I’ve mentioned previously that I’m happiest with federal and state governments when they are not controlled by a single party, regardless of whether it’s the pachyderms or the donkeys making up that single party. Well, it seems that I’m not alone in that thought, as Cato has an article out discussing the downside of the GOP monopoly in Washington:
The one thing you can usually count on in Washington is partisanship. When Republicans are the beleaguered minority—or a congressional majority fighting a big-spending White House—they are in their element. Big Government is the clear enemy. But once they find themselves in control of it all, they don’t rein each other in. Instead, they egg each other on.
We can see this by comparing how a GOP Congress treated the proposed non-defense budgets of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. During the years of divided government under Clinton, a sort of gridlock ensued. The Republican Congress managed to cut Clinton’s domestic spending requests by an average of $9 billion each year between fiscal 1996 and 2001.
Contrast that with the budget outcomes under President Bush—specifically the years in which Congress was held entirely by Republicans. Between fiscal years 2003 and 2006, Congress passed, and Bush refused to veto, non-defense budgets that were an average of $16 billion more than the president proposed each year.
I’ve been reading in the press about increasing speculation about the Dems possibly taking over at least one house of Congress this November. That would please me to no end, under my dual-party control preference. I just wish it were the Senate that they were more likely to pick up, rather than the House.