ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the various devices that allow government to act despite policy stalemate with several case studies drawn from the Ronald Reagan administration. In 1972, the Congress and the president agreed to index Social Security payments to the cost of living. Deadlock between the president and the Congress may be acceptable in many instances. If a failure to act means that bad policies are not improved or that nagging problems go unresolved, the political system is certainly the worse for it, but only slightly so if the policy stalemate leaves most people’s lives unaffected in any immediate way. The 1983 agreement between President Reagan and the Congress about how to save the Social Security system from impending bankruptcy exemplifies the crisis-commission approach to breaking policy stalemates. Gramm-Rudman, like the crisis-commission approach to policymaking, represents an attempt to overcome the US political system’s bias toward stalemate.
