Tag: 114th congress
5 Reasons This May Be The Worst Congress Ever

5 Reasons This May Be The Worst Congress Ever

If you’re ever trying to decide which Congress is the worst in American history, start off with the 112th — in which a House majority was swept into power following a Tea Party “wave” election and promptly decided to hold the global economy captive by threatening to default on our debt if it didn’t get its way.

Unlike the Congress that passed George W. Bush’s tax cuts and authorized an endless War on Terror, at least this sabotage was purposeful.

In 2011, America was still crawling out of the economic mineshaft after a stern shove from Bush’s Great Recession. It was a textbook example — interest rates were low and the private sector was in tatters — of when government should be investing, not cutting.

Luckily, congressional Republicans decided to pull the gun away from their own heads. They still extracted their pound of flesh in cuts to essential programs. But rather than ask the rich to pay a cent more in taxes in exchange for cuts to Medicare and Social Security, they decided to wait for their chance to turn Medicare into a voucher program in order to pay for massive new tax breaks for the rich. This so-called “Path to Prosperity” plan was authored by Paul Ryan, now Speaker of possibly the worst House ever: the 114th.

Norm Ornstein, a non-partisan expert on the inner workings of Congress says it’s “no exaggeration” to call this one the worst ever. And sometimes even that description seems mild. Here’s why.

  1. Zika
    “The good news is that both the House and Senate have finally passed bills that would provide some funding to combat the Zika virus,” former Ebola Czar Ronald Klain wrote in Sunday’s Washington Post. “The bad news is this action comes more than three months after President Obama requested the aid. Moreover, the House bill provides only one-third of the respond needed; pays for this limited, ineffective response by diverting money allocated to fight other infectious diseases; and necessitates a conference committee to resolve differences with the Senate bill, meaning we still don not know when any money will finally get through Congress to fund the response.” We’ve seen this public health care crisis coming all year, but Republicans seem determined to let it get bad enough to use as a political tool, the way they did in 2014 with Ebola before quickly forgetting they ever wanted to shut down thousands of flights to fight the disease.
  2. Paralysis
    Republicans hold both houses of Congress and have the largest House majority since before FDR — yet they are still enthralled to the rightest of the right wing the self-proclaimed “Freedom Caucus,” conservatives from safe districts that are so white they have to wear sunblock in order to watch daytime TV. “Despite Paul Ryan’s many moves to accommodate Freedom Caucus members, bringing them into the leadership fold and consulting with them regularly, they have given him the middle finger on spending bills, holding firm against any change in the sequester numbers,” Ornstein notes. “And that, of course, puts Ryan right where Boehner was for several agonizing years. To get Freedom Caucus members to go along, Ryan will have to make concessions, which will lose other Republicans and allow Democrats to rip the bills apart with their own amendments.”
  3. Voting Rights Act
    When Republicans last had Control of a functional Congress, they did something admirable — renewing the Voting Rights Act with overwhelming majorities in both houses. Meanwhile conservative interests were using extra-legislative maneuvers to get right wing judicial activists to gut a law that protected the right to vote — “the crown jewel of American liberties,” according to Ronald Reagan — to those who’d historically been denied it. In 2013, after a flurry of voting restrictions that hadn’t been seen since before the VRA, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority gutted the crucial pre-clearance aspect of the law. Now we face, as The Nation‘s Ari Berman keeps pointing out, the first presidential election in 50 years without the protections of this law. The 114th Congress joins the 113th in infamy after doing absolutely nothing to restore protections that would have at least delayed suppressive laws like Virginia’s, which could keep Josephine Okiakpe, a 69-year-old African-American woman, from voting.
  4. Abandoning its duty to confirm appointments
    “The gaps on the executive side, which include key ambassadorships in critical countries and important posts in national security and homeland security, among others, are still overshadowed on the judicial side,” reports Ornstein. “There has been a huge spike in ‘judicial emergencies,’ which are formally designated by the courts when unconscionable delays in justice are caused by heavy workloads produced via court vacancies.”
  5. And the biggest dereliction of duty of all — the Supreme Court
    Republicans have rewritten history and precedent to deny President Obama’s centrist Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland even the dignity of consideration. “The Senate has never taken more than 125 days to vote on a successor from the time of nomination; on average, a nominee has been confirmed, rejected or withdrawn within 25 days,” The New York Times reports. “When Justice Antonin Scalia died, 342 days remained in President Obama’s term.” In 2011, House Republicans in their own ineptitude missed their chance to get the president to agree on a compromise agreement that would have infuriated his base. In 2016, if there’s any justice, they’ll end up rueing their chance to appoint a nominee Orrin Hatch once praised “as good as Republicans can expect from this administration.”

Photo: Speaker of the House John Boehner addresses the members of the 114th Congress after being re-elected as the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives at the start of the 114th Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington January 6, 2015. REUTERS/Jim Bourg

Boehner Survives, Conservatives Cope: Ongoing Saga Of The 114th Congress

Boehner Survives, Conservatives Cope: Ongoing Saga Of The 114th Congress

By Matt Fuller, CQ-Roll Call (TNS)

WASHINGTON — It was an unconditional, unmitigated cave. In the battle to defund President Barack Obama’s immigration action, Democrats won. Republicans lost. So why does Speaker John A. Boehner’s job look as secure now as it did a month ago? And why aren’t conservatives more outraged?

“To be honest with you,” Rep. Paul Gosar told CQ Roll Call, “not all of it is his fault.”

The conservative Arizona Republican, who didn’t back Boehner for speaker in January’s election, said much of the frustration in GOP circles outside of Washington came because Republicans promised a fight on the Department of Homeland Security once the GOP controlled the Senate.

“Well where’s (Senate Majority Leader) Mitch McConnell? Where are our senator friends?” Gosar asked. “I mean, they took a bail on this one as well.”

Asked about Boehner’s overall performance, Gosar paused, then admitted he has questions. But he noted his staff is scheduled to meet with Boehner’s team to discuss a statutory tactic for blocking the executive action on immigration. “I want to send him a lifeline,” Gosar said. “If it works, who knows? We’ll see what happens.”

Conservatives aren’t exactly pleased with how leadership has handled the first two months of the 114th Congress. The sudden capitulation on the DHS fight — after months of tough talk — angered many on the right. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., said he was “horribly disappointed, almost heartbroken” that Republicans gave in. Still, even the most conservative elements of the Republican Conference are surprisingly understanding of Boehner’s difficult job.

And with the DHS funding fight out of the way, Republicans — some of whom are suddenly attuned to the concept of “governing” — see an opportunity to get stuff done: a budget, Trade Promotion Authority, even changes to Obamacare.

Republicans just need everyone to forget January and February. Please.

Asked about the leadership team’s performance thus far, Rep. Randy Weber’s first reaction was laughter.

“On the record?” he inquired. The Texas Republican said he knew there had been “some unhappiness” with a lack of regular order. But, Weber said he understood Boehner’s position.

“He’s caught, you know, in a continuum of 247 Republican members — from the most conservative to the least conservative. So that’s a hard place to be,” he said.

Asked for his perspective on leadership’s performance at this point, Virginia’s Dave Brat was slightly more candid about his disappointment. “Well,” he said, after dramatically slumping his head and taking a short pause, “that’s up to you reporters to find out and answer one question.”

That question, according to the man who deposed former Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a primary, was whether Republicans truly fought “tooth and nail” (as Boehner had promised) to block Obama’s executive action.

“I didn’t see any fight,” Brat said. “You report on it. Go see if you found the fight. See if you can find it.”

Brat said the only fight he saw was one in which an outside GOP group with Boehner ties — Barry Jackson, the speaker’s former chief of staff, is a senior board member for American Action Network — was running $400,000 worth of ads against conservatives such as House Freedom Caucus Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio and Tea Party Caucus Chairman Tim Huelskamp of Kansas.

That bit of news seemed to fire up conservatives almost as much as the DHS bill.

“Again the hypocrisy,” Raul R. Labrador told CQ Roll Call. “They complain about outside groups, but then they’re using outside groups to attack conservatives.”

The Idaho Republican claimed it was “a dangerous precedent” for moderate Republicans, “and I’m not sure they want to go down this road.”
Arizona Rep. Matt Salmon offered a similar warning: “There’s an old adage: When you play with fire, you get burned.”

Boehner spokesman Michael Steel distanced the speaker from the ads, noting the law forbids members from coordinating with outside groups. “But the speaker does not think these ads are helpful,” he said.

Tensions inside the conference were inevitable, given the bumpy first two months that saw leadership forced to pull bills dealing with abortion, border security and education from floor consideration.

Then came the DHS debacle. Still, Boehner, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Majority Whip Steve Scalise succeeded in averting a DHS shutdown.

South Carolina Republican Trey Gowdy defended Team Boehner.

“What alternative did they have? There’s a reason very few people raise their hands and ask to be in leadership,” Gowdy said. “It’s much easier … to just second guess what other people do.”

Texas Republican Randy Neugebauer, who isn’t part of the most conservative wing of the GOP but has voted against leadership this Congress, said given it’s a diverse group, he’d give Boehner “pretty good marks.”

Even those in the conference who are clearly disappointed thus far are looking ahead.

Jordan told CQ Roll Call the HFC’s next focus would be on “doing a good budget.” Does that mean conservatives will forget the immigration action?

“No, we’re going to keep talking about it,” Jordan said. “We hope the court does the right thing. But (we’re) just disappointed in the U.S. Senate that they couldn’t — Democrats in the Senate — couldn’t go to conference.”

When CQ Roll Call pointed out it was Senate and House Republicans who ultimately gave in, Jordan refused to attack his own party. “Just remember,” he said, Senate Minority Leader “Harry Reid wouldn’t let the bill come up.”

But if blaming Reid isn’t enough for some on the right — if Republican leadership did cave — why aren’t conservatives more upset?

For one, the GOP surrender on DHS unfolded exactly the way most predicted. Even conservatives privately conceded the outcome. The only question for GOP leaders was whether a DHS shutdown would be the only thing to placate hard-liners. Boehner was unwilling to go that far, which may vex conservatives — but there’s little those Republicans, still seething from last year’s “cromnibus” fight that set up the DHS clash, can do.

Two months into a new Congress, Boehner isn’t going anywhere. And talk of efforts to steal his gavel is overblown.

Of course, there is chatter of a coup, members and aides told CQ Roll Call on background. But it’s not coming from — strictly speaking — GOP conservatives. It’s coming from members who believe the party would benefit from a shakeup. The only problem for those members is they’re counting on “troublemakers” such as members of the HFC to be the spark that ignites the proverbial powder keg — and, contrary to the belief of many Republicans, HFC members aren’t seriously discussing an effort to take down the speaker.

One HFC member told CQ Roll Call that holding a vote to vacate the chair would probably work in Boehner’s favor. Instead of undermining him, it would likely affirm that Boehner, and only Boehner — the man who has held the No. 1 spot in the conference since 2007 — can muster 218 votes for speaker.

Democrats would get to participate in such a vote, and conservatives know that, absent a deal with Democrats, Boehner isn’t going anywhere. If there were somehow a deal with Democrats, whoever could theoretically topple Boehner with the help of Democrats would be even less to the right wing’s liking.

Under the current dynamic in the House, there’s hardly any positive outcome for conservatives trying to embarrass Boehner. They are more likely to incur the wrath of a speaker many moderates believe has been too forgiving of dissension — embarrassing themselves instead.

(c) 2015 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Photo: Speaker John Boehner via Flickr