Criticism of House GOP during early days of Israel-Hamas war is misplaced

The House of Representatives — or more accurately, Republicans in the House — have come under a great deal of criticism recently. A lot of it is well-deserved, as they apparently cannot figure out how to fix the internal management problems caused by their inability to rein in a half-dozen or so Instagram wannabe C-listers.   

But some of the criticism of the House GOP — specifically its alleged inability to act during the critical first days of the Israeli-Hamas war — has been misplaced. Indeed, by not acting on anything regarding Israel this week, the House has effectively tied for first among the various levers of power.  

Under better circumstances, the House would have likely voted on and passed a resolution supporting Israel or condemning Hamas by now. (And in doing so, it would have exposed the fractures within the Democrats on the issue.) And resolutions are important. They carry necessary precedent for international law, and they also convey clear messages to both our friends and enemies.  

But resolutions don’t put rockets on launchers or supplies in hospitals. And a resolution is about the best the House, under ideal circumstances, could have accomplished on the matter last week. 

Any real legislation — additional financial support for the Israelis, for example, or an expansion of military hardware transfers — would never have reached the floor by now. Indeed, any such effort is weeks into the future. So, while the House certainly has its PR problems right now, that hasn’t translated into any real impact on the fighting. 

This ties the House with the Senate, which likewise did nothing on Israel. In fact, I suppose the argument could be made that the House should be ruled the winner by default, as it was at least in Washington last week. The Senate, of course, was not. It is unclear why Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) didn’t immediately end his overseas junket to China, Japan and Korea. But he ultimately did so, choosing to lead a bipartisan delegation to Israel. 

This is a good thing, by the way, as it sends a solid message to the Israelis that they have support in Washington. But my guess is that Schumer didn’t come rushing back to Washington because he knows that, short of a resolution supporting Israel, the Senate can’t accomplish much right away. His trip to Israel, instead of back to Washington, reinforces that perception. His time was better spent meeting with our ally than it was dithering in the Senate chamber. 

Against that backdrop of deep nothingness, however, the White House still somehow managed to come in last place. 

To be clear, Biden has said all the right things so far. His rhetoric has actually been stronger and clearer than may Republicans had feared. The Biden team has, so far at least, put the soft-discrimination of “nuanced” false equivalencies into deep freeze. For that, they should be commended. 

The reason they lost the week is not because of what they said, but of what they failed to do. For example, they haven’t been able to explain how it doesn’t help Hamas that Iran is selling roughly seven times as much oil every day as it did during the Trump administration. And Team Biden have been falling over themselves as to whether the $6 billion released to Iran as part of the recent prisoner swap did or did not contribute indirectly to funding Hamas, or whether or not that money will or will not be frozen now.  

If the Trump administration had been this confused in its messaging, it would have been excoriated daily for its inability to get its story straight, and rightly so. 

The bottom line, though, is that our system is working, despite the hiccups in the House. We have an executive branch under our constitutional structure of government for a variety of reasons. One of those is to provide for quick responses in time of urgent need. Thus, for example, Congress has delegated much early disaster response authority to the president. 

In that same vein, the White House has the ability to do things about the situation in Israel right now, such as taking certain military action (which it has begun to do) and levying economic sanctions (which will probably depend on Iran’s role). A president can do those things without immediate congressional participation. Indeed, our entire system contemplates him doing exactly that, at least in the early days of a critical situation.  

It is not ideal that the House lacks a Speaker. But it certainly was not, and is not, the cataclysm that many Democrat lawmakers and media commentators were bemoaning. That may change if things don’t get straightened out in the next few weeks. Government funding and, eventually, supplemental aid for Israel will not wait indefinitely. But for now, we need to realize that the so-called whirlwind of chaos in DC truly is a tempest in a teapot. 

Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman from South Carolina, is a contributor to NewsNation. He served as director of the Office of Management and Budget, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and acting White House chief of staff under President Donald Trump.