D.C. gets ready for partisan gridlock
GOP control of the House would stall state priorities
Republican control of the House, which appeared likely as votes continued to be counted Friday, would mean two years of partisan gridlock during which little gets done in Washington as long as President
Biden remains in the White
House.
With little other than congres- sional investigations and infighting happening in Washington through 2024, that means politically deep blue California — where there are twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans — would step into the national spotlight as a Democratic bulwark.
Divided government means some of California’s top policy priorities that profited from the Biden administration — including environmental pro
tection and clean energy — could stall in Washington.
The political dynamic in Washington is still shifting as key races are yet to be decided. While Republicans were expected to control the House, control of the Senate remained up for grabs.
But one thing was certain: The predicted red wave — a massive Republican victory — didn’t materialize. A year ago, House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy predicted Republicans would win 60 seats in the midterms.
Now, it looks like McCarthy will be lucky to have a doubledigit majority if he is elected speaker after Biden enjoyed one of the best midterms for a sitting president in decades.
Biden said Wednesday that midterm voters sent lawmakers a message.
“Look, I think the American public wants us move on and get things done for them,” the president said.
Politically, the shift in the composition of the House means that many top activists and leaders will adopt a more combative mode, especially with some Republicans threatening to change how Social Security is administered.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, just elected to another fouryear term, will be among those encouraging his fellow Democrats to aggressively push back on Republican messaging.
“Go on the offense; stop being on the defense,” Newsom said during a campaign stop in San Francisco last weekend. “We’ve got to get more serious about what we’re up against.”
But in terms of policy, it’s a different posture.
“We’re back on the defense,” said Lorena Gonzalez, a former state legislator who leads the 2.1 million-member California Labor Federation. She predicted that organized labor would be leading the resistance to Republican plans to scale back Social Security.
Gonzalez had concerns about House leadership likely switching from one Californian — Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco — to another, McCarthy of Bakersfield.
McCarthy asked his colleagues Wednesday to back him for speaker and urged them to deliver results, not just bombast.
“I trust you know that earning the majority is only the beginning,” McCarthy wrote. “Now, we will be measured by what we do with our majority.”
He received the backing of former President Donald Trump, who endorsed McCarthy for House speaker Tuesday. But others feared what his leadership would mean for California.
“The thought of the leader of (the California) congressional delegation going from Nancy Pelosi to Kevin McCarthy … oh, God,” Gonzalez said.
“I’m sorry — either he’s not very bright, or he just lies,” Gonzalez said, referring to how McCarthy switched positions on how he felt about Donald Trump’s actions during the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. “He’s not for workers. He’s not for regular folks. It’s so out of tune with the rest of California that it just seems bizarre that he’s even here.”
Some Republicans acknowledge that few laws will pass in Washington until the next presidential election.
“We’re not passing a lot of bills next year that the president will sign,” said Geoffrey Verhoff, senior adviser at the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and a former Republican National Committee finance committee vice chairman.
“We’re largely messaging, stopping — from our perspective — bad stuff that’s happening and trying to pivot to whatever 2024 looks like in terms of who a Republican nominee that’s going to bring the party together will be,” Verhoff said.
Many of the headlines coming out of Washington will be about investigations.
Republicans have already previewed that they will be investigating the financial dealings of the president’s son, Hunter Biden, as well as launching probes into the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
There also may be probes into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and COVID funding, and how the National Institutes of Health distributes grants.
“When it is divided government, most congressional inquiries will be aimed at the Biden administration,” said Karen Christian, a partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and a former counsel to the house energy and commerce committee.
Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, called Monday for “a thorough accounting of where the tax dollars from President Biden’s $2 trillion so-called American Rescue Plan were sent.”
Here are some of the ways that GOP control will affect California.
Energy priorities differ: Christian expects “there will be aggressive oversight of how the Biden administration has managed energy policy during a time of inflation.”
That means possible probes into federal funding earmarked for electric vehicles, including, Christian said, “how the buildout would be implemented and where the money is going.”
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which included $369 billion for climate and energy projects, gave consumers tax credits of up to $7,500 to purchase a new electric vehicle or up to $4,000 for a used one.
The national law firm Holland & Knight this month predicted GOP-led oversight hearings into “the green tech industry and related federal funding by the U.S. Department of Energy.”
California, a national green energy hub, has set a goal for 100% of new cars and light trucks sold in the state to be zero-emission vehicles by 2035.
Christian also predicted oversight probes into “whether the administration has done the right things” in releasing oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve — and how that affected fuel prices.
California, meanwhile, is headed in a different direction when it comes to investigating soaring gas prices. On Nov. 29, the California Energy Commission will hold a public hearing in which oil company executives and experts will be asked about gas price hikes at a time when energy companies are making huge profits.
Newsom has called a special legislative session on Dec. 5 to address California’s high gas prices, including his proposal to create a windfall tax on oil companies’ profits.
Environment in peril: Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Fremont, worries that Republicans will kill the oversight environmental subcommittee that he chairs. It has jurisdiction over global climate change, environmental protection, public lands, endangered species, and air and water quality, among other things.
He wondered if funding could be stalled for local projects like one that addresses climate change-related sea level rise and flooding in the Bay Area that he and fellow Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo of Palo Alto secured funding for this year.
Khanna also worries about how GOP rule “could hurt our ability to get funding for critical projects.” Republican House leaders could spike the Community Projects program, which enables members to request funding for up to 15 projects in their district. They are similar to earmarks for a particular district.
Khanna landed $11.9 million for community projects in his district this year, including funding for a pedestrian bridge, a homeless shelter and a library. He said it was “unclear if the Republicans would even keep that program.”
Labor ready to counterattack:
Gonzalez, the California labor head, said losing Pelosi as speaker would be “huge.”
“Not just because she brings home the bacon, but she really is a leader who has ensured that the entire Congressional delegation is extremely pro-labor and pro-worker,” Gonzalez said.
She likened the next two years to when Republicans tried to privatize Social Security during former President George W. Bush’s second term in 2005.
While there is a near-zero chance that Biden would OK changes to Social Security, California union members will be at the forefront of opposition to any alterations to the program.
California is one of the few states where organized labor has remained powerful. About 30% of the nation’s 14 million union members live in just two states: California and New York, which has 1.7 million union members.
Part of labor’s mission is to offer a reality check to the GOP’s appeals to working-class voters, Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez said that Republicans “have learned to speak a populist kind of language, especially when it came to trade and manufacturing. But in reality, their policies won’t match that. It’s just going to be our responsibility to point out to how they’re seeking to destroy the middle class.”
Tech in the hot seat: Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the likely incoming chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has vowed to create an “investigations subcommittee” to focus just on the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Justice and Big Tech.
McCarthy used to be a cheerleader for Silicon Valley, often chaperoning Republicans from around the country to its companies and extolling the virtues of entrepreneurs.
No longer. McCarthy has turned against Big Tech, particularly since his obeisance to Trump solidified.
One of the tenets of the Commitment to America, McCarthy’s one-page outline of the GOP’s agenda, promises to “Confront Big Tech and Demand Fairness.” The GOP wants “greater privacy and data security protections,” to “equip parents with more tools to keep their kids safe online,” and to “stop companies from putting politics ahead of people.”
Californians should expect to hear more about Section 230, the part of the federal Communications Decency Act that shields tech companies from liability for what their users post. Conservatives have wanted to repeal it for years. But with Biden in the White House, anti-tech legislation stands little chance of becoming law.
Yet without a friendly face in House leadership, Khanna worries that Republicans will apply public pressure on tech companies, holding hearings into their long-standing concerns — which aren’t backed by evidence — that some social media and search platforms are biased against conservatives.