The Misconception of Compromise

There is a troubling misconception being propagated by the press and politicians lately that compromise is always a desirable goal and that it is the American way. As a result, many Americans have voiced their opinion that they want the government to work together to get things done. They say they want compromise and that the government is dysfunctional when it can’t come to an agreement. The negotiations over raising the debt ceiling brought these complaints to a crescendo even to the point where Cokie Roberts implied on ABC’s “This Week” that somehow our Constitution is flawed because it makes it difficult for Congress and the President to accomplish anything. I would make the exact opposite argument. The Constitution was precisely crafted to make it difficult to do things and the checks and balances were established for that very purpose.



First, our federal government only has a limited number of Constitutional powers which are referred to as the enumerated powers. According to the Tenth Amendment, everything else is left up to the individual States. Therefore, anything that isn’t one of the enumerated powers or that is controversial is supposed to have a difficult time becoming law due to the checks and balances. Compromise has made it possible to circumvent the checks and balances and enact legislation that Congress has no business acting on. As a result, look where we are today. Instead of the powerful but unobtrusive central government envisioned by the Founders, we have a meddling government that imposes itself into nearly every aspect of the lives of the citizenry and threatens our sacred liberty.



Next, some would argue that America has a long tradition of compromise. However, if you think back to your grade school history or research compromise in US history, you will find that there are really only 3 compromises that occupy a place of prominence in our 235 year history – The Great Compromise that established the two houses of our Congress; The Missouri Compromise which admitted Missouri to the Union as a slave State and Maine as a free State, and The Compromise of 1850 that established which new States added to the Union would be free and which would allow slavery. In these examples, two out of the three compromises were not good and to the contrary were arguably evil. Therefore, to maintain that we have a tradition of compromise and that compromise is a good thing is not supported by the facts.



Lastly, Congress continues to pass bills that are thousands of pages long that no one has read, regarding subjects that they are unqualified to make decisions about, or even have the capacity to anticipate the unintended consequences these bills may have. The most recent and perhaps most egregious example, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obama Care) should have been prevented from becoming law by the system of checks and balances but they were thwarted by compromise and ultimately parliamentary dirty tricks and pay-offs. Fortunately, the checks and balances may have the last word when the Supreme Court hears arguments on the constitutionality of this legislation and it is overturned.



The ideas that compromise is an unqualified good or that the mechanism of checks and balances preventing bad bills from becoming law is a problem with our Constitution is supported by neither history nor current experience.