WASHINGTON — Your wall calendar may read “2023”.
But in the nation’s capital, 2024 is already raging. Election season firmly on lawmakers’ minds. Making laws? Not so much.
So far this year, Congress has only passed 12 public laws, including approving a 250th Anniversary of the United States Marine Corps commemorative coin and renaming the Veterans Affairs clinic in Indian River, Mich., the "Pfc. Justin T. Paton Department of Veterans Affairs Clinic."
Congress also averted a crisis of its own making when at the last minute they reached a deal to pay the nation’s debt obligations.
In the Senate, three-day work weeks have become the norm, while the House has now devolved into a perpetual digital dunk contest where the most cringe-worthy memes and statements win. Most of what passes for business this year on Capitol Hill are proposals that have little or no chance of ever becoming law — but what’s a law when you can rile up your base?
“Not very productive so far and there’s not a sense among the majority of members that productivity is what they’re after. What they’re after is messaging to their, unfortunately, most hardline base,” Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) — the former majority leader — told Raw Story while walking into the Capitol last week.
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Lawmakers are now on their month-long summer break. When they return to Washington, D.C. after Labor Day, House Republicans and Senate Democrats will need to come together and hammer out their competing federal funding measures or risk a government shutdown on Oct. 1.
The clock is ticking.
Not everyone — particularly far-right Republicans — says the 118th Congress is hopelessly gridlocked and unproductive.
“No, we’ve done a whole lot,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) told Raw Story last week when asked about the 118th Congress’ record.
Norman, like others, pointed to the 10-year balanced budget House Republicans crafted. But this budget proposal will never pass the Senate, which you wouldn’t know from talking to Republicans, especially members of the Freedom Caucus, who have fought for deeper and deeper spending cuts than Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden agreed on in their debt-ceiling deal earlier this year.
“Things are going well. We’re having a really robust discussion, but at the end of the day, it's math,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) told reporters in July as the Freedom Caucus was demanding further budget cuts than party leaders wanted. “This isn't a policy discussion. This is a math discussion.”
While a government shutdown looms in September, Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) spent much of July pushing for votes on their respective measures clearing former President Donald Trump of his two impeachments.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Flickr/Gage Skidmore
“We’re still working on that,” Greene told Raw Story outside the Capitol in July. “Expungement is important. It’s writing the wrongs that were done here, impeaching President Trump twice, politically. Weaponizing the government against him just to smear his name and affect presidential elections.”
To be clear, the second impeachment involved charges Trump incited an insurrection after the 2020 election, on Jan. 6, 2021.
And Trump, for his part, is scheduled to be arraigned today in Washington, D.C., on his latest set of felony charges — these pertaining to his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“I believe we're witnessing the collapse of what used to be one of America's great political parties,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Raw Story. “I mean, there's an utter [Republican] descent into conspiracy theory, paranoia, pornography and extremist antics. I mean, it's just like a bag of desperate tricks and there's no program for the country.” Raskin calls the far-right turn of the House “dangerous.”
“Their lurching from antic to antic masks the collapse of their party into right wing authoritarianism,” Raskin said.
To others, the GOP under McCarthy is turning the House into “kind of a laughingstock.”
“Under McCarthy, we just see the House, as an institution, continue to decline,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) told reporters at the Capitol recently. “One thing that has really shocked me over the last several years is, I thought so many of my Republican colleagues stood for something. That they cared about the institutions, took their political office seriously, but time after time, they really debase themselves in the service of Donald Trump.”
While Trump and his presidential campaign feel ever-present in the House, over in the Senate, lawmakers’ own 2024 reelection bids seem to be setting the tempo And the tempo, with its aggressive fundraising schedules and plenty of travel, has resulted in many three-day Washington work weeks.
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“It's a little schizophrenic,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) told Raw Story just off the Senate floor last week. “Members of both parties are not delighted. So, I know I'm circumspect about how I choose my words, but, yeah, it would be nice if things were predictable, and I don't know why they’re not.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) brushed aside criticisms of his new three-day Senate.
“We're working all the time,” Schumer (D-NY) told reporters last week. “Look at how much we're getting done. In the last month and a half a [National Defense Authorization Act] bill. Huge, with ramifications in many areas. Twelve appropriations bills and avoiding default, I'd say in a month and a half. That's a damn good record.”
Those appropriations bills may have made it out of committee, but they have yet to hit the Senate floor and the pressure campaigns that often accompany measures that are taken up by the full Senate.
The Senate floor schedule is also affected. As of July 27, the 118th Senate has held 212 roll call votes, compared to the 280 votes taken by the 117th Senate at the same point.
Fewer Washington work days has meant less time for Senate investigations, or hearings — along with more double-booked senators forced to choose one hearing over another — and less time for voting on measures touching just about every aspect of Americans lives, including stalled technology, climate and health care measures.
A light schedule while in Washington isn’t how the Senate ran when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) first arrived — in 1981.
“When I started the United States Senate, we started at 10 a.m. on Monday and finished at 4 p.m. on Friday, and nobody complained about it,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) complained to Raw Story. “And it's hard to get all the work of the country done when you only work two and a half days.”
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Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). Andrew Harnik / POOL / AFP
While Schumer denies the 2024 elections are top of his mind, Republicans say it’s obvious the leader’s running the Senate to help his long list of vulnerable incumbents next year — and to save the Democrats’ narrow Senate majority.
“I think Democrats recognize that they had a real challenging map for ’24, so they wanted to give their folks more time back in their home states,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) told Raw Story last week. “Once the House was Republican, they figured they weren't going to get much done in terms of a Democrat agenda. So why spend the time here when they could be home trying to regain the Senate?”
The Senate worked two back-to-back three-day weeks in its lead up to recess. Those short weeks meant a couple late nights wrapping up work on the sprawling, must-pass National Defense Authorization Act, which frustrated senators — especially those who had to change out of their shorts and into a suit so they could preside over an empty chamber past midnight.
“It's just surreal. I'm going to have to get dressed in my suit at like 11 p.m.,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) told Raw Story last Wednesday, predicting an audience size of “two people watching C-SPAN.”
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With end-of-summer politics eating up the Senate’s time, Fetterman’s heart was far from last week’s overheated Washington.
“I just want to go home and be hanging out with my kids and wife,” Fetterman said. “I promise, as a senator, I will never put out an amendment that is guaranteed to go down, because then that's performance art. That's kind of the thing that's frustrating.”
At the end of July, Sens. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Jon Tester (D-MT) reintroduced their Transparency in Congress Resolution requiring members of Congress to publish their official schedules online, which the two senators already do, in contrast to most of their colleagues.
It’s not aimed at the Senate’s three-day work week, specifically. But, especially with his own much-watched 2024 race hovering over all he does, Tester thinks a little transparency will go a long way, especially when opponents can point to the Senate voting three days a week for much of the 118th Congress.
“Well, we work more than that. But you're right, voting [days],” Tester told Raw Story while heading to cast a vote on the floor last week. “I think you got to look at getting things done. If we're gonna get things done, that isn't an issue. If we're not able to get things done, like the appropriations bills, then that becomes an issue.”
