The core of the Secret Congress theory is that on highly salient issues, lawmaking is dominated by the question of which party controls which chambers and by how slim their majorities are. Under these circumstances, polarization is high and compromise is rare. Congress is prone to gridlock, and when solutions pass, they pass on a near party line.

Highly salient successes tend to be the most famous legislative achievements of a president’s term (the ACA for Obama, the TCJA for Trump, the ARP for Biden).

Highly salient failures tend to be what people point to when they call Congress gridlocked: the 2013 Manchin-Toomey background checks bill, Comprehensive Immigration Reform, the American Health Care Act, the Dream Act, etc.

But while these highly salient issues are the subject of heated debate in Regular Congress, Secret Congress keeps plugging away in obscurity.

The key is that public attention creates incredibly perverse incentives. Members of the minority (rightly) think that any popular, well-known bill that passes on a bipartisan basis is going to help the standing of the president. David Mayhew’s book “Divided We Govern” studies the 1946-2002 period and finds that periods in which the president and Congress are on opposite sides generate just as much legislation as periods of unified government. Another classic Mayhew book, “Congress: The Electoral Connection,” is about how members of Congress like to win elections. Getting bills passed helps members win re-election by giving them things to take credit for. But in an era where congressional voting is so highly correlated with presidential approval, and primary electorates say they’d rather have members that fight the other party than help their own state, it’s extremely risky for a member of Congress to let an opposite-party president be seen as successful.

https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-rise-and-importance-of-secret