Update 7/29/2024: This post was updated to replace and/or note deprecated links.

3.5 trillion.

There's a good chance your brain automatically added "dollars" after that number, as that is the price that has been associated with the infamous "Reconciliation Package" for months now. We know this number so well because all eyes have been on this reconciliation bill as it seems that President Biden's entire agenda will live or die with its passage. As a result, pretty much all national politics coverage the last few months has been centered on this bill, with newsroom pundits and Twitter denizens everywhere hanging on every closed-door meeting, White House appearance, and Joe Manchin op-ed.

However, almost without fail, all of this coverage has been tinged with negative spins and headlines. News outlets are highlighting the "messy politics" and "intraparty fights" and playing up the divides between the progressive and moderate wings of the Democratic party. Throughout the entire process, the bill has been almost exclusively referred to by its price tag, or by the policies that are not in the bill, rather than by what the bill will actually do. Much of this came to a head just a few days ago when the White House announced they had at long last agreed on a framework that outlines the main policies and priorities that will be included in the legislation. When covering this announcement, many stories focused on how slimmed down the package was (this link is deprecated with no replacement), rather than discussing it as a significant step towards legislative progress.

Although some of this negative coverage comes down to bad messaging on the part of the White House, and America's perpetual dissatisfaction with the party in power, I also think it shows how much the media misses the point when covering the legislative process.

Coverage versus Communication

Some of the negative media coverage surrounding the reconciliation package can be traced back to a poor communication strategy coming from the White House. The administration did not come up with a coherent message about what the package was supposed to be and represent. Remember that whole "American Jobs Plan" and "American Families Plan" from back in early spring?

Yeah, no one else does either.

That was the closest the White House came to having a consistent message about what the legislation was for, but they let that message get subsumed by endless talk of price tags and what Senators Manchin and Sinema would let through a 50-50 senate. Hammering home that message could maybe have alleviated some of the negative headlines, but at the end of the day, this was always going to be a messy process. There was always going to be a lot of back and forth, a lot of offers and counteroffers, a lot of "lines in the sand" that got brushed away the next day.

These are the parts of the process that the media is making out to be the failure of the Democratic party. They point to how much time has passed without cementing a deal as an indication of the party's failure. How Biden is unable to keep his party together. How AOC/Bernie Sanders/Nancy Pelosi/Joe Manchin/Kyrsten Sinema are able to singlehandedly hold the entire party hostage. They focus on what gets removed from the bill and talk about how the Democrats are unable to keep campaign promises.

These stories are obviously tantalizing as they reinforce our existing beliefs that Congress (and government in general) is incompetent (this link updated). It also serves up the story of a messy drama of seemingly soap opera proportions. And of course, the Republicans love any opportunity they have to paint the Democrats as incompetent (and vice versa). But to me, this type of coverage is obscuring the most important point.

This is exactly how the system is supposed to work.

The Point of Politics

Politics arises out of the fundamental truth that as long as there are two people, they will disagree about something. Modern political philosophy, dating back to Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, often sees politics as the framework for making decisions about governing in light of these disagreements. In fact, one definition defines politics as "the distinctive form of rule whereby people act together through institutionalized procedures to resolve differences."

With this definition in mind, the process of negotiating the reconciliation bill is politics working exactly as intended. The Democrats are using our institutions and procedures to resolve their political differences as they attempt to create legislation desired by their voters. The fact that it is a drawn-out process, with back and forth, negotiation, disagreement, and compromise, isn't a failure of the party to act, it is the party engaging in healthy political bargaining and decision making. It will only be a failure if they ultimately do not produce any legislation. And although that is definitely a possibility, at this point in time it is far from a certainty.

The fact that the process is taking so long and is requiring so much work is instead the result of three key factors:

1. Democrats are not a monolith. For many years now the Democrats have been the "big tent" party, representing a more varied range of political ideologies than their Republican counterparts. This should come as no surprise as this is the party that is home to both Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin. And so, obviously there will be disagreements.
2. Biden's agenda was always going to get paired down. President Biden campaigned on a large number of issues that were doomed as soon as the Democrats didn't have a 53+ seat Senate majority. It was only with those kinds of numbers that the filibuster could be reformed or eliminated to pass gun control legislation, immigration reform, or racial equity legislation. Even with these issues off the table, they are still limited by a 50-50 Senate, so the reconciliation bill was never going to be the 6 trillion dollar bill of progressives' dreams. So of course items had to be cut.
3. The American system makes legislating difficult by design. Unlike an authoritarian system, where the entire government apparatus can move at the will of an individual, or a parliamentary system, where the majority party only needs 50%+1 to enact legislation, the American system is designed to make legislating difficult. The system is chocked full of veto points where legislation can be stopped in its tracks. Getting anything through the system, let alone a package as large as the reconciliation bill, therefore takes a monumental effort.

Together, these three reasons are why the Democrats are involved in the messy process of legislating. They want to do it and are doing it in good faith, practicing politics as it was meant to be done, and (slowly) getting results.

Unhealthy Narrative

You would be forgiven though if you thought that the Democratic party was falling apart at the seams and descending into a state of complete disarray if you were just reading the headlines. The media coverage of the on-going process prefers to emphasize disfunction and incompetence over negotiation and progress. Although there are legitimate critiques to be made of the messaging strategies, the people the Democratic party is trying to serve, and the substance of the policies themselves, the narrative is instead focused on the problems with the process. Which is problematic, because the process itself is, as I've said, the one part that is working correctly.

This type of coverage is not good for trust in government. It sends a message to the public that lawmakers spending time contemplating policy, negotiating amongst themselves, and trying to reach a compromise, actually represents a failure of government. This narrative reinforces the belief that government is incompetent and inefficient and plays down the real-world importance of a government working deliberately to enact new policy.

It also hides the real sources of gridlock and ineffectiveness within government. Since the focus is on the difficult process of negotiating, there is less time spent analyzing why politicians aren't punished for making unpopular choices, why the Senate is split 50-50 when Democrats represent 40 million more voters, or why the views of only two parties continue to dominate our political landscape.

When it comes to discussion of problems with government, often we are having the wrong conversation. We vilify the functioning parts of government just because they are messy, and we don't discuss the true inadequacies because they are complex and difficult to overcome. We need to start having the right conversations if we are going to start addressing these issues and moving towards a more functioning government, a government that is more responsive to, and representative of, the public.

Political scientists have been having these conversations for decades, and have proposed many possible solutions, but they can't be acted on until awareness of these issues becomes mainstream. That will require a change in the way Americans think about government, which in turn requires the media to change the way they cover the legislative process.

Politics is meant to be messy, and we should move past the expectation that in order for the government to be "well-functioning" everyone must be in perfect agreement and legislation should be sailing through without hardship. If there are divisions - and there almost always will be - legislating is going to take work and compromises will have to be made.

It's time the media, and the greater public, begin to grapple with this truth, so we can have more realistic expectations for what government can, and cannot, accomplish. Cliche sounding as it is, we should embrace the wisdom of Robert Kennedy when he said:

"Democracy is messy, and its hard. It's never easy."

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