Hey, I Can’t Actually Quite Imagine a World in Which Things Are Exactly as Different as They Would Need to Be to Give Me What I Want, but It Would Be Neat if I Could!!

by Will Wilkinson on November 9, 2009

Here’s Ezra Klein commenting on Matt Yglesias:

It’s worth taking a moment to appreciate the fact that in a unicameral United States of America, we would now have passed both a comprehensive health care reform bill and also the most important piece of environmental legislation in the history of the world. Now that’s not the world we live in. Instead we live in a world where neither of those things has passed and where their prospects aren’t clear. But think back on this point the next time you hear someone say Obama is struggling with his agenda because he’s not centrist enough, or else that Obama is struggling with his agenda because he’s not left-wing enough.

Health-care reform passed with 50.5 percent of the vote in the House. Cap and trade passed with 50.8 percent. Neither margin would’ve been nearly enough in the Senate. Whether or not you think Nancy Pelosi had a couple more votes in her back pocket, it’s pretty clear that she didn’t have 41 more votes, which is what she would’ve needed to pass health-care reform if the House worked by the Senate’s inane rules. Pelosi really does seem like a great speaker, but a lot of the ire directed at Harry Reid would be more appropriately aimed at the rules he labors under.

This “we’d already have everything we want if only the rules were different” line of argument is just ignorant. Matt’s happy counterfactual implicitly holds fixed the status quo party composition of Congress. But the composition of Congress is endogenous to the rules Matt and Ezra wish were different. If the rules of our democracy were fundamentally different, party electoral strategy would be different, the  composition of Congress would be different, the deals required to pass legislation would be different, and the space of feasible policy would be different. Here’s what one can say about a unicameral United States of America if one chooses not to talk out of one’s ass: it would be different.

I’m all in favor of discussing fundamentally different constitutional structures. I’m even in favor of a new Constitutional convention, like Sandy Levinson. But this kind of procedural whingeing is just stupid and it should stop.

  • sarahrc
    Good point. I think this is why there's suddenly been a flurry of dialogue about procedural rules. Suddenly progressives are wondering "Does this mean that the people don't actually want universal health care?" and coming up with the answer "no, it's the rules."

    Thoughts:
    (a) and (b) are, of course, not unrelated. We have a political structure that makes it hard for the government to do big new things through Congress. The Klein/Yglesias argument might be restated as "The Constitution was written for people a lot more anti-statist than we are today," which I think is true.
  • Kent
    I don't think these posts are really "arguments for the abolition of the Senate."

    As I read them, Ezra's and Matt's point is that, given the following options:

    "The United States, virtually alone among industrialized nations, does not have universal health care. This is properly understood as:

    (a) Americans are uniquely committed to libertarian / conservative / anti-statist policies generally, and/or uniquely distrust the government when it comes to provision of health care;

    (b) America's bicameral political system, combined with the rules of the Senate, makes it uniquely difficult to pass major legislation of a type that is similar to provision of universal health care."

    Matt and Ezra are arguing for (b), and thus against (a).

    I think it's an interesting argument and well worth considering.

    As for the "Republican ideas would also be more likely to pass" retort:

    (i) maybe so;
    (ii) if so, it doesn't undercut the point Matt and Ezra are making, but only the points that their critics think they ought to be making;
    (iii) the Democrats have not been nearly as pro-active w/r/t using the filibuster, which gave the Repubs the ability to pass major legislation with only 50 votes in the Senate under GWB. The Republicans appear to be uniquely good at obstructionism ... or the Dems uniquely bad. Not sure which.

    So a question for Paul Z and others: what do you think a unicameral legislature would have allowed the Repubs to accomplish, that they didn't, over the period 2000-2008?
  • Hunter
    It's worth pointing out that Klein, at least, was all in favor of ending the filibuster a few years ago when the Republicans had power and were threatening to do so to get some judge or another appointed. I don't know what Yglesias's stated position was then...
  • Paul Zrimsek
    Guys, you can whine about the systemic inertia that keeps your majorities from passing your favorite reforms, or you can crow about the systemic inertia that keeps the other side's majorities from repealing your favorite reforms. But not both.
  • Peter Johnson
    I want to know what your constitution would look like Will. If you could what would you change or would you start from scratch? Do you like the idea of proportional representation in the House or the Senate or both? Would you keep it a republic? What voting system would you use? Term limits? The courts?
  • John V
    This syndrome/blind spot that Ezra and Matt both suffer from affects a lot of what they think in the most general sense. I see it from too many modern liberals when any discussion of economics and fiscal policy come up. They like to change one thing and pretend everything else can be held constant for the sake of their argument....going backward and forward. It doesn't work that way.

    I once read a piece (a couple of years ago) where the author remarked on politicians' and political writers' general behavior in the discussion of foreign policy. For some reason, this area is more likely to avoid such sweeping magical and one dimensional switcheroos of factors because people are more ready to acknowledge the "butterfly effect" in that area. Of course, he also proposes that this correct perspective is done for the wrong reason. His idea is that people avoid ignoring the butter fly effect in FP because our government doesn't control the realities created by other governments' or countries' actions. I agree with him that this simply isn't a good reason to view the matter more correctly.

    In closing, let us stay for a sec in their one dimensional, "non-intercausal", chain-reaction-free zone:

    I wonder how many times Matt and Ezra thanked the maker during most of the 2000s when the GOP had control of both houses and things they didn't like didn't pass. I was quite relieved myself on many instances. I often wish everything needed an 75% majority. We'd see some serious rule changes then.
  • Nicholas Weininger
    Does Matt realize, do you think, how much he is inadvertently strengthening the argument for the Senate? Or does he really believe that anything at all which 50.1% of The Holy People want should be done, regardless of how much the other 49.9% hates it?
  • y81
    Douglas Hofstadter wrote some very funny stuff (I think it's in "Godel, Escher, Bach") about counterfactuals. If we had only been playing football, then that A-Rod hit would have been an incomplete pass, and the Angels would have won. Or something.

    Anyway, if we had a unicameral legislature, Bill Clinton would have been removed from office. So would Andrew Johnson, for that matter. All black people would still be Republicans (but urban Jews would still, in my counterfactual, be Democrats), and Matt Yglesias's life would be constant disappointment, as his party would be confined to handful of urban enclaves.
  • No, I wasn't accusing, but I saw it posted, then came back later and it was gone.

    Oh well, I said something about Klein wanting a tyranny of the majority, unless the Republicans gain power, then it wouldn't do.
  • Hmm, I left a comment here earlier and it disappeared.
  • Hmm indeed. I don't mess with comments.
  • jj
    I'm pretty sure Matt's post fits in line with a critique he's been making against the institution of the Senate over a long period of time and through a number of posts. Yes, alone this looks a bit like sour grapes but if you have been following his blog then you would know that there is context for his comment and he has been "discussing fundamentally different constitutional structures" for quite some time especially with regards to the Senate.
  • I've been following MY's blog since he was in short pants. I know about his bugbear here. It's still completely senseless to pretend you can project current D to R ratios onto a fundamentally redesigned democratic structure.
  • jj
    Judging from bloggingheads, MY in short pants is not the best image in the world.

    Is your position that counterfactuals are silly or just this particular counterfactual is silly? Or both?

    It strikes me that you've probably gone on at length about this subject somewhere, and if that's the case you need not rehash it for my sake.
  • The Democrats control 60% of Senate seats and 59.3% of House seats. I think it's fair for Yglesias and Ezra to assume that a unicameral legislature would have, in 2008's electoral climate, resulted in a similar 60% Democratic composition.

    The real thing Yglesias and Ezra Klein object to is not the sheer existence of a second chamber, but rather the peculiar rules it functions under--notably the filibuster.
  • If the real objection is to conventional Senate rules, you have to admit that it's strange to make this objection in the form of an argument for the abolition of the Senate. No?
  • They've made the objection in other forms, too. The point of these posts is just to remind people that if there were only one chamber with House-like rules, almost-universal health coverage could have signed into law by now (or conceivably, quite a few years ago).

    Bottom line, the Senate and its rules are the chief obstacle, rather than Obama's perceived lack of $FAVORITE_IDEOLOGICAL_BENT
  • "I think it's fair for Yglesias and Ezra to assume that a unicameral legislature would have, in 2008's electoral climate, resulted in a similar 60% Democratic composition."

    Just totally baffling! Would politics running up to the 2008 elections have looked anything like it in fact did with a unicameral legislature? (When do you imagine we made this transition?) Would GW Bush have been president rather than Al Gore or Gary Hart or somebody. Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain would not have been senators in a U.S. with a unicameral legislature. Presumably that sort of thing would have affected who ran for won the presidency. Have we also switched to multiparty proportional representation? For all we know the coalition government under prime minister Mike Huckabee passed single-payer years ago.
  • Obviously more things would have been different the longer back a change to a unicameral legislature happened. You could take it all the way back to the 1780s if you're so inclined. And if you assume other changes like proportional representation, things could be even more radically different today.

    But Yglesias's counterfactual isn't concerning itself with a full-on Butterfly Effect analysis--he's holding all that history constant to make a smaller point...

    Universal healthcare has been in the pipeline of liberal dreams for a long time. It stands to reason that it would have probably happened by now if a supermajority weren't required. And once you give voters something like that, it's really hard to take it way (see: Medicare), so it's also somewhat unlikely the opposition could have amassed its own 51% majority some cycles later to repeal it.
  • lemmycaution
    I agree with Gherald L.

    The countries that do have universal healthcare don't give it up; and, they don't tend to have the kind of supermajority requirements that the US does.
  • daveco
    Yglesias' comments seem like a bone thrown to his readers to make them feel good despite the uncertain future of health care reform in the Senate. Damn that pesky bicameral system!!

    And why is that Republican speakers aren't "great" when they pass their party's legislation? Hmm....
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