A `historical and hysterical' House flees tumultuous year
The Republican-led House of Representatives concluded a year of paralysis and dysfunction Thursday with the latest in a string of failures to act on a pressing crisis, leaving undone a sweeping emergency spending measure to send another infusion of money to Ukraine for its war against Russia.
It was a startling outcome but also a fitting finale for one of the most tumultuous and unproductive legislative years in recent memory, characterized by Republican infighting and a tiny majority that left House GOP leaders toiling to do even the bare minimum of governing.
The inability to reach any agreement with the Senate to bolster a key U.S. ally that is facing off against President Vladimir Putin of Russia — even as clear majorities in the House and Senate strongly support doing so — only underscored the disarray.
Never mind that the House left town without making a dent in a pile of unfinished work on spending legislation to keep the government funded and was planning to return after New Year's, with only eight working days to avoid a partial shutdown if they fail to complete it.
The first House session of the 118th Congress will be remembered mainly for the unprecedented 15 roll call votes it took in January to elect a speaker who was then unceremoniously dumped 10 months later by a Republican mutiny. That left the House leaderless and unable to work for weeks.
“This fall has been a very actively stupid political environment by a mistaken, misled few,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., who filled in as speaker to oversee the election of Mike Johnson, R-La.
Like more than three dozen of his House colleagues to date, McHenry, a 10-term veteran, registered his opinion on the state of the chamber by announcing this month that he would not seek reelection next year. On Thursday alone, two more retirees announced their plans to depart as Republicans and Democrats gave the House failing grades for 2023 and headed home for the holidays.
“It was historical and hysterical,” said Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, who helped block the election of Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, as speaker. “In a word, I would say, `underwhelming.'”
The House did manage to narrowly avoid complete disasters of its own making. Congress barely headed off a calamitous federal default that hard-right Republicans were provoking by refusing to increase the debt limit without deep spending cuts. It also moved, with no time to spare, to avoid a government shutdown, again steering around the objections of the far-right as its members continued to refuse to budge without slashing spending and imposing conservative social policies. Their positions proved impossible to sustain with Democrats in control of the White House and the Senate.
In the end, then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy embraced legislation to avert both economic crises and was forced to rely on Democrats to get debt limit suspension and stopgap spending bills to President Joe Biden's desk. His bow to reality prompted a handful of Republican adversaries, led by Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, to force a vote to vacate the speakership, dethroning McCarthy and setting the House on a spiraling search for his successor.
As he took the floor for a final time Thursday, McCarthy, who began his career as a rising Republican star in a different era of House factionalism, said he would make the same moves again, even knowing what resulted.
“If your philosophy brings people more freedom, do not be fearful that you could lose your job over it,” he said on the floor as his California colleagues celebrated his time in the House. “I knew the day we decided to make sure to choose to pay our troops while war was breaking out instead of shutting down was the right decision.”
The House did end the year with bipartisan approval of a sweeping Pentagon policy measure. But again, it could be delivered in the Republican-led House only with significant Democratic support. Farright Republicans balked, unhappy that provisions aimed at ending what they viewed as “woke” military policies on abortion, transgender care and racial diversity were stripped out, and some members of both parties objected to an extension of warrantless surveillance authority.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, took the opportunity to remind Republicans that the little they did get done should be credited to Democrats.