In order to understand why the US Congress and President Obama are finding it so difficult to reach a bipartisan consensus on addressing America’s budget deficit woes, one first needs to understand the parties’ respective constituencies.
Because most Republicans in Congress represent districts in predominately suburban or rural areas, a majority of their constituents also tend to be in the older strata of America’s white ethnic majority. Many of these citizens are also retired and rely on government-funded entitlement programmes like Social Security and Medicare, as well as supplemental income from private employer pensions and healthcare plans, to provide for their pension and healthcare needs. For these voters, unemployment isn’t the problem – maintaining their lifestyles is.
Although unemployment tends to be lower than the national average in these areas, that’s not the case everywhere. In a number of Midwestern states such as Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, the loss of higher-paying manufacturing jobs had ripple effects on the service businesses that once catered to the needs of these workers, leading to even more job losses.
But most of the jobs that have been lost did not require a college education. As a result, many unemployed lack the skills needed to acquire better-paying jobs. Many are also either unwilling to move to other areas for a job, or unable to do so because they can’t sell their homes in America’s still depressed housing market. So confronted with either going back to school to get a university degree or accepting a lower-paying job in the service sector, these workers react by becoming angry and frustrated with America’s political leaders.
Although white Americans still make up the majority voters and a diminished but still privileged position in American society, their grasp on electoral and economic power has been eroding for quite some time. But rather than accept this as an inevitable consequence of life in a vibrant multicultural society, many older and less educated whites are looking for someone and/or something to blame.
Seeking to take advantage of their discontent, Republicans in turn blame Democrats – since younger, better-educated whites and ethnic minorities tend to vote for Democrats like President Obama. But even though the balance of power in Congress, as well as the US Presidency, has been shifting between the Democratic and Republican political parties for years, members of both parties have historically compromised with their political opponents to pass important legislation.
So why can’t the current Congress muster the bipartisan support that has always been used in the past to pass important legislation like our nation’s annual budgets? The answer lies in the way most states’ Congressional districts have been gerrymandered every 10 years.
When US Congressional districts are redesigned, the new districts are designed to favor the incumbent legislators of their party. Since the conservative Republicans or liberal Democrats elected from these districts no longer have to worry about swing voters, they are also less inclined to compromise and pass the bipartisan legislation that America needs. However, the gridlock in Congress also makes President Obama look like an ineffective leader. How he can overcome the legislative impasse and win re-election in 2012 is the question.
Charles Laffiteau is a US Republican from Dallas, Texas who is pursuing a PhD in International Relations and lectures on Contemporary US Business & Society at DCU
