Rubber Stamp Congress

NYT (“G.O.P. Push Behind Trump Agenda Has Congress in an Uproar“):

Republicans’ relentless marathon to force President Trump’s agenda through Congress over objections from Democrats and some in their own ranks is taking a toll on the institution and its members, prompting tempers to boil over and relationships to fray on Capitol Hill, with potentially disastrous consequences ahead.

In recent days, lawmakers clashed bitterly over federal spending, presidential nominees and even broadly supported cryptocurrency bills — all while a dispute raged over releasing files in the case of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. The normally staid proceedings of Congress were punctuated with shouting matches, a committee walkout, charges of abandoned deals and Democratic demands to fire the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

By Thursday, Republican leaders in the Senate and House rushed to finish their business and get exhausted lawmakers out of Washington to allow them some time to cool off.

And that was just last week. Veteran lawmakers said that the level of vitriol and dysfunction in the Capitol had reached a fever pitch.

“It is bad — really bad,” Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said when asked to assess the mood on Capitol Hill. “There’s a level of frustration. How do we get back to doing our jobs?”

Republicans have achieved hard-won legislative victories, but those have come at a cost, setting the stage for a meltdown that has, among other things, raised the prospects of a government shutdown this fall. Some G.O.P. lawmakers are feeling squeezed, while Democrats, outraged that the White House is shredding funding agreements and doling out money however it wants, are threatening to abandon a tradition of bipartisan spending deals.

NBC (“Bipartisan government funding is at risk of dying in Trump’s Washington“):

For many years, final decisions over how much the U.S. government spends, and how, have required sign-off from leaders of both parties, no matter who controlled the White House or Capitol Hill or the level of polarization.

Now, that last vestige of the bipartisan funding process is at risk of dying after a one-two punch by President Donald Trump and the Republican-led Congress.

The “appropriations” process, whereby both parties pass detailed funding bills for various federal agencies every year, has been in a slow decline for decades. But recent moves by the Trump-era GOP to disrupt past funding agreements have accelerated that decline — and, in the view of Democrats and even some weary Republicans, undermined Congress’ power of the purse in deference to the White House.

First, Republicans passed a $300 billion hike in military spending and immigration enforcement as part of Trump’s megabill; and second, they cut $9 billion in domestic money and foreign aid under a rarely used “rescission” process, allowing the GOP to cancel already approved bipartisan spending with a party-line vote.

A Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government or risk a shutdown will test whether a bipartisan deal is still possible, particularly as Trump’s top budget aide publicly calls for a more partisan approach.

House Republicans have undermined the bipartisan path for years by slamming the resulting deals as “swamp” creations by a “uniparty” that is addicted to spending. Now, GOP lawmakers in both chambers are going it alone, suggesting they’ll bring more rescissions packages to undo past bipartisan spending agreements because the existing process is failing.

“We don’t have an appropriations process. It’s broken. It’s been broken for a while,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

He said Congress will likely fall back on continuing resolutions, which largely maintain the status quo, and rescission packages for the remainder of Trump’s presidency.

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a senior appropriator, said the once-respected government funding process has “disappeared,” calling the latest rescissions package “a step backwards.”

“It’s basically saying: No matter what you decide on, the president is going to be able to change the bill, even for money that’s been appropriated,” Durbin said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, insist the process is alive and well. They will test that theory this week as Thune plans to bring at least one — if not more — appropriations bills to the Senate floor. He has argued that the $9 billion cut hits a tiny portion of the federal budget and shouldn’t dissuade Democrats from working toward a deal.

There’s an argument to be made—and, indeed, both Steven Taylor and I have made it many times over the years—that our system gives too much power to the minority party to thwart the will of the majority. Granting the many ways in which our electoral setup advantages the Republican Party, it won the White House and enjoys slim majorities in both the House and the Senate. So long as it doesn’t violate the Constitution, it ought to be able to advance its governing agenda.

At the same time, this simply isn’t how our system is supposed to work. The combination of a set of institutions developed in 1787 for a radically different country and the complete sorting of our two major parties over the last three decades or so has left us with a Frankenstein system. The Congress, rather than representing local interests and jealously guarding its institutional powers, as intended, has become either a rubber stamp for the President (if the same party controls both branches) or a roadblock against action (if the other party controls either House, especially the Senate). That’s simply dysfunctional.

This has been exacerbated by a complete breakdown in professional comity and respect for institutional traditions. While both parties bear significant blame for this, Republicans have taken that to extremes in recent years. The Tea Party wing, which evolved into the Freedom Caucus and ultimately MAGA, has taken over the party and pretty much defines itself by its disdain for norms.