Wither Congress? The incredible shrinking dome

Just as “one swallow does not make a summer,” one session does not make a Congress. However, all indicators are that the current 118th Congress is for the birds, going south, and is unlikely to return to warmer climes in 2024. 

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank sums it up in a recent column headed, “Worst. Congress. Ever.” (Dec. 17). HuffPost pundit Jonathan Nicholson headlines his piece, “The Least Productive Congress Since the Great Depression” (Nov. 23). Both are heavily dependent on the number of laws enacted in the first session — 31 to date, compared to 328 at this point in the preceding 117th Congress’s first session under a Democratic majority and President Joe Biden. 

Counting laws is a poor indicator of either productivity or the significance of a Congress’s actual accomplishments. For one thing, Republicans don’t think more laws necessarily translate into real progress. As former Republican Speaker “Uncle Joe” Cannon (Ill.) put it, “The country don’t need any legislation,” as, “everything is all right out West and in Danville.”  

A more accurate assessment of the current Congress can be summed-up with just three words: delays, defeats and dissension — a 3-D picture that jumps out at you for its sheer weirdness. On delays, consider the four-day, 15-ballots required last January just to elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) Speaker, and the three-weeks and four ballots it took in October to elect a successor after McCarthy had been ousted at the initiative of just eight of his party colleagues. 

Or consider the delays in enacting any of the 12 regular appropriations bills by the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1. Now, three months later, the government is operating on a second continuing resolution until the next drop-dead dates of Jan. 19 for four of the bills and Feb. 2 for the other eight — a baffling, bifurcated process. Also, put-off until next year are the president’s emergency requests for more military assistance for Israel and Ukraine, and to better secure our borders.     

Another major delay was the Department of Defense authorization bill. Although the annual measure passed both chambers in July, it remained stuck in a House-Senate conference committee for over four months because the legislation had been loaded down with all manner of House-passed cultural riders.    

One of those provisions, barring funding for travel to obtain an abortion, was the special cause of Sen. Tommy “Coach” Tuberville (R-Ala.). He had put a hold on over 400 military promotions as leverage for retaining the ban in the DoD authorization. The dam finally broke in December as even Tuberville’s GOP colleagues grew impatient and threatened to support a rule change to overcome his delaying tactics.   

House-Senate conference negotiators subsequently agreed to strip all the controversial House riders from the bill. Both houses went on to adopt the compromise agreement in mid-December. The House vote, brought under a suspension of the rules (requiring a two-thirds majority vote), was 310-118, with 73 Republicans and 45 Democrats voting against. The Senate voted 87-3 for the measure. The President signed it into law on Dec. 22. 

Most of the session’s delays were caused by a handful of House majority party dissenters who had no qualms about bucking their own leadership, even on procedural votes. It took three special rules governing debate time and amendments to finally bring the defense appropriations bill to the House floor; with five and six Republicans, respectively, opposing the first two rules along with all Democrats.   

Prior to this Congress it was unheard of that majority party members would buck their own leadership on procedural rules recommended by their own leadership-controlled Rules Committee, let alone against their party’s candidate for Speaker. Those norms are now out the window — the victims of their own majority-party dissenters.  

All of these incidents are further complicated by House Republican efforts to investigate whether President Biden should be impeached on charges yet to be determined. That exercise was prompted at the direction of an outside dissenter, former President Donald Trump, as part of his retribution tour for having been twice impeached by Democratic-controlled Houses in 2019 and 2021, but then acquitted by the Senate. The House voted before it left town this month to officially authorize the Biden impeachment investigation to give it more legitimacy in the courts for enforcing subpoenas and bringing contempt charges against recalcitrant witnesses.   

It would be unfair to prematurely label the 118th Congress the worst ever with a whole year to go. However, presidential election years are notoriously short and unproductive. Whether this Congress will rival the do-little Great Depression’s 72nd Congress for a paucity of laws remains to be seen. But it is bound to take some time before the country will again be chirping along to “Happy Days Are Here Again.” 

Don Wolfensberger is a 28-year congressional staff veteran culminating as minority staff director of the House Rules Committee (1989-94) and chief-of-staff of the committee (1995-7).  He is author of, “Congress and the People: Deliberative Democracy on Trial” (2000), and, “Changing Cultures in Congress: From Fair Play to Power Plays” (2018).  The views expressed are solely his own.