Yes, I think the biggest reason for that happening, as well as the obstructionism in general is the extreme partisanship that has come from the FPTP voting system.
Republicans say big government doesn't work, for which they are partly right, but they usually say it for the wrong reasons - wanting to cut some services so they can cut taxes for corporations or spend that money for Defense, not because they want to make the gov more efficient.
Then to oppose them in a partisan way, the Democrats come and say "you're wrong! big government does work! and the people need it!" So they just end up wasting a lot of money not trying to make things more efficient, because doing so would "prove the Republicans right" or something.
Same issue with electoral rigging. Republicans yell about it but mainly referring to "voter fraud" (probably a non-issue for the most part, but I haven't looked at the data), while real electoral fraud issues do exist, voter suppression being included in that. But for the most part Democrats don't call for audits and such either, because "voter fraud is not real" (even if other type of fraud is) and they think they might be helping Republicans by admitting it.
This toxic partisanship is what's ruining politics in the U.S. Everything has to be black or white, red or blue. This is why I said it before when I criticized Sam Altman here for "simply encouraging young people to vote" as an obvious political ploy to get the Democrats to win.
If Altman and others here are actually serious about democracy and fairness of the political process in the U.S., then they should be supporting stuff like removing electoral processes that don't work anymore and aren't democratic. Processes like the FPTP voting system for Congress as well as primaries and other elections (to proportional representation or RCV/approval voting for single-winner elections), as well as removing the electoral college, and the caucus system from primaries.
They should also fight to make the "money vote" equal, just like the real vote is, and fight to limit individual political campaign donations. A rich person shouldn't have a "1,000 times stronger voice" than a regular or poorer person that can donate to a campaign.
There are other real issues they can fix as well, such as fighting to eliminate electronic voting machines. Even when they aren't hacked to steal the elections have a ton of other issues like not working properly, and thus making a lot of people's vote not count, which should be a crime in itself.
Fix the fundamental problems in the U.S. electoral process and everything else take care of itself in time, including climate change, and all the other important issues. As Elon Musk says, go at the problem from a "first principles" angle, rather than try to fix the symptoms (get more young people to vote so the "bad" Republicans don't win - the point is to make it so there aren't any "bad" Republicans anymore, at least not any worse than the typical right-wing party in Europe).