New level of dysfunction in U.S. House
Politics can be about gamesmanship, with fiery rhetoric in the public while backroom deals come together to push agendas across the finish line. This is especially true during election years, when political goals center more on the polls than the public good.
It may be ironic, but votes matter more than voters. And this past week, House Republicans did not have the votes.
They didn’t have the votes to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. They were crucial players in killing the U.S. Senate’s bipartisan immigration bill, which included aid for Israel and Ukraine, but then they didn’t have the votes to pass a standalone bill to aid Israel.
“Well, look, it was a mess what happened here, but we’re cleaning it up,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA., said after the disastrous week. Policy is too often subservient to politics in Washington, but Republicans have made a habit of debasing an already tainted process.
Examples abound. They have hijacked legislation, stymied debate and initiated doomed impeachment efforts, all to make their opponents look bad. As often happens with such tactics, the ploys backfired and the nation suffered.
One of the most outrageous examples of this chicanery came last week, when the bipartisan immigration bill imploded in the Senate.
The legislation featured security and asylum measures that Democrats previously opposed, but many of those same Democrats did something that astounded their Republican counterparts. They set aside their reservations and agreed to these provisions because they believed a compromise was best to address surging immigration.
When Democrats acted out of character, the bill started to unravel. What had seemed like a bipartisan effort turned out to be a Republican ruse, fueled by the expectation that Democrats would reject the harsh measures, thus branding the party as incapable of addressing the crisis on our southern border. It left Republicans with no choice but to condemn the very bill they had been championing.
These days, Republicans usually act under the direction of ex-president Donald Trump, who lost the 2020 presidential election and hardly served the GOP well in the 2018 and 2022 midterms.
This sad episode in legislative failure was no different. Trump, knowing that turbulence on the border enhances his campaign against President Joe Biden, trashed the legislation before he had even read it. He wanted the bill dead on arrival, and his congressional minions, especially Johnson, complied.
Complicating matters, the legislative theatrics doomed military assistance for Israel and Ukraine, which was tied to the border security measures. Three critical measures in one bill, all cut down as if by a scythe. Republicans were dysfunctional but efficient; standalone aid to Israel also then failed.
“We’re governing here,” Johnson said. “Sometimes, it’s messy.”
Does he expect anyone to take him seriously?
The Senate later advanced a foreign aid package without the border measures of the previous proposal, but it is unclear whether it will be any more successful than the previous bill. Some Republicans back the measure, but they represent a lonely group. Intransigence does not fade overnight.
“There are people in Ukraine right now, in the height of their winter, in trenches, being bombed and being killed,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said.
Aggravating the chaos, Republicans failed to impeach Mayorkas after months of politicizing the investigative process against him.
“Frustrated,” Rep. Mark Green, Rtenn., chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said, “but we’ll see it back again.”
Voters should be frustrated, too — frustrated the House is wasting its time and energy to impeach Mayorkas.
The 118th Congress, thanks to such political stunts, has been historically unproductive. This inactivity becomes more dire every day; after passing three stopgap spending bills to keep the federal government open in January, lawmakers must act to avert yet another shutdown threat in March.
The real tragedy of all this nonsense is that it may continue well beyond the November election. We should remember that we employ these people, whether representatives, senators or president. The power to hire and fire is in our hands.
Hypocrites on border security, Republicans unable to pass basic legislation