Half a Congress, especially given shenanigans, not enough
WASHINGTON — We can debate whether senators and House members are “essential workers.” What’s not debatable is that a democratic republic needs both of its legislative bodies working — especially the one led by the opposition party.
The imbalance of power in Washington was brought home when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., against much medical advice, shamelessly rushed the GOP-controlled body back to the Capitol. He has truly urgent matters to deal with — starting with his push to win confirmation for a 37-year-old protege to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the nation’s secondhighest court.
Judge Justin Walker, the nominee, has served all of two months on a lower federal court — McConnell helped arrange that appointment, too — and has, as The New York Times put it, “zero trial experience but a pedigree in conservatism.”
No way is Mitch going to let a mere health catastrophe get in the way of packing the courts with right-wingers.
In the meantime, the operation of the House is being gummed up by Republican resistance to new rules to deal with the exigencies of the COVID-19 crisis. Moving its 435 members around the country is harder than moving 100 senators, and many of the top House committees are so big that there are only a few rooms where they can meet and social-distance at the same time.
And wouldn’t it be nice to have a fully operational governing body at a moment when potential scandals, inefficiencies and just plain incompetence are breaking out across the Trump administration? Consider the political cronyism and ineptitude of son-in-law Jared Kushner’s procurement operation and the shocking, but not surprising, whistleblower complaint from Dr. Rick Bright. Bright was pushed out as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority after he raised alarms about Trump’s full-speedahead advocacy of hydroxychloroquine as a cure for COVID-19. The drug has since been ruled as dangerous in certain circumstances. Trump doesn’t talk about the “miracle” drug much anymore.
The House is not entirely hamstrung. It has passed big emergency bills. Bright is scheduled to appear before a House subcommittee on May 14, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office noted that as of Monday, House Democrats had conducted 117 briefings, hearings and roundtables since the shelter-in-place orders were issued.
But Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., the chairman of the House Rules Committee, pointed to the “difference between a hearing and a briefing” on the one hand and “formal hearings where committees have subpoena power, if necessary, where you can actually debate legislation and mark up legislation and move it to the floor.”
McGovern has been pushing for a system that would allow the House to run with fewer members present through proxy voting — an absent member could designate a colleague to cast his or her vote — and with committee hearings and markups in which members could participate remotely.
“The Supreme Court is finding a way to operate remotely,” McGovern said. “Yet in the House we’re told by some Republicans in particular, ‘Well, you know, we’ve got to think long and hard before we tweak 200 years of tradition.’ Give me a break!”
McGovern’s reference was to objections to an early version of his plan from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. He urged the House to tread lightly before “changing 200 years of House precedent.” Pelosi pulled back from McGovern’s proposal, hoping to negotiate a bipartisan solution.
But Democrats are increasingly suspicious that McCarthy simply wants to disempower the one part of the federal government not under Republican sway.
“Kevin McCarthy exists to do the president’s bidding, he exercises no independent judgment and really has no devotion to his institution” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said in an interview. “So he would be only too happy if the House never took another vote, didn’t do a whit of oversight . ... He doesn’t want the House to do oversight any more than the president does.”
McGovern said that while some House Republicans privately support his efforts, he, too, is increasingly skeptical of GOP leaders. “It’s clear to me,” McGovern said, “that they’re not interested in figuring out a way to operate remotely.”
Schiff doesn’t want more delays in getting the House fully back in business. “I would hope by next week that we have established the processes that we can use to conduct virtual hearings and vote at a safe distance,” Schiff said. “If ever there was a circumstance in which the adage that ‘the Constitution is not a suicide pact’ was meritorious, it’s now, during a pandemic.”
“The mother of all parliaments” in Britain, even more suffused in tradition than Congress, has found a way to operate remotely. Surely our tech-savvy country also has the bandwidth to make democracy safe.