He grew a touch more somber. "Now, the economic case for the Partnership Act was always the most convincing part for me because I'm sort of a wonk about these things. But there's also the moral case. Dating is one of the most social things we do. Don't we always introduce single friends to each other and serve as a 'wingman' at bars? Shouldn't everyone have a wingman?"
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There was much truth in Patter's pitch. By 2014, fifty one percent of marriages ended in divorce and over forty percent of individuals of marriageable age were single, seemingly destined to be old maids forever. Surely, a society as affluent as ours could afford to ensure that no one died alone.
The Partnership Act promised to mitigate the economic harm of singledom, provide companionship for the single, and level the playing field for the unattractive. The Act had 3 main components: subsidized exchanges on which single people could find partners, mandatory minimum requirements for partners (so-called “Adequate Partner Requirements”, or “APRs”) to ensure no one was paired with a bad partner, and the individual mandate requiring each citizen to be in a relationship or pay a fine.
Introduced by the President in her 2018 State of the Union address, the Partnership Act took a full year to wind its way through Congress. Stalwart members of the President's party still insist that the concessions needed to secure passage of the bill fatally weakened the overall concept.
Rep. Nancy Polenta, the firebrand from San Francisco, is particularly touchy on the subject. "The President thought she could get bipartisan support if she went for exchanges instead of a single matcher service. If the federal government could just do the matching, you wouldn't need an individual mandate or all those