead and do it. They spent the last forty or so years saying that the social safety net was holding America back. From what has changed. It’s gone from a dynamic capitalist utopia to the most Trumpy form of America. But the message is the same and the logic was always unchallenged by Republicans.
Public responsiveness comes at the next election.
If you remember the ACA, it was underwater in terms of popularity when it passed, though IIRC, by smaller margins than this bill. And Democrats paid a big price in the midterms – the largest midterm loss since 1938.
It seems that this could be a “hold my beer” moment for the GoP.
The Congress is very responsive.
To donors.
And to primary threats.
This is an atrocious piece of Legislation by any metric. Imagine resorting to the 50 year failure of voodoo economics in order to sell it, and doing so with a straight face?
Ironically the patron saint of voodoo economics, Reagan, could not survive the primaries of today.
MAGA = Pathetic incompetence.
@Andy:
There are several provision in the BBB that would give Trump more leverage to curtal the 2026 mid-terms altogether and a complaint SC that would back it. You really want to roll the dice in that?
@Andy:
Do you really believe that? I think that lots of folks will say things like wait until the next election because that is what they want to hear from others and believe themselves.
This liberal leaning person is resigned to the fact that probably for the next 10-15 years folks will have to get used to a huge number of individuals having the social safety net kicked out from under them (at least as far as health care is concerned).
I think the privatization of Social Security is a much harder goal to achieve and the GOP just does not have enough buy-in/approval from the Right Wing infotainment complex to make that happen now and even several years from now. So at least that part of the net will hold for now, but I really think it may take years for the realization to build amongst Red State folds that they have been screwed over by their own team and they want the Government back in their lives big time.
I say 10-15 years because in that time period Trump will be in his late 80s, early 90s and at that point I think folks will drift away from him and maybe things slowly start to normalize themselves in D.C.. Once folks start to drift away from Trump the GOP’s stranglehold on politics and the SC should start to be weakened.
America as a whole is just barely starting to eat the dog food that President Trump and Republicans claim is good for us, again…we are just starting to eat this food and it will take many meals before folks decide that no, we would prefer to indulge in eating something else.
These days Republican opposition to Trump – even his incompetent appoints like Hegseth, Gabbard, Patel, RFKjr – is a false positive. I’m 99% certain Trump is going to get everything he wants. Oh, you have a few Republicans doing the Susan Collins Thing – seemingly very concerned about cuts to Medicaid and Medicare – but they always collapse when Trump threatens.
I believe that Republican legislators and voters are going to stay the course because the perception is that no matter how serious the stench, things are getting done. Perhaps not entirely to their liking: actions such as sending troops to American cities, using masked Agents to yank people off the streets throw them into vans, arresting elected Democratic officials, and tariffs are a wild card, potentially very damaging but, unless any of this directly and strongly affects Republican constituents, I just don’t see a 2026 change happening.
I hope Democrats get back a Chamber in Congress, but right now it’s too early to tell and too much can happen in the coming days, weeks and months. I’m not a believer at this moment.
@Rick DeMent:
Which provisions exactly? The idea that legislation can give the President the authority to curtail elections is a bold claim that requires some convincing evidence.
@inhumans99:
One of the long-standing patterns in our politics is that the party that controls the Presidency generally loses ground in the midterms, especially if the president is unpopular, as Trump certainly is. That’s heightened when that party also controls the legislature. Passing unpopular legislation on top of those factors works directionally in the same way. If we compare it to 2010, Trump as President will be less popular than Obama was, and this legislation will be less popular than the ACA.
So I think the chances that the GoP gets blown out of the water in the House are substantial – the Senate is obviously more tricky because of a difficult map. If you think this pattern won’t hold in 2026, I’d love to hear the argument.
@Steven L. Taylor: I think the death threats and other harassment Trump can direct towards his enemies might also be a way to hurt them.
Say what you will about Biden, very few people were motivated by him towards threats of violence to others. Same with George HW Bush, for that matter. Or most anyone else.
I just want to know who the 6% of Democrats and 23% of Republicans are who are in favor of the bill after it’s explained to them.
IMHO, the left doesn’t have a messaging problem as much as a skills gap in their ability to hang an albatross like the OBBBA around the necks of everyone with (R-Congressperson) behind their name.
Maybe it is due to the Democrats not having a fine tuned machine, like the Right Wing infotainment complex (that @inhumans99 refers to), ratcheting up the whining 24/7. But, with the OBBBA already polling so horribly – even before the decidedly bad effects are being felt in real time by its victims – should seem like a bigger opportunity to spank Trump and the GOP than it does right now.
@Kevin:
Laughable, isn’t it? These people are afraid.
at a meeting in the Oval Office ____________________________
The 6% and 23%: Help me (us) out here, it’s 1,000 pages, and I (we) just don’t know how to vote on this, why should I (we) vote for it?
Trump: It’s a big beautiful bill, the biggest and most beautiful bill ever.
The 6% and 23%: I am (we are) still not sure …
Trump: {{{nodding to masked Agents}}} We’ve got a ‘situation’ here …
The 6% and 23%: Okay, okay .. just don’t hurt me (us) …
@Kevin:
“I just want to know who the 6% of Democrats and 23% of Republicans are who are in favor of the bill after it’s explained to them.”
Possibly the ones who are in the top 10% of households by income, and who are better off as a result of it.
Professor Taylor and others here have great points. But I’d like to embellish this a little as an old student of US political science: Taking part is extremely important. If let’s say only 65 per cent vote in the American first past the post-system, the party that gets 33% beats the party with 32%. When a faction like MAGA only neeeds 51% of the 33, i.e. 16.6%, democracy will automatically and unavoidably be in grave danger every election cycle.
Just my two cents from Norway (though with hundreds of US emigrated relatives) and thanking the OTB commentariat for straight and solid analyses. Very little snark and wannabe super-smartness.
@ScandiLib: Agreed, and this is precisely how the excerable Paul LePage ended up as Governor of Maine with 30% of the vote in a 5 way race.
At the national level, we also have the electoral college to deal with, as an added element.
Musk criticizes the GOP bill and bashes Republicans: ‘PORKY PIG PARTY’ (NBC)
Lolol. Well, we’ve found the rats Sen. Coach keeps talkin bout. They’re all jumping off the Trumptanic.
@Andy:
To a degree, but even if the Dems win both chambers, they will not have a veto-proof margin.
But, really, the Senate definitionally is not responsive to public opinion nationally and not just because it is the chamber that represents states. The design never contemplated the size ratios we see state to state.
And even if the House goes D, they will have no power to fix any of this. And even if this is a “hold my beer” moment, there are only going to be so many competitive seats.
The feedback loop is largely broken.
Maybe we see some responsiveness in 2029 if a Dem comes in, EOs a-blazin’ (but that is not the kind of democratic responsiveness I have warned for years we are lacking).
@Daryl:
This is a central point.
@Andy: BTW: I do think it is likely that the Ds win the House in 2026, although how “blown out of the water” they will be given the maps the districts are drawn, I am less confident. The Senate will be tricky.
But, I cannot stress this enough: Ds will not be in a position to reverse anything the Rs have done, because Trump has the veto pen.
Tearing down and breaking things is the easy part. Fixing it is going to be much harder.
So, I will rejoice if Ds get at least one chamber, as that will make BBB II impossible. But I think it will also lead to more dictatorial governing by Trump, with SCOTUS happily allowing him to do so.
The claim that the bill gives the POTUS the power to stop elections appears to be internet BS.
But there seems to be a provision that bars judges from holding people for contempt of court. An interesting step.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Yes, which is better than a GoP trifecta.
So, there needs to be, IMO, analysis that includes time horizons. The reality is that there’s gonna be a shit-show while Trump is President. There’s no avoiding that, but it would certainly be good if D’s could take the House and maybe the Senate in 2026 and pave the way for 2028 and beyond. The GoP passing a super unpopular omnibus bill is not a great long-term strategy for them and it helps D’s.
Trump is already a lame duck and will only have two years left after the midterms. Yes, D’s won’t have veto-proof majorities to reverse things during those two years in office, but that’s the norm. Once Trump is gone, things will change.
When Democrats lost the House in 2010 (again, the biggest shellacking since 1938), they lost it for four cycles (8 years). It would have been worse if Obama had not won reelection, putting a Democrat in the Presidency for 6 of those 8 years. What’s different now is that Trump can’t run again. Let’s speculate that the GoP similarly burns 8 years of political capital for Trump and this bill. In 2028, D’s would have a decent chance at a trifecta. Even if it doesn’t happen then, it’s only a matter of time before D’s get a trifecta again, and then they will do whatever it is they want at that time. The only question is when.
We’ll have to wait and see what happens in the House in 2026. Given the GoP barely holds the chamber, the historical pattern, and the unpopularity of the GoP, it seems to me pretty likely the Dems get a majority. How big a majority is less important than they get one given the power of the Speaker. But a huge win could keep the chamber in D hands for a while.
And yes, Democrats should be looking toward redistricting in 2030 (and all that requires) and improving their competitiveness in the Senate.
@Andy:
Sure. Putting bandages on wounds is better than getting new ones, but this isn’t like parliamentarism, wherein deeply unpopular policies can be reversed if enough voters want them reversed.
I am. The damage is immediate and will last into the long term. However, solutions are at best medium-term away.
The Senate continues to make solutions difficult. Unless the Dems can get a filibuster-proof majority (which is a near impossibility) or unless they are willing to do away with it, legislative solutions that actually reflect public preferences are extremely hard.
And the courts have made all this more difficult.
I continue to fear that we end up in a cycle of competing EOs (but also a competition wherein SCOTUS will decide they don’t like overreach as soon as the EOs aren’t to the right-wing’s liking).
Again: the filibuster.
I appreciate you engaging, and I understand your basic points.
However, I think that despite your generally analytical approach to these conversations, you tend to look at American government more romantically than you realize. The system is skewed away from actual democratic accountability and is not especially representative. The system also makes breaking things easier than fixing them.
@Andy:
I will again note, in the hopes that people reading this start to understand why deeper reforms are needed: fighting over districting is, yes, important, but to the general point of the original post, fights over districting underscore how the lines on the map are ultimately more important than voters or the preferences of those voters.
I currently live in a district represented by a Democratic, after a very long time being in a Republican district because lines were redrawn, not because the actual preference of voters have changed.
@Steven L. Taylor:
110% to everything you wrote, especially:
This really accentuates the issue–the people and their preferences haven’t changed and yet I am sure there is a radical swing in what their representatives are voting for.
@Steven L. Taylor:
It’s not romanticism, it’s realism. The system is what it is. My assessments in this thread are based on what I think will happen in the real world and are not based on what I wish would happen.
To me, this is the romantic view. The way we do districts is not changing anytime soon. The reality is that parties and political actors need to act per the existing rules on the field of play, including how districts are drawn and how our representatives respond to public pressure. It’s always been the case that the nexus on public pressure is the next election, and that’s all I was pointing out. The GOP will likely face backlash from this bad bill which will advantage Democrats That’s not a romantic view, it’s a realistic view.
In the same way, the failure of the Biden Administration to respond to public pressure on a host of issues like immigration and other things that made him historically unpopular led to the situation we’re in now – where Trump is elected with slim legislative majorities. The time to stop this bill was last November. That is public responsiveness in the current system we have. I understand you don’t like it, and we’ve discussed our various agreements and disagreements on potential reforms many times (mostly agreements, I’d say). However, very few agree with us on that, and so the system isn’t changing anytime soon.
@Andy: We both agree that the system is what it is and that reform is impossible, at least in the short term, and likely, too, the medium term, at a minimum.
But I would still say that assuming the current system has within the kinds of correctives you seem to assert, especially within the context of the theme of the OP comes from a romanticized belief in that system to produce democratically responsive results.
BTW, prevention isn’t responsiveness.
Indeed. I chose to continue to try to get people to change their minds. I recognize the quixotic nature of my position.
@Steven L. Taylor:
You are reading too much into my comments. I was merely predicting blowback from passing an unpopular bill and speculating that the negatives against the GoP could result in historic losses for them in 2026. I gave a recent historical example of when this occurred. I noted the general thermostatic nature of mid-term elections, especially in the House. If you think any of that is wrong, then feel free to dispute it.
I’m not arguing for some grand idea that the GOP losing the next election will produce the kind of correctives you think I’m asserting, but it remains the case that winning elections is important, and doing things, like passing unpopular legislation, affects that.
@Andy: I appreciate your ongoing back and forth on this. I started a response, but it is already 300 words, and I expect I am not even halfway done with the thought, so I think I will consider recrafting it into a post.