The government shutdown that began on Oct. 1 is not a natural disaster, but a man-made failure of governance. Hyper-partisanship has once again contributed to the nation’s lawmakers failing to pass essential funding bills. Vital government services were halted and hundreds of thousands of federal workers were furloughed.
Oct. 1, 2025, marks the 20th government shutdown since 1976, and the third one in the past 12 years. This recurring crisis is the predictable outcome of a legislative process that favors high-stakes negotiation and political brinkmanship over bipartisan agreement.
There is a dangerous decline in tolerance for differences in opinion and surge in lack of open-mindedness to collaborate for the best interest of Americans. Among potential structural reforms to the lawmaking process, I particularly favor the notion of implementing Mandatory Cross-Aisle Co-Sponsorship.
Requiring any bill to have at least one supporter from the opposing political party to co-sponsor it before its introduction to Congress would fundamentally shift the legislative incentive of political representatives from conflict to practical cooperation.
What is Gridlock?
To understand why this shutdown was almost inevitable, we must examine the holes in our legislative process that create and gridlock. As it stands, bills are born in partisan echo chambers. Party leadership, responding to pressure from its most ideological members, drafts legislation as a wish list of partisan priorities.
They achieve this by attaching controversial “policy riders” or “poison pills,” or amendments largely unrelated to the budget but specifically designed to be rejected by the other party.
The result of these actions is not a negotiation, but a game of chicken.
Gridlock is the result of political parties refusing to negotiate with one another, resulting in the decrease of legislative productivity. It essentially empowers the extremes and makes crisis the default setting for governing. Each party passes a bill that the other is guaranteed to reject, and the process eventually fizzles out. The debate becomes about who will get blamed for the shutdown, not about how to responsibly fund the government.
A Procedural Fix to the Lawmaking Framework
The solution is not to simply ask for more civility, but to change the rules of the game.
Mandatory Cross-Aisle Co-Sponsorship would require a bill to have the signature of at least one member from the minority party in order to be formally introduced to the House or Senate. This simple yet transformative requirement would force collaboration to the very beginning of the legislative process. Instead of drafting partisan documents in isolation, lawmakers would have to reach out across the aisle to find a legislative partner before their idea could be presented.
The initial draft of any bill would, by necessity, be an agreed-upon compromise. The current shutdown is a political event designed to energize each party’s base. Government shutdowns are a form of political brinkmanship where factions often use the threat of a crisis to achieve personal political goals.
A cross-aisle co-sponsorship requirement would reframe the objective. The “win” would no longer be defeating the other party, but rather successfully co-authoring a bill that keeps the government up and running. It changes the incentive of Congressional meetings from rewarding conflict to rewarding cooperation.
By requiring bipartisan buy-in early in the process, bills would have a built-in coalition of lawmakers from both major parties committed to its passage. This would disallow extreme factions to hold the entire government hostage to their demands.
Although the idea of requiring co-sponsors for bills may seem unconventional and new, several organizations and members of Congress have actively pushed for rules to incentivize bipartisan collaboration from the start of the legislative process.
In June of 2025, U.S. Representatives Emanuel Cleaver (D) and Young Kim (R) reintroduced the BUDS Resolution to Bolster Bipartisan Collaboration in Congress. The current House rules only permit one main sponsor for a bill. The BUDS Resolution would change the rules to allow two members to serve as joint sponsors, provided they are from different parties.
Supporters, including the Bipartisan Policy Center Action group, argue this simple change would make bipartisan efforts more visible and encourage lawmakers to collaborate from a bill’s inception, which could lead to more productive legislative outcomes.
Similarly, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Commission on Political Reform advocates for structural changes that foster collaboration, and the arguments within can be used to support the need for mechanisms like mandatory cross-aisle co-sponsorship.
Concerns About its Effect on Congressional Activity
Some will argue that this regulation would lead to fewer bills being introduced, which ultimately confuses overactivity with meaningful progress.
Congress already sees thousands of purely political “messaging bills” that have slim chances of becoming law. This reform would force lawmakers to focus their energy on what is achievable, rather than on power-plays and partisan exercises. While others may claim that the rule would stifle genuine ideological debate, I would argue that it would foster a more productive form of it.
Debate would shift from scoring points with unpassable bills to the real work of amending legislation that already has a baseline of bipartisan consensus. The principle of majority rule is not undermined but enhanced by ensuring the majority is built from a coalition willing to govern.
The shutdown that we are currently enduring is not a sign of a healthy democracy. We have long depended on hopes of potential bipartisan cooperation to repair democracy and American government, but it is a lost cause.
Implementing a regulation that mandates reaching out to legislators of the opposing political party would be much more efficient. Mandatory Cross-Aisle Co-Sponsorship is not a cure-all method, but it is a concrete reform that realigns the incentives on the floors of Congress toward sensible governing.
Academic research and current lawmakers have proved that requiring cross-aisle sponsorship is a practical, data-backed strategy to increase government efficiency and combat gridlock. It’s time to demand a change not just in our politicians, but in the broken rules they play by.
