How do you get a series of related policies through a legislative body when there are large factions with intense preferences against each of the individual policies?

One traditional answer is, of course, a logroll. You package all of the policies together, and even though none of the parts might have majority support, everyone is willing to allow the parts they don’t like to get through in order that the parts they do like can go through as well. The classic theoretical example of this is so-called “pork barrel” spending: each Member likes the project that goes to his/her district, but would probably vote against all 434 other projects if they came up individually for up/down votes. So just roll them all together into one bill, and everyone will vote yes. This is called omnibus legislation. Happens all the time.

So, imagine that you want to do the following: raise the debt limit. cut entitlements, and raise taxes. It might be your first instinct to spend your time trying to craft a combination of those policies such that a majority could be found that would accept the omnibus. In fact, this is probably the preferred solution. So it’s worth spending time on.

However, it can be the case that omnibus legislation works against the goal of passage. If the individual parts of the omnibus are so onerous to different factions, then the omnibus can actually weigh down the bill and preclude passage. It’s not hard to see how that works: for example, if there are groups of Members who can’t vote for entitlement cuts in any circumstance, as well as Members who can’t vote for tax increases in any circumstance, all that happens when you push the two policies into the same bill is that you get both groups of Members voting no, and your attempt to grow the vote has actually backfired. Your attempt at compromise via omnibus has combined the no votes, instead of mitigating them.

This is not theoretical. This is what happened in the Compromise of 1850. As originally constructed by Henry Clay, the compromise was a single piece of omnibus legislation, which included all of the following components: California is admitted to the union as a free state; Utah and New Mexico territories are organized without restriction on slavery; Texas gives up it’s land claims in New Mexico in exchange for the federal government assuming it’s debts; a stronger fugitive slave act; and a ban on the slave trade in the District of Columbia.

The omnibus was a miserable failure. And it’s not hard to see why: the most extreme pro-slavery southerners would not accept free California or the ban on the slave trade in DC; similarly, the most ardent anti-slavery northerners would not accept slavery in Utah and New Mexico territories or the enhanced fugitive slave law. Everyone just voted no.

So how did Stephen Douglas pick up the pieces of this and pass the eventual compromise?

He broke it into pieces. Once the shape of the Senate was clear — that there were large factions on both sides of the issue that would not compromise at all, but a small group in the middle who would take a compromise — it became obvious. Douglas broke the bill into five pieces, and then passed them separately. In each case, the tiny group in the middle would vote in favor of the bill, bringing the fire-eaters along for the pro-slavery bills and the abolitionists along for the anti-slavery bills. In the end, all five bills passed by very slim margins. But it was enough.

One bonus of this strategy (from a political perspective) was that no one had to compromise their position: the fire-eaters got to vote against the DC slave-trade ban, and the abolitionists got to vote against the Fugitive slave act.

Now, I’m not saying that this is proper route to go with the debt limit. There are way too many moving parts and specific contexts to make such a blanket statement. My point here is only that omnibus compromises aren’t always the best way to move these sorts of bargains through. In the case where you have two dug-in sides and small middle that is ready to compromise, the Douglas solution may be a viable option.

Notice also that the Douglas solution is immune to reneging from the wings. Unless someone in the small middle group changes their mind, no one can stop a second bill after their baby has passed first. They are voting no anyway! Of course, you do have to worry about the middle reneging, but that can practically be taken care of through the timing of sending things to the White House — you can wait to send things over until all bills have passed, or you can wait until certain things are signed before others are sent over — and the threat of vetoes in the case of compromise breakdown.