Divided Government.

• Author: Silvestri, James
• Position: President's page

Welcome to 2019 and the uncertain political environment that awaits us in the 116th Congress. Is this what American democracy has come to? Could this be what our founding fathers really contemplated more than two centuries ago--all the coarse talk and uncivil behavior? Well, as I thought about our current circumstances, I reflected on the high school civics class I took a long time ago when I was introduced to the Federalist Papers, essays written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, advocating for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. One of Madison's quotations from Federalist No. 51 rings particularly true today: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." Madison advocated for the creation of a government characterized by separate and independent branches, along with a series of checks and balances, to ensure that one way or another, the rights and interests of everyone could be protected. At least that's how the theory goes.

Fast-forward 230-plus years. Madison was a visionary about men not being angels and about the importance of checks and balances. Daily, we see evidence of both in nearly every newsfeed and the front pages of nearly every newspaper and on Twitter.

Although the 116th Congress and the reemergence of divided government guarantee little (if anything) in terms of legislative progress or accomplishment (more on this later), it does make real the possibility of extensive use (or misuse) of the power of the purse and oversight as checks on executive action. Hopefully, the newly empowered House majority will strike some balance between legislating and investigating, thereby justifying the confidence placed in them by the midterm electorate. And, even though a change in legislative control has taken place, whether divided government will provide the impetus to find common ground and to legislate is very much an open question.

Indeed, might the existence of divided government during the 115th Congress have resulted in a more workable piece of tax reform legislation? This is an interesting question, but, for now at least, it's one best left to the pundits and academics, as we have other, more pressing matters to attend to. The Tax Cuts and...