Why Joe Biden Will Probably Do More Than Congress Does In The Next Two Years
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President Joe Biden faces a 50-50 Senate and a narrowly divided House. Some observers assert that with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi holding the gavel and Vice President Kamala Harris able to preside as president of the Senate and vote to break ties, the Democrats control Congress.
Looking at mathematic “control” of Congress betrays a simplistic understanding of the very human endeavor of representative government, boiling the system down to mere numbers as if it were a business with a balance sheet.
Politics, more so than business, is about people, not numbers. In business, if you don’t make a profit for too long, you’ll go bankrupt and people will lose their jobs. It’s almost the opposite in politics—at least among lawmakers as opposed to chief executives like the president and governors—in that getting elected and reelected is largely disconnected from the effects of policies lawmakers voted for. In politics, success and failure attach personally and have little to do with job effectiveness.