To the Editor:
Everyone has a favorite culprit to blame for the unnerving debt-ceiling debate. Jacob S. Hacker and Oona A. Hathaway (“Our Unbalanced Democracy,” Op-Ed, Aug. 1) reflect the opinion of many others in saying that we face “a democracy crisis,” that our system of government is “dysfunctional.”
The difficulty of reaching an agreement on the debt ceiling undoubtedly justifies a review of some characteristics of Congress, like the routine use of the threat to filibuster in the Senate and the short two-year term of members of the House of Representatives, which makes them campaign continuously. But wholesale assertions that the system is dysfunctional cannot help us address solvable problems.
In historical perspective, the most unusual aspect of the debt-ceiling debate was the unwillingness of a large group of newly elected representatives aligned with the Tea Party to participate in the normal legislative process. Only the voters can deal with that problem.
GERHARD LOEWENBERG
Iowa City, Aug. 1, 2011
The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Iowa.
Note from KBJ: Ha! The voters sent these representatives to Congress with explicit instructions to rein in the wild horse of government. There will be more of them in January 2013. The letter writer confuses (1) participation in the legislative process with (2) participation that pleases progressives. If the tables were turned, he'd be praising the "principled" progressives who stood firm against the evil conservatives.
