The USA Congress, both the House of Representatives and the Senate just passed a coronavirus stimulus bill, which has already been signed by President Trump. Regardless of which political stance you take, the bill has various items that could easily be labeled as pork. Notice my careful wording. I say could easily be labeled as pork because one party’s pork is sometimes the other party’s necessary item.
For instance, the tax break for real estate investors may save them up to $170 billion over 10 years. You can thank your Republican Congresspeople for that. On the other hand, the support for the Kennedy Center that is also included in the bill is thanks to your Democratic Congresspeople. In other words, neither side is anywhere near innocent in slipping in items that their party would tend to favor. But, is that so bad?
Well, in the long view, no it is not. The saying quoted in the headline about not being able to make an omelet without breaking eggs speaks to the complexity that is found in most human affairs. When you have 535 people with different viewpoints, you will inevitably end up with bills that are not pure. Unless you have a 2/3 majority that is unwavering as well as the Presidency and the Supreme Court, the two houses of Congress will not be able to pass ideologically pure bills because they will not be able to consistently pass bills that favor only your political ideology.
And that means that compromises have to be reached. It even means that some amount of pork is inevitable. I define pork as entirely gratuitous bits of legislation that are slipped into a major bill and that major only a specific industry or a very specific and limited industry. I do not consider pork to be those measures that are approved by one political ideology and rejected by another.
Let me give you some examples. If an item is slipped into a bill that favors only a specific small industry, that is probably pork. If an unrelated item in a bill favors a particular political ideology, that may be breaking eggs to make an omelet. Here is a human reality. Short of having an absolute veto-proof majority, most majority leaders have to gather votes by allowing some pork into a bill. We may not like it. We may later be able to use it in a reelection campaign against the Congressperson who slipped the pork in, nevertheless, the bill will not pass if it does not garner enough votes.
If it is a major enough bill, and if there is not an overwhelming majority before the final version of the bill is written, then there is a painful political reality. If you do not deal, you will not get the major bill passed. Thus, the proof of the saying that you cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs. That is a reality that faces even the most ideologically pure Congressperson elected.
So, it is not necessarily that a Congressperson slowly corrupts the longer they stay in Congress. No, that is an unnecessary insult. It is often that they realize that bills will not get passed without compromises. In truth, the current and last Congress are sterling examples of this truth. Almost nothing has been passed because of the number of ideological warriors who refuse to find acceptable compromises. This does not mean that they have to agree to wholesale pork but rather that they have to realize that our country is fairly evenly ideologically divided.
The only way to pass bills in an ideologically divided country is to learn to compromise. Sadly, all the pressures in this country are to not reach compromises. Then we are surprised that Congress does not function. The reality is that Congress does not function because we are not willing to allow our representatives to make the compromises necessary to pass important bills.
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