The common opinion of pundits and pollsters in this country is that government has grown so partisan that nothing is getting done — nothing at all.
I do not accept this view. I am more optimistic, convinced that the federal government is operating just as it should, pressured by a partisan populace of a divided mind.
This country wants the federal government to stop the spending, yet term after term the federal government keeps on spending, and the most fiscally prudent of executives, no matter how much they try to prune back the size of government, cannot gain a toe-hold over the spending and the borrowing.
Enter the Tea Party movement: the caucus in the House and the Senate was committed from the moment that they entered Washington to stop the profligate revenue letting which is bleeding this country dry.
Bipartisanship since the Johnson administration has meant vote-trading and pork-barrel log-rolling. Business as usual has never cut the spending. The most heart-felt protestations of fiscally conservative legislators has fallen by the wayside. Even with the Republican Revolution of 1994, the federal government keeps spending more money than this government had..
I am not surprised at the outrageous "hyperpartisanship" which has taken over in Washington. I applaud the Tea Party caucus for not giving up on their principles. The House Reps represent the heartbeat of this country, and a growing number of voters across the country are tired of the waste and fraud trying our patience and tying up our future. Not surprisingly, constituents across the country are sending more determined legislators who will not budge on the casual raising of the debt ceiling or easy subsidies to pay for pet projects throughout the United States.
The Framers of the Constitution instituted a form of government filled with checks and balances which made it difficult to get anything passed. The intention was never to provide power to the people, to an elite, or to one person, but to frustrate the concentration of power so that no one group would wield inexorable power over the country and trump the rights of the individual and the domain of the several states.
Unlike the more moderate or conciliatory of commentators, and contrary to the respectable opinion of those who want government to "get things done", our federal government, awash in red ink and threatening to take this country down a terrible slope of credit crises and sudden market shocks, has been spending, spending, spending, the very activity which a growing number of citizens want to stop.
So far, gridlock unending has effected the necessary course correction to force legislators to work out the needed compromises to scale back government and return the United States back to a firm fiscal footing.
Gridlock: our government is at work both representing and resisting the passions and interests of the different constituencies in this country. I believe that the Father of the Constitution, James Madison, is looking down from Heaven, smiling at the intense wrangling which is forcing the voting public to develop a more critical tone and take a more critical role in our national polity.