Our Extremely Dysfunctional Congress & Congressional Reporting
The government is likely to shut down on 1 October and Congressional reporting is focused on whether Speaker McCarthy can "get a win".
There are times when I really feel genuinely concerned for the state of our governing institutions. We are lurching towards a government shutdown at the end of Fiscal Year 2023. Given that the budget toplines for FY 2024 were nominally agreed upon under the Fiscal Responsibility Act signed into law earlier this year, this is a somewhat remarkable achievement. However, this has come about for reasons embedded in decisions made earlier by a variety of players, but most notably House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Given those decisions, the fact that we will likely see a government shutdown is not particularly surprising - since I moved to Washington they have occurred every few years, always in years without elections (like this one). What’s somewhat surprising, and the prompt for this post, is how it is being reported on by Congressional reporters. The interaction between Congress and its media is one that is not healthy for the functioning of our elected branch.
On Wednesday, Punchbowl News entire top half was focused on how Speaker Kevin McCarthy could work out a deal with a dozen or so far-right holdouts in his caucus. I’m not trying to attack them, this was not dissimilar to coverage in Politico, the Washington Post or pretty much anywhere. The issue is not that this is wrong, per se, it’s that it’s mostly irrelevant to what will actually be required to fund the government - a cross party agreement that is acceptable to leadership on both sides, likely in line with the Fiscal Responsbility Act passed earlier this year. All of the sturm and drang in the House (which seems to be drawing to a close today, September 21st, with McCarthy’s inevitable capitulation to the hard right) is totally meaningless regarding that. Whatever concessions he makes to the far right will be lost in negotiations with Democrats. If he is committing to stick to the positions they are demanding, he is lying to their faces and everyone knows it. Even if the latest set of concessions to the far-right succeed in getting a bill through the House, it will be dead on arrival in the Senate, never mind the White House. Sure, McCarthy can point to his bill and say “We passed something”, but the public generally understands who wants to shut the government down and blame will be apportioned accordingly when it shuts down on 1 October.
So, this wall to wall coverage of “Can McCarthy get a win?” is fundamentally misleading and only encourages McCarthy and his staff in their indulgence of the far-right part of the caucus rather than pushing them to address the actual negotiations that are required. It’s big, expensive theatre that creates a sense of drama around something that is actually ephemeral. There is an actual public policy dispute between conservatives - several, really - in the various funding plans being bandied about. Those questions have real import for real people and should be the focus of coverage. The fight over what messaging bill House Republicans should adopt is blocking any consideration of them in service to what is, in the end, something deeply dishonest.
I also want to be clear; this is not only a Republican phenomenon When Democrats control the House, similar narrative dynamics dominate Congressional reporting. It’s not healthy for the country or for the House that the news voraciously devoured by staffers and members alike is dominated by these sorts of distractions rather than trying to dig into the actual substance of what Congress is doing. I understand why reporters and publications do this - it’s far more exciting to cover politics like it’s a sporting event and see which team “wins” or “loses”, but ultimately that trivializes what is actually happening. The country as a whole loses when our legislative branch is totally caught up in superfluous dreck about who is up and who is down.
We need members of Congress less focused on their own standing in DC-media power rankings and more on attempting to address actual policy problems. So much of Congressional activity is grandstanding for activists, grandstanding for fundraising and grandstanding for other members - we would be far better served with a focus on what actually got done instead of who looks better in the spotlight.