Politico asks, "Congress 'worse than it's ever been'?" And in the way of an explanation, it answers:
A central theme of the dysfunction is a lack of trust: Republicans and Democrats don’t trust each other; rank-and-file freshman Republicans in the House and the Senate, many of whom won their seats thanks to tea party support, don’t always trust party leaders; there’s no love lost between Congress and the White House; and the public doesn’t trust government or other major institutions.
Yet in its article Politico had lassoed a much simpler, less imprecise, more economical explanation: Stupidity is the central theme of the dysfunction; that, plus pseudoconservative ideology, although I hesitate to suggest any distinction.
I give you, or rather Politico gives us, Rep. Mike Pompeo, "a freshman Republican from Kansas who has never before served in elective office [and who] explained that it is more a matter of 'deep division' and 'two sharp worldviews' between the parties than a lack of trust in specific party leaders":
"There’s nothing in my judgment that indicates that Aug. 2 is a magic moment," said Pompeo, who argues that a true financial meltdown will occur only if investors conclude that the government isn’t serious about repaying the debts it already has incurred.
The government has incurred debts beyond Treasury bonds. Indeed, many of them were incurred under the "judgment" of last decade's Republican majorities. The government must repay these debts. Yet if it fails to do so, Pompeo sees no reason why "investors [would] conclude that the government isn’t serious about repaying the debts."
In this publicly elected "judgment" there inheres a House-majority stupidity so profound, so unspeakably ignorant, so indescribably impenetrable as to compel the reader to seek refuge in a rereading of H.L. Mencken's writings on democracy, and thus find the reassurance that though Mencken's observations are a century old and aggressively valid, we have survived.