Public Has Little Hope Of Political Compromise In Congress

Last year, when the Congress was facing the problem of the debt ceiling, a majority of Americans (56%) expected the members of Congress to hammer out a compromise. They were disappointed. Congress instead engaged in a war of ideologies and brought to government to the brink of crisis, resulting in a lowering of the government's credit rating and a loss of confidence in Congress' ability to solve financial problems.

Now the government is facing another financial problem -- what to do about what some are calling the "fiscal cliff" (end of certain tax cuts and imposition of substantial spending cuts). But this time the public is not so optimistic. Now only 38% believe the two parties will reach a reasonable compromise, while a majority (51%) believe we'll see a replay of the ridiculous "debt ceiling" debate.

And there is good reason for this pessimism. And it is not just a problem of Congress. The congressional actors are just mirroring the beliefs of their party bases. There are those who say there is no difference between the two parties. While I agree that neither party is anywhere near as progressive as I would like to see (with the Democrats being slightly to the right and the Republicans being far to the right), the fact is that there are significant differences between what Democrats and Republicans want to see happen.

Here are some of the areas where there is significant disagreement among members of the two major parties:

Even though a majority of voters voted for Democrats in House races, the Republicans were able to keep their majority in the House of Representatives (because of some effective gerrymandering of congressional districts by state legislatures). The Senate remains in the hands of the Democrats (who actually were able to add a couple of seats to their total in the election). This means the pessimism of the public is probably justified. We are probably looking a two more years of arguing and posturing, resulting in governmental deadlock.

(Graphs above are from a survey done by the Pew Research Center on November 8th through 11th.)