Partisanship makes compromise impossible.

Given the urgency of the issues and those bipartisan majorities — and given that little else was clogging the legislative agenda during the final months of the year — you might wonder why nothing was done. Certainly in decades past, the relevant committees would have held substantive hearings to look into the separate issues and reported bills to the full House and Senate. And the House and Senate might have taken a week to debate and vote on each bill and dozens of amendments. In this instance, almost none of that happened.

Instead, the Democratic majority in the Senate refused to take up aid to Israel unless it was packaged with aid to Ukraine, which by itself might not have enough Republican votes to overcome a filibuster. In response, House Republicans announced they would refuse to fund aid to Ukraine unless Democrats agree to stronger border enforcement and tougher criteria for refugees. In response, progressives warned fellow Democrats never to agree to tougher immigration laws unless Republicans agree to a pathway to citizenship for millions who are already here illegally.

And now we hear that the only way to do anything about Israel, Ukraine and the border is to fold it into a sweeping appropriations bill needed to avoid a partial government shutdown when funding runs out in January.

The root cause of all this dysfunction — the reluctance to vote, the holding of one issue hostage to another, the brinkmanship and the refusal to compromise — is the sorting of the country and the Congress into two ideologically consistent parties that have adopted the same tactics and now fought each other to a draw.