[baldeagle]

'Bi-partisan' just means that both groups came to a compromise to get some of the things they want. You then have to look into how the bills and rules evolved to figure out how it came to be. My guess (non-researched) is that the party that has cutting government budgets as a priority was the one injecting a lessening of resources into the process.

[tracker1]

Both major parties dramatically increase spending more often than they reduce it. Bureaucracy and waste are incentivized at every level given how budgeting works in practice. They both prop up corporate welfare and military expansion.

We are the only major country in the world that doesn't have a fist fight on their congressional floor now and then... to me, it just indicates that most don't mean what they say.

[cmurf]

Exactly correct, consent and agreement aren't the same thing, PoliSci 101. The idea that one party consents to a policy (or lack thereof) promoted by another party, does not mean it is bipartisan approval of that policy. And in fact, a unified vote against a policy cannot be seen as being opposed to that policy.

Example of the latter is PPACA. That legislation came straight out of the conservative Heritage Foundation, and had substantial Republican agreement and modifications incorporated into it at the committee level by compromise. In every way how it was produced into a final product, on the record, it is bipartisan. And yet in the final vote, zero Republicans voted aye, in either house. That's politics. And they took advantage of this with plausible deniability for a decade, invariably claiming Democrats had jammed it down everyone's throats.

Further, effectively opposing policies depends on arguments being provable or convincing in relative real-time. A party needs to expend political capital when in opposition of a thing, and there is an opportunity cost: there's simply less ability to oppose or promote other policies.

Also in political science, the Republican vs Democrat distinction that always seems to rile up people on HN, using the "partisan" label as a smear to stop conversations, is not even that significant of a consideration. Ideology, expertise, personal interest, and individual campaign contributions are more predictive. There are parties within those parties. Most people have no idea to what degree actions are individually motivated or to what degree the party holds power over the individual politician.