Making an appearance on Meet the Press, the Mayor of Pittsburgh is reported to have drawn a stark contrast between the Pittsburgh government to that in D.C. saying that in D.C., “lawmakers too often forget about getting the job done.” Presumably, the Mayor was implying that Pittsburgh’s government works efficiently and expeditiously to get things done. Has he has forgotten the last few years when contentiousness was rampant in Pittsburgh’s government?
But more to the point, Pittsburgh has a Mayor and City Council, all of whom are lifelong Democrats whose collective and individual political philosophies run the gamut from A to B. The Federal government in Washington, D. C., on the other hand, has what the Mayor apparently views as an “unfortunate” problem of having a bicameral legislature, one house of which is controlled by non-Democrats. He might consider too that not all political jurisdictions are basically one party control. This is especially true of the United States as a whole where there are very large differences in governing philosophy—think Texas and Massachusetts. Or the Mayor might want to think closer to home about the government in Harrisburg, nominally under the control of Republicans, both houses and the Governor’s mansion. Yet very little substantive that the majority of Republicans wants gets done.
How can that be? Because they do not have an ideologically compatible majority and are opposed by the Democrats, except when the Democrats get something they want such as huge increases in mass transit funding and billions more for highway maintenance—a great boon to construction workers.
Government of the people can be messy where political differences are large among the voters.
