WASHINGTON — In a rare show of unity that leaders of both parties called “long overdue” and “entirely the other party’s fault that it took this long,” Congress on Wednesday passed a joint resolution formally establishing that the other side is why Americans can’t have nice things.
The measure, the Unanimous Finding of Fault Act, cleared the House 435–0 and the Senate 100–0. Members described it as the first time in living memory that every lawmaker voted for the same thing for the same reason, that reason being that the other lawmakers had voted for it too, and could not be trusted with it alone.
“Today, America speaks with one voice,” said Sen. Harlan Pike, the Republican co-chair of the Joint Select Committee on Nice Things, at a signing ceremony in which he and his Democratic counterpart signed the same document, with the same pen, while pointing at each other. “And that voice says: it’s them.”
“For once, we’ve set partisanship aside,” agreed Sen. Corinne Waverly, the committee’s Democratic co-chair, still pointing. “Because it’s them.”
The resolution follows a 22-month investigation and a 1,140-page final report that committee staff called “the most comprehensive accounting of blame ever assembled by a legislative body.” The report is divided into Majority Findings and Minority Findings. Apart from the words “Republican” and “Democratic,” which trade places, the two sections are identical down to the footnotes, a fact each co-chair cited Wednesday as proof that the other side had plagiarized them.
The committee leaned heavily on public polling. In an April survey by the Pew Research Center, 58% of Americans held an unfavorable view of the Republican Party and 59% held an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party, a near tie the committee entered into the record as “Exhibit A: Everyone Is Right About Them,” before striking it on a joint motion from both sides. Among partisans, Pew found, 92% of Democrats view the GOP unfavorably, and 93% of Republicans return the favor.
Earlier Pew research found large majorities in each party calling the other more immoral, more dishonest and more closed-minded than other Americans. “These are the most bipartisan numbers in American life,” Waverly said. “Nothing else gets ninety-plus percent. Not puppies. Not Mom. We’d be fools not to build on that.”
The heart of the report is Appendix C, an inventory of the 4,812 nice things Americans cannot currently have. Among them: high-speed rail, a federal budget passed on time, insulin priced like a liquid, a pothole repaired in the fiscal year it was reported, a Thanksgiving dinner that ends before the pie, and “a printer that works (pending further review).” For each item, the report assigns fault to the other side, or, depending on which section the reader opens, to the other other side.
The committee’s flagship case study is last year’s 43-day government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, which cost the economy an estimated $11 billion. It appears in both sections. Each concludes that the other side shut the government down by refusing to admit it had shut the government down.
The Blame Desk™ 🫵
Pick your side, then pick a nice thing you can’t have. The committee will tell you whose fault it is. It already knows.
- Nice thing
- Responsible party
- Committee finding
- Nice thing
- Responsible party
- Committee finding
Findings are binding on the other side. Your side is presumed reasonable pending a review that has been scheduled, by unanimous consent, for never.
The committee says its work is grounded in science. Dr. Miriam Osei-Thornton, a political psychologist who testified at the committee’s final hearing, cited studies by the nonprofit More in Common finding that Democrats and Republicans overestimate the share of the other side holding extreme views by roughly a factor of two, and that the most politically engaged Americans get it the most wrong.
“Members of Congress are the most politically engaged people in the country,” she told the panel. “So I can say with confidence that this room is working from the least accurate information available anywhere in the United States.” The committee voted to thank her for her testimony, then voted, by unanimous consent, to designate her as being from the other side.
Under the resolution, every federal agency must name a Chief Other Side Officer by March 1. Every new bill must carry an Other Side Impact Statement estimating how much of each provision the other side will ruin, and by when. The Congressional Budget Office scored the resolution itself at zero dollars, “payable by them.”
Reaction across the country was swift. In Ohio, a family of nine announced plans to hold Thanksgiving in two adjoining rooms joined by a single shared gravy boat, which each room has already accused the other of hoarding. A Pennsylvania man said the resolution had “finally put into words” what he had been saying at the hardware store for eleven years, and asked that his neighbor be informed.
The Other Side Estimator™ 🔭
What share of the other side do you think holds the single most extreme view you can imagine them holding?
“Likely closer to reality” halves your estimate, after research finding partisans overestimate the other side’s extreme views by about a factor of two. Both parties have objected to the halving as partisan. The committee figure is whatever you said.
The finding also settles a long-running question at the National Repository of Nice Things, an unmarked federal warehouse off the Beltway where nice things have been held in storage “until the other side leaves.” Staff confirmed the building holds all 4,812 items from Appendix C in mint condition, including a bullet train still in its original packaging and a bipartisan bill that “only needs one more signature, from whoever’s turn it is.”
“Nobody has ever come to pick anything up,” said a repository archivist, who asked not to be named because she is “not sure which side I’m on and I would like to keep my parking spot.” She explained that each party holds one key to the front door. “The lock needs both. They each think the other one changed it.”
The only sticking point Wednesday came during questions, when a reporter asked who, exactly, the other side is for the roughly 28% of Americans who told YouGov during last year’s shutdown that both parties were equally to blame.
Pike and Waverly conferred briefly. Then, for the first time all afternoon, they pointed in the same direction.
“Them,” they said.
At press time, both parties had co-sponsored a follow-up measure, the Unity Through Independents Act, which aides predicted would become the first bill in history to unite all 535 members of Congress behind a single other side.
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