Jared Bernstein is a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington and a former chief economist to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

While you were just getting the Sunday morning coffee going, I was arguing about the Clinton 1993 budget with a panel on “Up With Steve Kornacki” on MSNBC (in two segments). Why, you might ask, would someone get up at the crack of a weekend dawn to look back at a 20-year-old budget bill?

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Fair question. But Mr. Kornacki had what I thought was an interesting angle on the lasting importance of this two-decade old vote. Republican opposition was totally unified against the first Clinton budget, which raised income, corporate and energy taxes, as well as taxes on Medicare and Social Security. And it’s a piece of cake to find the opposition making countless predictions of dire economic and fiscal outcomes — basically, that job loss, recession and deficits would result from the budget, which barely squeaked through both houses.

Those predictions were not just wrong, they were 180 degrees wrong. Economic growth was strong, productivity accelerated, unemployment fell below 4 percent, and while inequality continued to increase in the 1990s, the benefits of said growth were more broadly shared than before or since. And, of course, the budget reached a surplus in 1998.

These results were not all or even largely because of budget changes. There are, as was pointed out in the segment, always lots of moving parts. But there can be no credible, accountable argument that the tax increases prevented these gains. And there can be no credible, accountable argument that the opposite approach to fiscal policy — the supply-side tax cuts of the Bush years — led to the far less positive growth and job outcomes in the 2000s expansion.

All that is pretty well known, though still contested, as you’ll see in the MSNBC discussion. And it’s that point — “still contested” — where the analysis turns from economic to political. The unified opposition to the 1993 budget — a budget that was not particularly popular — is widely viewed as helping the Republicans’ 1994 takeover of the House for the first time since 1954. Forget accountability and facts. From the perspective of the outcome that matters most — not jobs, investment or deficits, but raw political power — the Republicans’ strategy worked.

Mr. Kornacki’s argument is that this was a long-lasting teaching moment. The economic and fiscal lessons that a rational person would take from Bill Clinton vs. George W. Bush matter not at all. They are an inconvenience to be explained away by citing other moving parts at best and endlessly reciting false talking points at worst. The important lesson is that if we stick together in opposition, regardless of the facts, we win.

Mr. Kornacki put up a figure showing the 2009 stimulus vote, supported by no House Republicans. He could have cited the 40 or so votes taken to repeal the Affordable Care Act, despite the early evidence that it already appears to be having its intended effect, most notably in states that are carrying out the law in good faith.

Now, I don’t know that you can accurately carbon-date 20 years ago as the day facts left the building. But I do think you can conclude that the inability of the current United States political system to absorb factual analysis and to compromise on solutions is solidly behind our dysfunction. Mr. Kornacki may be right that an important and destructive seed was planted that day, one that has since flowered into a foul and poisonous plant.

What we need now is some serious thinking on what it will take to kill that plant and clear the path back to functionality.