How Congress can bridge the divide: Face each other and talk

The next Congress has all but taken shape under Republican control, but a more fundamental, behind-the-scenes change is also coming — one that will require more effort and collaboration from a dysfunctional legislature that’s at least as divided as the rest of the country. How is our current Congress supposed to do that?

It may sound impossible, but it’s not. If congressional leadership earnestly commits to diminishing partisan acrimony and gridlock, they’ll find the tools to do it.

In June, the Supreme Court reversed itself in a consequential decision for all three branches of government, overturning its 1984 Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. ruling. 

For decades, this gave Congress an “out” from making hard decisions, and our elected representatives outsourced tricky policy details to an unelected federal bureaucracy. Now, the court has effectively told Congress that it can no longer let the executive branch do its work for them.

The original Chevron decision concerned whether the Environmental Protection Agency overstepped its bounds when regulating air pollution sources. Executive branch agencies are supposed to figure out some details as they enforce Congress’s laws, but sometimes those laws are so vague that it’s not clear where the bounds are. “Chevron deference” held that regulatory agencies are the experts and that their interpretations of the law deserve deference from lower courts.

This left bureaucrats with a big advantage in legal challenges, as courts deferred to their judgments when the laws were vague.

After 40 years and 18,000 court decisions affecting more than 3,000 agency decisions citing Chevon, the Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo ruling has reversed this precedent. The new case was prefaced on the federal bureaucracy requiring fishermen to have government regulators on board — and charging these businesses $710 per day for the privilege. With tiny profit margins to begin with, this put a tremendous burden on small fishing fleets that Congress never intended. There have been many similar situations over the years.

Judges must now decide whether agencies have gone beyond congressional delegations of power, and Congress must now create rules with details — something members had been happy to avoid.

One congressional chief of staff once told me that people in Congress don’t want to be held accountable for making those decisions; they want to pass vague laws and then forget about them. Later, they can always hold hearings to decry the results.

The problem with relying more on Congress is that, like the rest of the country, it has become more polarized in the last 50 years. Today, there are only about two dozen moderates in both parties versus 160 in 1971-72, when we were divided over the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy had been assassinated and Richard Nixon was soon to resign in disgrace.

In addition, party leaders dictate more of the agenda, often from the far right and far left, and government shutdowns are regular occurrences.

I participated in a unique way to “bridge the partisan divide for the good of our democratic republic.” It was created by Braver Angels, which started in 2016 with a small group half composed of Donald Trump voters and half Hillary Clinton voters, who tried to see if they could find a way to start talking to one another. 

It’s rather simple: To begin, bring an equal number of reds and blues together. Next, using a structured format — one which encourages ideas and allows for challenges to the chair — hold a conversation in which people admit to what they actually believe without trying to score points against the other side. 

Within several hours, not only do both parties understand more about the other, but they find a good deal to agree on, including solutions for the big problems we face like crime, global climate change, debt and immigration.

This defuses the tension and allows people to come away feeling refreshed, encouraged and hopeful.

The evidence shows that it works. Nearly 70 percent report ending up with a positive view of the other side and 80 percent say they were able to find common ground. Dislike for the other side dropped from 38 percent to 21 percent. 

One former political participant said, “Taking Braver Angels into Congress could make a fundamental prospective change.” Now there’s an idea.

As the organization states, “At the heart of all that civilization has meant and developed is 'community' — the mutually cooperative and voluntary venture of man to assume a semblance of responsibility for his brother.”

It’s not a triumph of one party over another that we need. It’s a way to “live and work alongside each other today, tomorrow and in the generations to come.”

Richard A. Williams is a former director for social sciences at the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, chair of the board of the Center for Truth in Sciences, and a senior affiliated scholar with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.