Congress isn’t ‘broken.’ Larry Hogan’s party is.
I caught the latest
Larry Hogan-for-Senate commercial where he says pretty much what he always says: Washington is completely broken. It’s time to stop partisan politics. Enough is enough. We need to get stuff done.
The former Maryland governor seems to be presenting himself as a non-partisan, middle-ofthe-road guy with a magic formula to heal a bitterly divided Congress.
But, of course, he’s not that. He’s an old-school Republican who says both sides are bad, and he’s only moderate by today’s MAGA Republican standards. More on that later.
For now, a focus on Hogan’s claim that Washington is “completely broken.”
It sounds right. It sounds like what most of us think. Polls consistently show that Americans have a breathtakingly low opinion of Congress.
But Hogan’s claim that Washington is a mess and can’t “get stuff done” is neither accurate nor honest. His claim doesn’t acknowledge that Congress has actually gotten a lot of “stuff done” and it’s been mostly Democrats, with little or no help from Republicans, who did it.
Go back to 2009-2010, and it was a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress that gave the nation Obamacare, with not a single Republican in the House or Senate voting to provide access to health
insurance for millions of Americans. As a result of Obamacare, the percentage of Americans without health insurance fell from 15.5% in 2010 to 7.9% in 2020.
And, if not for Republican-majority legislatures in 10 red states refusing the Medicaid expansion provision of the law, even more people would have insurance by now.
But you need not go back that far for evidence of Congress getting “stuff done,” and sometimes even in a bipartisan way. The recent history — that is, the years since President Biden took office — haven’t exactly been do-nothing.
The $1 trillion infrastructure bill, pushed by Biden and congressional Democrats, passed with the support of 13 House Republicans and 19 Senate Republicans. That doesn’t sound like a lot,
but getting 32 votes from just-say-no Republicans in a closely divided Congress was considered a major achievement.
(Amusing epilogue: Some of the many Republicans who voted against infrastructure spending now brag to their constituents about federal money coming into their districts for roads and bridges, broadband expansion and initiatives to combat the effects of climate change.)
The CHIPS and Science Act, to bolster the nation’s chip manufacturing and the semiconductor industry, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate, and Biden signed it into law in August 2022.
Maybe Hogan missed that one.
He might have also overlooked the bipartisan gun safety bill, the first of its kind in three decades,
that passed the Senate in June 2022 by a 65-33 vote. With so many mass shootings, including the slaying of 19 school children in Texas and 10 shoppers in a New York supermarket, Congress finally took some action, providing millions of dollars to the states for mental health and school security programs. It made the juvenile records of gun buyers under age 21 part of required background checks and provided incentives for the enactment of local “red flag” laws to keep guns away from people considered dangerous.
And just last week, enough Republicans sided with Democrats to send much-needed military aid to Ukraine for its existential fight against the Russian invasion. (Alas, Maryland’s lone Republican in Congress, Rep. Andy Harris, was not one of them.)
So, when Larry Hogan says, “Washington is completely broken because our leaders refuse to put country over party,” I have to disagree. The record says otherwise.
Of course, bipartisanship is great, but it doesn’t always happen.
No Republican in either the House or Senate voted for Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, a comprehensive spending package designed to increase manufacturing jobs, advance clean energy and other climate initiatives, extend Obamacare subsidies and lower prescription drug prices.
No Republican in either the House or Senate voted for the American Rescue Plan, Biden’s first big initiative, to further help Americans emerge from the pandemic with billions for vaccines, to help schools reopen safely, to extend unemployment benefits, help low-income families with children — you know, all that good stuff that Democrats see as vital and Republicans generally see as reckless spending.
Now, Republicans are not the only ones who just say no.
For instance, in 2017, when Trump was president, not a single Democrat agreed with Republicans on the major tax cuts they enacted — a revival of Reagan-era trickle-down economics that promised job growth and increased productivity. The Trump administration claimed the cuts would “pay for themselves.” Two years later, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that the cuts would increase the national debt by $1.9 trillion and the “pay for themselves” claim has been debunked.
Also, Senate Democrats generally rejected Trump’s Supreme Court nominees. Only three voted to confirm Justice Neil Gorsuch. Only one, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, voted to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh. And no Democrat backed the hurry-up nomination of Amy Coney Barrett a week before the 2020 election.
Of course, less than two years later, all three of those Trump justices joined the other conservatives on the court to overturn Roe v. Wade, declaring that a woman’s right to have an abortion was no longer guaranteed by the Constitution.
So, when I hear Larry Hogan’s campaign pitch — that Washington is “completely broken” — I disagree with the use of the word “completely,” and as for the parts that are really broken, I see mostly red.