Rubber Stamp Congress
Things are not operating as Madison intended.
NYT (“G.O.P. Push Behind Trump Agenda Has Congress in an Uproar“):
Republicans’ relentless marathon to force President Trump’s agenda through Congress over objections from Democrats and some in their own ranks is taking a toll on the institution and its members, prompting tempers to boil over and relationships to fray on Capitol Hill, with potentially disastrous consequences ahead.
In recent days, lawmakers clashed bitterly over federal spending, presidential nominees and even broadly supported cryptocurrency bills — all while a dispute raged over releasing files in the case of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. The normally staid proceedings of Congress were punctuated with shouting matches, a committee walkout, charges of abandoned deals and Democratic demands to fire the director of the Office of Management and Budget.
By Thursday, Republican leaders in the Senate and House rushed to finish their business and get exhausted lawmakers out of Washington to allow them some time to cool off.
And that was just last week. Veteran lawmakers said that the level of vitriol and dysfunction in the Capitol had reached a fever pitch.
“It is bad — really bad,” Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said when asked to assess the mood on Capitol Hill. “There’s a level of frustration. How do we get back to doing our jobs?”
Republicans have achieved hard-won legislative victories, but those have come at a cost, setting the stage for a meltdown that has, among other things, raised the prospects of a government shutdown this fall. Some G.O.P. lawmakers are feeling squeezed, while Democrats, outraged that the White House is shredding funding agreements and doling out money however it wants, are threatening to abandon a tradition of bipartisan spending deals.
NBC (“Bipartisan government funding is at risk of dying in Trump’s Washington“):
For many years, final decisions over how much the U.S. government spends, and how, have required sign-off from leaders of both parties, no matter who controlled the White House or Capitol Hill or the level of polarization.
Now, that last vestige of the bipartisan funding process is at risk of dying after a one-two punch by President Donald Trump and the Republican-led Congress.
The “appropriations” process, whereby both parties pass detailed funding bills for various federal agencies every year, has been in a slow decline for decades. But recent moves by the Trump-era GOP to disrupt past funding agreements have accelerated that decline — and, in the view of Democrats and even some weary Republicans, undermined Congress’ power of the purse in deference to the White House.
First, Republicans passed a $300 billion hike in military spending and immigration enforcement as part of Trump’s megabill; and second, they cut $9 billion in domestic money and foreign aid under a rarely used “rescission” process, allowing the GOP to cancel already approved bipartisan spending with a party-line vote.
A Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government or risk a shutdown will test whether a bipartisan deal is still possible, particularly as Trump’s top budget aide publicly calls for a more partisan approach.
House Republicans have undermined the bipartisan path for years by slamming the resulting deals as “swamp” creations by a “uniparty” that is addicted to spending. Now, GOP lawmakers in both chambers are going it alone, suggesting they’ll bring more rescissions packages to undo past bipartisan spending agreements because the existing process is failing.
“We don’t have an appropriations process. It’s broken. It’s been broken for a while,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee.
He said Congress will likely fall back on continuing resolutions, which largely maintain the status quo, and rescission packages for the remainder of Trump’s presidency.
Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a senior appropriator, said the once-respected government funding process has “disappeared,” calling the latest rescissions package “a step backwards.”
“It’s basically saying: No matter what you decide on, the president is going to be able to change the bill, even for money that’s been appropriated,” Durbin said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, insist the process is alive and well. They will test that theory this week as Thune plans to bring at least one — if not more — appropriations bills to the Senate floor. He has argued that the $9 billion cut hits a tiny portion of the federal budget and shouldn’t dissuade Democrats from working toward a deal.
There’s an argument to be made—and, indeed, both Steven Taylor and I have made it many times over the years—that our system gives too much power to the minority party to thwart the will of the majority. Granting the many ways in which our electoral setup advantages the Republican Party, it won the White House and enjoys slim majorities in both the House and the Senate. So long as it doesn’t violate the Constitution, it ought to be able to advance its governing agenda.
At the same time, this simply isn’t how our system is supposed to work. The combination of a set of institutions developed in 1787 for a radically different country and the complete sorting of our two major parties over the last three decades or so has left us with a Frankenstein system. The Congress, rather than representing local interests and jealously guarding its institutional powers, as intended, has become either a rubber stamp for the President (if the same party controls both branches) or a roadblock against action (if the other party controls either House, especially the Senate). That’s simply dysfunctional.
This has been exacerbated by a complete breakdown in professional comity and respect for institutional traditions. While both parties bear significant blame for this, Republicans have taken that to extremes in recent years. The Tea Party wing, which evolved into the Freedom Caucus and ultimately MAGA, has taken over the party and pretty much defines itself by its disdain for norms.
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All made the worse by uncompetitive elections, a too small House, an unrepresentative Senate, and elections for almost all by relatively small voter bases in primaries.
Add in a SCOTUS that was shaped by a president who lost the popular vote and a Senate that represented a minority of the population, and it is hard to actually call all of this democracy. It certainly isn’t a healthy one.
The fault ultimately lies with the American people.
@Michael Reynolds:
Most House districts are gerrymandered, making the primary the default election. When the was the last Republican US Senator elected from California? Or Virginia, for that matter? And electing a Democrat in Alabama requires the Republicans to nominate a pedophile.
@James Joyner:
Gerrymandering works because people allow it to, they reward the bad behavior. Voters could push back by throwing votes to the other party. We could support candidates of our own parties who have some integrity and some values and reject trickery. We are not without agency. We have power, but we allow ourselves to be manipulated because we’re lazy, ignorant, short-sighted and motivated by nothing but prejudice and narrow self-interest.
It’s all well and good to talk about huge institutional and structural changes, but that’s a pipe dream. Why a pipe dream? The American people.
I wouldn’t mind the rubber stamping, especially when the GOP controls the WH and both chambers of Congress, if they would simply own the outcome of their votes. Instead they want to claim the good and deny the bad, much like they claimed the parts of the Dems’ big infrastructure bill that benefited their states even though they voted against that legislation.
The details of the rescissions package came from Trump through Vought through the complacent GOP, so every unpopular bit of that package belongs hung around the neck of every Republican from now until the next election.
One Big Bad Bill was a choice – overtly bundling everything together to avoid any need for the Democrats – so I don’t want to hear any whining from Murkowski et al about how they had to accept some elements of the omnibus they didn’t like because they didn’t want to sacrifice the whole.
The big problem with “the many ways in which our electoral setup advantages the Republican Party” is that the GOP can enact policy that is broadly unpopular with impunity from consequences at the ballot box. Part of that could be mitigated if it wasn’t so easy for these politicians to want it both ways.
As an outsider I remain inclined to think a lot of US political problems is based on undisciplined “open” parties via the “voter party registration” system WITHOUT actual party membership, and the primary election system.
These really are very unusual in Western democracies.
Other types have their own failure modes, of course.
But the US system seems remarkably open to “base capture” by “enthusiasts”.
Perhaps it might work better if counterbalanced by a Australian “compulsory voting” model?
But fat chance of that.
@Michael Reynolds:
I doubt the American people are much more “lazy, ignorant, short-sighted and motivated by nothing but prejudice and narrow self-interest” than the general run of humanity.
The problem is, at least in part, political institutions that enable the clowns to drive the clown-car.
It was not for no reason that the Labour Party twice, under Kinnock and Starmer, had to stamp on the hands of those determined to cede effective control of the party over to the “local party activists”.
See Benn, Tony and Corbyn, Jeremy.
The current problems of the British Conservative Party, and indeed the UK more generally, are, imuho, in large part based on the post-Thatcher MP’s cowardice in permitting the party activists, of whom disproporionate percentages are either senile, stupid, or head-banging loons, to decide the leadership.
See Johnson, Boris and Truss, Liz.
@Michael Reynolds: So, you think that a district drawn 70-30 for one party should result in the party with 70 to switch to the party with 30 to show their own party what for?
@Scott F.:
It has to be said, from the perspective of a Brit, or afaiaa, almost any other OECD country: what the hell is it with US budgetary system?
(Rhetorical question: I know enough about US constitutions, procedures, politics and history to get how and why it has evolved this way. But it’s still so WEIRD! lol)
Generally, most countries have the government present a budget, with spending proposals and taxation adjustments.
That then gets debated, possibly amended, and voted upon.
You rarely get to require J.Random-Elected appending spending on pig farms in Bavaria, or tax concessions for stoat farms in the Hebrides, in order to get a budget passed.
It really is quite baroque.
@JohnSF: Until FDR, Presidents had next to nothing to do with budgets. Having gained independence from a king, the Framers wanted the legislature in control of the purse. But it’s been a long time since, indeed, since it worked as intended.
And, yes, Steven has coauthored a book on the degree to which our system is different from any other democracy. We’re weird even for a presidential system.
@JohnSF: @James Joyner: We are, as they say, exceptional.
@James Joyner:
@Steven L. Taylor:
Yeah, I know something of it.
It’s a bit like the UK system in the 18th century dialed up to 11.
Which was fine, in the 18th century. 😉
I must read that book.
Amazon linky?
Ah. Just checked our library cat, and asuming it’s “A Different democracy: American government in a thirty-one-country perspective” I have access.
Only our bloody stupid access procedures now mean I have to use a university device to access, not just an off-site login. 🙁
Will get to it tomorrow.
Will also bitch again to IT about how stupid the access is now.
Staff now can’t get anything except via BCU devices; but students can.
Daft.
@JohnSF: Happy to oblige: click.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Thanks.
I’ve got access to that online in our library.
But, infuriatingly, right now, not on a non-university device.
I’ll have to read it next week.
(OK, I could pay and read it now, but what can I say? I’m a cheapskate? 😉 )
Our access control has gotten really annoying.
I can understand no external access to our networks; but no external autenticated access to third-party resources is just silly, considering student can access that way.
Gah! *rage*
@JohnSF: IT can be a real pain.
Glad you have access!