Current Session Sputters to Conclusion With Another Stopgap Spending Bill
The 118th Congress will go down in history as the Congress that couldn’t. Its defining achievement may be late-session passage of a bill declaring the bald eagle as the national bird, even though the majestic raptor has been the national symbol since 1782.
Amid drama and bickering, the 118th Congress will go down in history for failing to approve spending, railway safety and children’s online safety measures, a bipartisan border security compromise and a farm bill. Despite promises to pass appropriations bills in regular order, another stopgap spending measure is needed by this weekend to keep government running and bolster emergency relief funding.
House Republicans made history by unseating Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who claimed the gavel following 15 grueling rounds of floor votes. After McCarthy’s fall, Republicans took numerous rounds of closed-door voting over three weeks on four different candidates to elect Mike Johnson as his replacement. During that time, the legislative process ground to a halt.
So far, the 118th Congress has passed just 82 public bills compared to 360 bills in the 117th Congress and 344 in the 116th Congress. The previous modern-era low was 283 bills passed in the 112th Congress (January 2011-January 2013). In the 1950s, Congress routinely passed a 1,000 or more measures in two-year sessions.
Some of the dysfunction can be traced to split control of Congress. Democrats held a razor-thin margin in the Senate and Republicans had an equally thin margin in the House. The far-right House Freedom Caucus, with as many as 49 members, has hamstrung the Republican majority by insisting on provisions that couldn’t pass the House let alone the Democratically controlled Senate.
GOP Trifecta With Internal Squabbles
Republicans enter 2025 with control of the White House, Senate and House. That hasn’t appeared to stop internal quarreling. Outgoing Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, who will lead the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense in the 119th Congress, wrote an essay in Foreign Affairsopenly challenging President-elect Donald Trump’s isolationist policies and cozy relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Trump should commit to a significant and sustained increase in defense spending,” McConnell recommended in his essay, as well as investments in the defense industry and access to new military capabilities. He also called for continued military aid to embattled Ukraine.
Incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, is signaling a preference to work on border security and defense measures before turning to extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cut, which expires next year. In the early part of 2025, the Senate will be busy holding a flurry of hearings to approve Trump’s Cabinet nominees, several of whom are controversial and may lack enough GOP votes to win confirmation.
Senate Republicans are reportedly considering rules to limit Democratic ability to filibuster Trump priority bills in the new session.
Photo Credit: Graham Dickie/The New York Times
House GOP Majority Down to Two
House Republicans will again face a narrow margin of control. At the start of the new Congress, the margin will be even thinner because two sitting House members have been nominated by Trump for administrative posts and one member, Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, resigned after his re-election to accept Trump’s nomination as attorney general. Gaetz subsequently withdrew from the nomination under the shadow of sex trafficking and drug use allegations.
Elections for their replacements won’t occur until next spring, leaving Speaker Johnson with only a 217-215 margin in the first 100 days of the Trump presidency, the ripest time to move the new administration’s priority legislation. A single Republican defection can prevent passage.
Among the first orders of business next year will be approval of an omnibus spending bill, which apparently won’t be approved by the current Congress. That measure could become more contentious if it includes Trump spending priorities such as substantial funding for his promised mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. Congress has failed to pass a budget in seven of the last 15 fiscal years.
Infighting Barrier to Compromise
Molly Reynolds, senior fellow in governance studies at the nonprofit Brookings Institution, has speculated the differences that may impede movement on Trump priority bills are intra-party squabbles rather than disagreements with Democrats.
Infighting within political parties, as well as Democrats and Republicans moving further away from each other on policy goals, has contributed to intransigence and failure to pass legislation, she said. It also complicates negotiating bipartisan compromises.
“When members put in the hard work to reach a compromise and then don’t have the backing of their leadership, it doesn’t necessarily incentivize them to come back to the table and try to do that same thing again in the future,” Reynolds added.
Photo Credit: Stephen Voss
Lacking Hours on the Job
Veteran Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, pointed out another impediment to passing laws. “When I came to the Senate 44 years ago, we used to start at 10 a.m. on Monday and go to 4 or 5 on Friday,” Grassley said. Now, he says, the Senate typically comes into session around 3 p.m. on Monday, with its first vote at 5:30 p.m. and usually holds its last vote of the week on Thursday around 1:45 p.m.
“There’s enough work for individual senators to do seven days a week if you want to work,” Grassley said. “But you can’t solve this country’s problems until you get 100 people together, and they’ve got to be together for more than two-and-a-half days a week.”
