The Problem Solvers Caucus Doesn’t Solve Problems—It Expands Washington

There is a group on Capitol Hill called the Problem Solvers Caucus, and its name is a masterstroke of political branding. It tells you two things before you have heard a single policy: first, that there are problems; second, that these people are the ones to solve them. To most Americans, that sounds like maturity. To anyone who takes the Constitution seriously, it ought to sound like a central planner's sales pitch.

Since its founding in 2017, the caucus has billed itself as the antidote to partisan gridlock. It requires equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats and refuses to endorse a bill without a supermajority of its members behind it. I do not doubt the sincerity of the people involved. But sincerity is not constitutionality. The real problem is not that Congress is too partisan. The real problem is that too many people in both parties agree on the most dangerous proposition in American politics: that Washington should solve problems.

That is not what the Constitution says. Congress was given enumerated powers-to regulate interstate commerce, coin money, declare war, and a short list of others. It was not given a general mandate to identify society's problems and fix them. The Founders did not design an efficient problem-solving machine. They designed a deliberately slow, friction-filled government of laws, because they knew that a government capable of solving your problems quickly is also capable of taking your liberties quickly.

The Caucus Is a Faction in Madison's Sense

James Madison, the architect of the Constitution, defined a faction as "a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." That is Federalist No. 10, and it describes precisely the energy behind a bipartisan problem-solving coalition.

The Problem Solvers Caucus is a faction in Madison's sense-not because its members are malicious, but because they are united by a shared impulse to prove that Washington can get things done. What gets done, more often than not, is the expansion of federal power. And the fact that the faction is bipartisan makes it more dangerous, not less, because it removes one of the only remaining checks on that power: partisan opposition.

Madison understood this. He did not argue that factions should be eliminated; he argued that the effects of factions should be controlled. The Constitution's separation of powers, federalism, and checks and balances were built to slow the ambitions of any faction-left, right, or center. A caucus organized around the idea that consensus can bypass that slowness is not restoring the Founders' vision. It is working against it.

The Knowledge Problem Does Not Disappear With Bipartisanship

Friedrich Hayek's knowledge problem is unforgiving: no roomful of politicians can assemble the dispersed knowledge needed to run a complex society. The price system, local communities, and voluntary action solve real problems every day. When Congress decides to "solve" a problem, it usually crowds out those private and local solutions and replaces them with one-size-fits-all mandates.

Take infrastructure. The most visible cause of the Problem Solvers Caucus has been the trillion-dollar bipartisan infrastructure bill. It was framed as a fix for crumbling roads and bridges. But the seen effect-a bipartisan breakthrough-hides the unseen effect Henry Hazlitt warned about in Economics in One Lesson: the precedent that every problem is now a federal problem if enough people from both parties agree. The actual roads and bridges belong, in large part, to states, localities, and private investors. The federal government does not have better knowledge about which bridge in Ohio or which water main in Texas needs repair. It has better access to borrowed money. That is not problem solving; that is centralization funded by debt.

Thomas Sowell put it plainly: there are no solutions, only trade-offs. The Problem Solvers Caucus behaves as though bipartisanship suspends trade-offs. It does not. Every federal dollar spent on a solution has to come from somewhere-higher taxes, more borrowing, or inflation. Every new federal program comes with compliance costs, mandates, and the slow erosion of state and local authority. Calling the process bipartisan does not make those trade-offs disappear. It just hides them behind a veneer of cooperation.

Partisan Competition Is a Check, Not a Disease

Here is the part most people miss. Partisan competition is not the disease; it is one of the few remaining checks on federal power. When Republicans and Democrats fight, each side has an incentive to expose the other's waste, abuse, and constitutional overreach. When they sit down together in a Problem Solvers Caucus, the competition becomes collusion. Bipartisanship often means Democrats get the spending and Republicans get the votes for it-and the taxpayer gets the bill.

Milton Friedman's famous line applies: there is no such thing as a free lunch. But the Problem Solvers Caucus often acts as though bipartisanship makes the lunch free. It does not. It just means both parties share the credit for ordering it, so neither has an incentive to question the price.

The Founders did not create a system designed to produce efficient consensus. They created a constitutional republic in which power is divided, slowed, and checked precisely because they distrusted consensus. A republic is not a pure democracy where a majority-or a bipartisan supermajority-gets to do whatever it wants. It is a government of laws, bound by enumerated powers, designed to protect rights against transient majorities. A bipartisan consensus that expands federal power is still an expansion of federal power. Its popularity does not make it constitutional.

What Counts as a Problem?

The name Problem Solvers tries to smuggle in a shared objective that does not exist. In a free society, people disagree about ends, not just means. Is the national debt a problem, or is the tax burden a problem? Is the lack of universal day care a problem, or is government crowding out family and church care a problem? Is slow federal action a problem, or is it the point?

When a bipartisan group decides which problems to solve, it is simply imposing one set of values on everyone else-with the illusion of consensus. The Founders understood that the worst tyranny often arrives that way: not through one faction seizing power, but through many factions agreeing that they know best.

The Constitution does not ask Congress to solve every problem. It asks Congress to do a few things, within its enumerated powers, and otherwise leave people free. The moment we trade that restraint for the false promise of problem solving is the moment we begin solving ourselves right out of liberty.

The Real Problem Solvers Are Not in Washington

Here is the most important point: the real problem solvers in America are not in Washington. They are the entrepreneurs, parents, teachers, ministers, and neighbors who solve problems through voluntary action and local knowledge-without a single congressional caucus. They do not need a 75 percent threshold. They do not need a press conference. They just need to be left alone to work, save, build, and serve.

That is the unseen cost of the Problem Solvers Caucus. Every time Washington announces it is solving a problem, it displaces someone who was already working on it. Every federal program comes with the implicit message that private action is not enough, local government cannot be trusted, and only Washington has the competence to help. That message is not just insulting. It is the road to serfdom.

The caucus does not need to solve Congress. It needs to remember what Congress is for-and, more importantly, what it is not for. The Constitution did not create a board of directors for America. It created a limited government of laws, restrained by enumerated powers and checked by the states and the people. The greatest threat to that system is not one party defeating the other. It is both parties agreeing that the system should be discarded. That is exactly what the Problem Solvers Caucus, in practice, encourages.

So the next time you hear that bipartisanship is the answer, ask one question: answer to what? If the answer is a bigger, more expensive, more centralized federal government, then the real problem was never partisanship. The real problem is the belief that Washington exists to solve problems at all.