To what extent can Congress be considered the ‘broken branch’ of government? (45 Marks)

The primary purpose of Congress is its legislative function, which it fundamentally fails to achieve due to the unproductive nature of the legislature and the process of passing legislation, as well as the significant growth in partisanship over recent years. Another key respect in which Congress fails is in its representation of its citizens, which occurs both through descriptive representation (minimal in Congress) and also the closeness or distance of the relationship between congresspeople and their constituents. Thus, Congress does not uphold any of its intended functions, and subsequently can be described as the ‘broken branch’ of government.

Firstly, Congress is unable to uphold its legislative function in that extreme partisanship has led to little overlap between the voting records of the two parties and politicians can be seen to vote in line with their party as opposed to based on their own judgement. This is problematic first and foremost due to the fact that it leads to the role of the congresspeople to make their own judgements, which they are both qualified and elected to do (as the relationship between politicians and constituents should be a representative one, rather than following a delegate model), becoming redundant. For example, when it was voted on in Congress in 2010, the Affordable Care Act received 39 votes against it in the Senate, all from Republicans. This illustrates the way in which congresspeople have begun to rigidly stick to the opinion of their party, quite likely neglecting their own. This is not the only case of such partisanship, which is undeniably evident across all legislation: during the first session of the 113th Congress, Republicans voted with their party 92% of the time, with the Democrats doing the same 94% of the time. The increase in partisan voting further breeds increase partisanship, and consequently legislation which congresspeople may want to be passed or rejected is not, as it is voted for along party lines only. This is worsened by the presence of the party whips, and as a result the best legislation, or that which is most desired by the citizens of the United States, may not be passed out of reluctance to deviate from party opinion, which defeats the representative function of Congress. Additionally, the increase in partisanship in the legislature leads to a ‘tit-for-tat’ attitude, which similarly diminishes the supposed representative function of Congress - legislation (or, notably, appointments) may be rejected or accepted in order to simply spite the other party, which is not beneficial to the democratic process of passing legislation. A key and current example of this is the Republicans’ rejection in the Judicial Appointments Committee, under Majority Leader (since January 2015), of Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to replace Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court bench. This was done not out of dislike for the nominee, but rather a reluctance to allow the Democrat president to have any nomination heard; McConnell said the JAC would not consider any nomination until the beginning of the next presidency in January 2017. Consequently, the Democrats have since indicated that they will utilise the same tactics regarding the nomination of Donald Trump (Obama’s Republican successor), who has been revealed to be Neil Gorsuch, an Ivy League graduate. Gorsuch is an indisputably reputable nominee for the position, yet the Democrats may reject him as a form of vengeance for the Republicans’ behaviour previously. This does not benefit the legislative role of the Congress at all, instead hindering its progress in making appointments and laws, failing to be productive and producing political gridlock. It is evident, therefore, that partisanship has, in the above ways, led to an unacceptable decline in the upkeep of the legislative function of Congress, and it transpires that the analysis of Congress as ‘the broken branch’ of government is entirely valid.