I think you’re wrong that legislators are incompetent. They’re human, and they’ve spent much of their lives learning how to get votes, but they’re not incompetent. A lot of them aren’t malicious, but there seems to be a small group of people outside of the legislative branch who are hell bent on taking control at all costs. And if you want to keep the votes rolling in you have to work with those people or get primaried. The dysfunction follows from fear more than incompetence these days.
I think legislators are skilled politicians and many are lawyers of varying competence. I would not expect them to deeply understand the negative downstream economic consequences of changing an obscure provision of the tax code. Maybe some of them could but would those have even been in the room? I get the impression most legislation is written by staffers (polysci or lawyers) and particularly spending legislation is tightly controlled in committee; only a handful of lawmakers ever saw the actual legislation before it was passed.
