Big Tech lobbying and hyper-partisanship ensures a fight that crushes legislation – even if there is bipartisan support, public support or presidential backing

Love the products, hate the companies — that’s the way many Americans think about Big Tech. Which is why it looked like a good bet when Congress convened in 2021 that Washington might finally rein in the companies that many believe have grown too big, too rich and too powerful — even as their products and services have become ever more indispensable to our lives. Here, it seemed, was the rare issue on which both Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, could agree.

In the end, however, Congress failed to act. And in that failure is a case study of how Congress has lost its ability to address the most pressing problems facing the country.

The root cause of this dysfunction has been the sorting of Americans into two warring tribes, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican. Over time, this hyperpartisan competition has played out to a stalemate in Congress, with legislative majorities that are so small and tenuous that every issue is now viewed through the lens of how it could tip the next election.

And so it was with a handful of bills meant to end the anticompetitive business practices of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google. By early 2022, all had been voted out of committees in both chambers with bipartisan majorities. All had broad support from voters, knowledgeable experts, regulators and the White House. Yet not one was taken up by the full House and Senate.

The prime suspect in this legislative murder mystery is Big Tech itself. In terms of lobbying, advertising, public relations and stepped-up campaign contributions, the four companies spent an estimated $250 million to kill the various bills. In financial terms, that represented about 1/10 of 1 percent of their combined annual profits. On a political scale, it was an overwhelming show of force.

Corporate power, however, is only part of the story. A bigger factor is that members of Congress and their staff have lost the instinct and ability to legislate. Over the past 30 years, the processes and norms that once allowed Congress to discover what the country wanted and needed have so badly eroded that few members can remember how it’s done. Failure has become the expected and accepted outcome. The instinct to turn any issue into a partisan battle, the lack of urgency, the fixation with and fear of social media, the refusal to accept even modest political risk, the reluctance to engage in serious debate and compromise, and the almost complete abdication of power to party leaders — all of these have become deeply ingrained in the life and culture of the Capitol. And it is all made worse by a self-imposed schedule that has members in Washington only three days a week, 30 weeks a year.