--- title: Breaking the Deadlock description: Taming a dysfunctional political system will be the next President's first priority canonical: https://time.com/archive/6596209/breaking-the-deadlock/ author: Fareed Zakaria article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2012-11-12T05:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-25T06:22:41.147Z article:section: Politics og:title: Breaking the Deadlock og:description: Taming a dysfunctional political system will be the next President's first priority og:url: https://time.com/archive/6596209/breaking-the-deadlock/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Breaking the Deadlock twitter:description: Taming a dysfunctional political system will be the next President's first priority twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [Politics](/section/politics/) # Breaking the Deadlock > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=640e114c-de44-4cab-96d7-b634dcfd33f6&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) by [Fareed Zakaria](https://time.com/author/fareed-zakaria/) Nov 12, 2012 5:00 AM UTC by [Fareed Zakaria](https://time.com/author/fareed-zakaria/) Nov 12, 2012 5:00 AM UTC Whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney wins the election on Tuesday, on Wednesday he will face the same urgent challenge: how to stop the U.S. from falling off the fiscal cliff. But let’s hope he also takes on the larger challenge of fixing a political system that has brought us close to disaster twice in two years. Unless Congress acts, the spending cuts and tax increases that would be triggered automatically next January would take 5.1% out of the country’s GDP in one year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That would be one of the most severe experiments with austerity in history–larger than anything Greece, Spain, Italy or the U.K. has tried. In fact, it is almost three times the size of Britain’s program. And the results of those European austerity policies have thus far been a dramatic slowdown in economic growth and a sharp spike in unemployment. Virtually every economist who has studied this believes that similar measures, even if enacted for a few months, could push the U.S. into a double-dip recession. [(MORE: Viewpoint: The Case for Mitt Romney)](http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/01/the-case-for-mitt-romney/) Even a prominent CEO-sponsored public campaign geared explicitly toward deficit reduction has warned that this much reduction this fast would be catastrophic for the country. In fact, just the fear that it might happen has already stopped companies from expanding. And once again, the rest of the world watches to see if the U.S.–the center of the global economy–will actually commit economic hara-kiri. The most puzzling aspect of our dilemmas is how manageable they are. Unlike Greece and Spain, the U.S. has a fundamentally healthy economy. We have problems, but we have solutions to them. The true virtue of the Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction plan is that it illustrates that the U.S.’s debt issues could be readily resolved as long as both parties compromise. Paul Ryan and Paul Krugman criticize the specifics of the plan, but that proves the point: neither side would get what it wants but the budget would be placed on a much more stable footing. The truth is, most of the U.S.’s problems could be solved using some version of the Simpson-Bowles approach. Imagine a bipartisan and independent panel that proposed comprehensive immigration reform. Or one that tackled Social Security. Or tax reform. Perhaps we need an independent agency chartered by Congress to generate such plans when asked. Whatever the mechanism, the U.S. needs some kind of process to produce compromise proposals that Congress would have to take seriously. Ideally, lawmakers would be forced to vote up or down on them. This is not an abstract theory. When used before–for example, for base closings after the Cold War and for trade legislation–the process has been very successful. In fact, a required vote was part of the original design of the Republican proposal for what became Simpson-Bowles. But once Obama agreed to it, seven Republican co-sponsors of the resolution reversed course and denounced the idea. And congressional Democrats weren’t all that unhappy with the outcome. [MORE: Obama and Romney Campaigns Maneuver, Misdirect as Election Draws Close](http://swampland.time.com/2012/10/31/81178/) That’s just another reminder that the U.S. political system is simply not working. The parties have become too polarized; institutions and traditions of governance, like the filibuster, have been abused to create permanent gridlock. It’s tempting to pretend that this has always been a part of the country’s raucous democracy and that both parties are to blame. But that’s just not true. Consider these facts. Over the past five years, Republicans have threatened a filibuster 385 times. That’s almost double the rate of the preceding five years. “This level of obstruction is extremely unusual,” Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told Newsweek. “And the core of the problem is the GOP.” The Republican Party has chosen to become the party of no in a political system that can work only if there is some cross-party cooperation. [(MORE: Viewpoint: The Case for Barack Obama)](http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/01/the-case-for-barack-obama/) Would Obama or Romney be better at breaking this deadlock? Each side makes its arguments. Obama has said, as recently as late August, that his re-election would “break the fever” and force Republicans to the table. Romney partisans quietly admit that the Republican Party will have to accept higher taxes but claim that only one of its own can take them there. Is either of these scenarios credible? I’m not sure. So far, Obama has clearly been more willing to compromise, though he is not blameless. The Republican Party could accept reality–and math–and accept that tax revenue will have to go up to get a budget deal. But I do know that unless we fix our utterly dysfunctional political system, it is only a matter of time before we face the next cliff–and that next time, we will fall off and crash. TO READ MORE BY FAREED ZAKARIA, GO TO [time.com/zakaria](http://time.com/zakaria) [MORE: I Voted! But It Wasn’t as Easy as It Should’ve Been](http://swampland.time.com/2012/10/31/i-voted-but-it-wasnt-as-easy-as-it-shouldve-been/) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6596209/breaking-the-deadlock/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6596209/breaking-the-deadlock/"},"headline":"Breaking the Deadlock","datePublished":"2012-11-12T05:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-25T06:22:41.147Z","description":"Taming a dysfunctional political system will be the next President's first priority","url":"https://time.com/archive/6596209/breaking-the-deadlock/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Fareed Zakaria","url":"https://time.com/author/fareed-zakaria/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6596209/breaking-the-deadlock/","name":"Breaking the Deadlock"}}]}] ```