House GOP Melts Down

House Republicans have rejected Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise & Jim Jordan, creating chaos, but this is more illustrative of a trend than an aberration

I realize that I’ve written a lot of posts about House Republicans this year and I apologize to readers who find this repetitive. However, when an institution that I have experience with and a degree of fondness for goes through a period of historic upheaval, I feel like I should get to comment. I’ll try to leaven it with a bit of what I think are issues relevant to national security, but fundamentally this is going to be about the way the modern House works (or, currently, doesn’t).

Currently, the U.S. House of Representatives has ceased to function. Since Matt Gaetz (R-FL)’s motion to vacate passed on October 3rd, Patrick McHenry (R-NC) has served as Speaker Pro Tem, a nebulous position with unclear authority. While some Committee work has continued to move along, the House floor has come to a standstill as first House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) and then House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) have attempted and failed to secure 218 votes to be the new Speaker of the House. This entire sequence is basically without precedent in the US House. As of this writing, Jordan had lost his position as “Speaker designate” of the House Republican conference following a secret ballot election loss on Friday, October 21st. Multiple members have now declared themselves as potential nominees and elections will continue into next week.

All of this is, from a historical and an institutional perspective, really remarkable. However, given the broader global situation, this is unsettling. The ongoing decay of our governing institutions is a major problem. Regardless of whether one is a Republican or Democrat, the inability of Congress to attempt to address public policy issues is a significant problem. And while it’s amusing to point and laugh at House Republicans, despite much talk, the Senate has been unable to get a three-bill appropriations minibus to the floor despite almost two months of negotiations.

Flatly, the imposition of the modern filibuster and the rise of the modern Speaker has neutered the nominal first branch of government. As the below chart indicates, Congressional productivity has been declining steadily from the levels seen in the 20th century (chart accurate through 2014, originally found here).

While my general experience of the past ~14 years observing Congress is that Democrats are slightly more interested in governing as an opposition party than Republicans, this is not a partisan problem. There are problems with both institutions. The creation of a 60-vote threshold for basically any legislation in the Senate is a huge problem. No other democracy has such a structure and the ability of an elected majority to enact its platform has not caused wild disruptions in any of our allies (that I’m aware of). However, I know less of the Senate and will stick with the House.

The issue in the House is not that it cannot pass legislation (at least, not prior to this particular breakdown), the issue is that the majority of the majority caucus has a stranglehold on what is able to be brought to the floor. Because the Speaker is beholden to that group and the Speaker has control of the floor, there is very little incentive to encourage bipartisan inquiry or collaboration and every incentive to pass the most party-line bill capable of getting 218 votes rather than trying to build actual bipartisan majorities (or, indeed, simply letting the Committee of the Whole House work on open bills).

This has slowly reduced the House into an entity that produces a vast amount of messaging and very little in the way of legislating. Majority members know that only legislation that can be passed with a party-line vote will likely come to the floor or that leadership will negotiate a deal on any must-pass measures (appropriations, debt ceiling, etc.). Similarly, minority members are faced with limited opportunities to actually legislate and will instead seek to use parliamentary procedures to force embarrassing votes from the majority. The end result is that the practice of legislating - building coalitions, finding compromises, log-rolling - is not prioritized and, instead, messaging is the focus. This is, of course, a broad statement and there are absolutely “workhorse” members of Congress who focus on the legislation, but the fact that Jim Jordan - who has literally never sponsored a bill that has been signed into law - was considered as a potential Speaker of the House should make this broader point fairly clear.

The national security implications of this are not all direct. The first is that the strong bias towards stasis makes it difficult for Congress to be as agile as it could be. The fate of Ukraine aid is doubtful given current trends, but this also has implications for oversight. The focus on messaging and partisanship means that Congress increasingly self-selects for people who are good in those areas and those skills do not necessarily translate to being focused on oversight. The Department of Defense is an enormous organization made up of millions of people and spends hundreds of billions of dollars annually. It desperately requires oversight. Oversight takes time, attention, and money.

Relative to the 20th century, the current Congress has stripped itself of its ability to do that effectively. I could not find a HASC/SASC specific trend in staff numbers, but this chart illustrates the point effectively.

This chart really understates the issue as while Committee staffing levels have basically plateaued since 1997, the scale of the organization they are attempting to oversee has grown significantly. In 1997, total federal spending was $1.579 billion, in 2022 (there has been some effort to address Congressional staffing in the interim, but nothing remotely adequate to return to 1997 levels), spending was $4.897 billion. This has real, tangible impacts on the ability of Congress to effectively monitor DoD.

I’ve also written before about how the current structures have inexorably led to more lengthy continuing resolutions, another problem for DoD. As the average approval date for appropriations has drifted into the following calendar year, it becomes even harder to accommodate the ongoing disruptions. Indeed, one of my biggest concerns currently is that the PPBE reform committee is going to propose a variety of good ideas that will be throttled by an uncooperative Congress intent on protecting its broken processes.

Regardless, the House’ failure to select a Speaker and create a durable governing majority has real-world implications. Government funding runs out on November 17th. It is entirely unclear if House Republicans will have a Speaker at that point or, if so, if that individual would dare risk the wrath of the far-right by agreeing to another CR that does not contain spending cuts. A government shutdown and an extended continuing resolution are both real possibilities as we head into November. A negotiated agreement on appropriations for FY 2024 seems increasingly unlikely. All of this is bad for national security and for the country, but it’s not really evident what the path out of this could be.