WASHINGTON – Congress is off for the campaign season, as lawmakers from one of the most chaotic and unproductive legislative sessions in modern times try to persuade voters to keep them on the job.
The House Republicans led the tumult — painstakingly electing their speaker in a bitter public feud then swiftly booting him from office, something never before seen. But the deeply divided Senate was not immune from the inaction, lumbering through a modest agenda.
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Taken together, the lack of big-ticket accomplishments is underscoring a volatile November election season with control of Congress a toss-up.
“The good thing is Congress didn’t allow much to go through law," said Rep. Ryan Zinke, a former Trump administration Cabinet secretary who is now running for re-election to his House seat in Montana. “But what it didn’t do, either, is it didn’t reach its potential.”
House Republicans blocked not only the Biden-Harris priorities of the Democrats, he said, but “in many ways, we blocked our own agenda.”
The situation the lawmakers find themselves in, particularly the House Republicans trying to preserve their slim majority control, is not academic. The House Republicans now have to face the voters who sent them to Washington on their “Commitment to America” two years ago having come up well short.
New House Speaker Mike Johnson remains upbeat that Republicans will not only stay in control but win more seats to bolster their ranks, but it’s been an uphill slog for him during a tight election year.
“It’s almost impossible,” said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, adding he would have little patience for hearing out the “idiots” he said Johnson has to contend with in leading a slim four-seat majority.
“You had a group grow up in the House Republican Party who think that voting no and getting nothing done is a victory," Gingrich said Friday at the Capitol. “You’ve got to find a way to break up this idea that being a nihilist and getting nothing done is a success. It’s not.”
Congress has passed fewer substantive bills than is normal, putting this two-year session on track to be among the least productive sessions ever. The representatives and senators returned to Washington for a brief three-week September work period and essentially punted one of their most important tasks, funding the federal government, for a few more months, to December.
While Congress succeeded in avoiding a federal shutdown — which Johnson said would have been “malpractice” so close to the November election — it left town mid-week, several days earlier than scheduled, as a hurricane bore down on the Southern Gulf states. It won't return until mid-November.
“Can anyone in America name a single thing that House Republicans have done on their own to make life better for the American people?" asked Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is in line to become House speaker if his party wins majority control. “The answer is no.”
Many lawmakers bristled at being lumped together with what transpired in their House GOP majority. There was the weeklong fight in January 2023 to elect Kevin McCarthy as House speaker. And the nearly month-long spectacle when a small number of far-right Republicans booted him from the speaker's office. And failed bills that never got off the House floor.
Those seeking re-election in some of the most hard-fought House districts offered a preview of the conversations they will have with voters.
Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., said he would emphasize his work on constituent services and his voting record.
“I don’t know if you’re going to judge an individual member on how the body does collectively,” said Bean, a freshman. “I don’t think that’s a fair comparison. That is apples to apricots.”
Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif., said the House has been a “firewall” against spending.
“What we’ve been able to stop is very significant,” he said.
“We haven’t necessarily gotten everything passed,” he added. “But what we have done is set a template for what needs to be done to fix these problems, whether it’s the border, the economy, national security, investing in our military, cutting taxes, reducing spending.”
Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, who is in a competitive race in New York, pointed to work he has done to secure needed infrastructure money for his district as well as his own various bills. One that passed the House and Senate this past week directs the U.S. Secret Service to protect Donald Trump and other major party presidential nominees by the same standards it does the president.
“So I have a record to run on that I’m certainly proud of," he said.
Besides, Lawler asked, what about the Senate?
“I mean there’s always a focus on the House," he said. "But if anybody looked down the hallway, Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats have done what? What exactly are they running on?"
The Senate, historically a slower-moving body designed that way by the founders, plodded along at an even more leisurely pace this year, staying away from Washington many Mondays and almost all Fridays.
Narrowly led by Democrats under Majority Leader Schumer, the Senate has succeeded in confirming a number of Biden’s judicial nominees, particularly women and people of color, to create a judiciary more representative of the nation. But senators have not been able to land many other big priorities.
In fact, one of the most talked about pieces of legislation in the campaign — the Senate's bipartisan effort to secure the U.S.-Mexico border and update some immigration laws — collapsed when Trump declined to support it.
“This has been a very, very unproductive Congress,” said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, mentioning the appropriations bills and a farm bill reauthorization that are stalled. There's “plenty of blame to go around.”
Oddly, as the Capitol emptied out, it briefly refilled Friday for the 30th anniversary of another Republican milestone — the 1994 Contract with America, the campaign promises that brought Gingrich and his party to power after four decades in the minority.
Two years ago, McCarthy, who was in line to become speaker, gathered House Republicans at a manufacturing plant along the Monongahela River in Pennsylvania to unveil their own “Commitment to America” agenda that gave a nod to the Gingrich era. Rising stars of the GOP, including firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, were in the front row.
McCarthy, Johnson and many others from today's House GOP were not around for Friday's ceremony, with its reception in the Capitol basement.
Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, who was among the eight Republicans who led the vote to oust McCarthy last year, said this was the House GOP majority's biggest accomplishment: "Not wrecking the country any further. We don’t need any more laws."
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Associated Press writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report.