WASHINGTON – It’s almost 2024 and many lawmakers on Capitol Hill are in a bind.
How do you run on the record of the historically dysfunctional 118th Congress?
One with a mere 27 bills signed into law in 2023 — the least accomplished Congress in modern history?
Or one — thank you Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) — that typically features a three-day Senate work week, where scheduled votes begin on Tuesday evenings and end early Thursday afternoons.
“It's ridiculous,” Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) — who’s facing voters next year — told Raw Story. “Have you seen the calendar for next year?”
In short: you don’t run on that record at all, particularly if you’re an endangered veteran lawmaker whose greatest legislative accomplishments occurred in the not-so-recent past.
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Which makes Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) — one of the Senate’s most vulnerable incumbents — such a fascinating test case for the value of a left-leaning lawmaker’s longevity, seniority, track record and toil amid a rightward leaning electorate and a do-little Congress.
Tester tells Raw Story he’s not worried about the light Washington work weeks this year or next. He knows what he’s running on, and it’s not the abysmal record of the 118th Congress.
“What I'm gonna run on is my accomplishments from the time I got here until Election Day of next year, and we're still going to work to get things done and things will get done,” Tester said. “So we've got a lot of stuff done, and we're going to continue in that vein and try to get stuff done. And we'll run on that.”
With the bar so low, Tester has one weapon to his credit: he’s actually gotten some stuff done during the past year.. During 2023, he had two bills — of the mere 22 sent to President Joe Biden for his signature — signed into law, which literally garnered headlines inside the Beltway.
“Two of Jon Tester’s bills have become law this year. That’s more than anyone else in Congress,” reads a Politico piece.
The Center for Effective Lawmaking also named Tester the 4th most effective senator in Washington. While he doesn’t defend the light Senate schedule, Tester says he understands it, and he doesn’t think Schumer ran a three-day Senate much of the year for vulnerable incumbents like himself.
“I don't think it was that,” Tester said. “We did a lot last year.”
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Fact check: Republicans agree – and they’re running on unwinding that record. Bidenomics to the White House comms staff is socialism to many in conservative Big Sky Country.
While Republicans hate it, Democrats were able to muster the votes to pass Biden’s sweeping Inflation Reduction Act. While its name is something between a misnomer and a lie — the bill has little to do with inflation – it earmarked $369 billion to help transform America’s clean-energy sector. It also increased the size of the Internal Revenue Service and lowered prescription drug costs for seniors.
In the wake of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, the 117th Congress also passed the Electoral Count Reform Act, which increases the threshold for objecting to presidential electoral votes from one member to 1/5th of both chambers. Lawmakers also came together to pass the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act — the first gun-control to pass Congress in decades.
There’s also the Respect for Marriage Act. It extends federal protections to same-sex couples who move to states that only recognize heterosexual marriages. It also divided Montana’s senators. Tester supported it, but Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) – the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee who’s gunning for Tester’s seat – opposed the measure and non-heterosexial marriages.
As chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, Tester was particularly focused on implementation of the PACT Act, which offers new benefits to veterans who suffered from exposure to burn pits, Agent Orange and other toxic chemicals during their military service.
“But the truth is, we focused a lot more on oversight. Why? Because the PACT Act was such a big deal that we've got to make sure that gets implemented appropriately,” Tester said of his changing role this beleaguered legislative year.
Still, Tester sits on the Appropriations Committee, which is charged with keeping the government funded. The committee – for the first time in five years – actually completed all of its tiresome work negotiating compromises on the nation’s 12 annual spending measures by the end of July. Then Congress took the month of August off.
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In November, senators rolled three funding measures into one package and passed it. The other nine Senate spending bills are gathering dust. As dysfunctional as the House is, Republicans on that side of the Capitol have passed seven of 12 spending bills. That just smarts Tester.
“What I'm frustrated with is, we get these appropriations bills done on time, and they're still hanging out there flapping in the wind. That costs taxpayers dollars, and just screws with efficiency to death,” Tester said.
When Congress returns after taking a three-week long winter recess, there will just be a couple weeks remaining in government funding. If House Republicans and Senate Democrats can’t hammer out their differences and pass individual funding bills, the government either shuts down or party leaders will likely look for an escape hatch, dubbed a Continuing Resolution – or CR, which keeps last year’s funding levels in place.
“If we end up with a yearlong CR, political malpractice, man,” Tester – who’s running for a fourth Senate term – said.
Policy malpractice is more like it. But the politics of bad policy coming out of Washington this Congress wouldn’t be as big of a factor if he faces Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT), who’s flirting openly with a run and fundraising (if lacklusterly) like he’s running statewide.
Tester’s likely opponent seems to be Minnesota-born former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy who’s raised millions – $2.8 million in Q3 of 2023 – and is already up with ads. That’s good news for the GOP, because so is Tester, a Montana-born farmer who raked in a record-setting $5 million in Q3.
Still, Schumer and Democratic leaders have rebuffed criticisms that all these end of year crises could have been handled more calmly had the Senate been in session more than three days a week much of the year.
They have their defenders, including at least one workhorse, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ).
“The thing I've learned is that a lot of times those are by cooperation, and sometimes you can end up extending the procedural muckety-muck as opposed to getting some kind of time agreements, so sometimes, strategically, leaving early results in a better environment to get things done,” the perpetually optimistic Booker told Raw Story.
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Booker says patience is key to the legislative process, which he’s had to learn over the years.
“I would stay here, you know, through Christmas Eve and come back the day after Christmas,” Booker remembered. “But clearly that ruins the comity – not comedy – and often actually results in less.”
Sure, but it’s hard to explain arcane Senate culture when your opponent’s tying you to the lazy Washington establishment.
“As governor you're working every day seems like. You don’t have that many days off, so I was really surprised when I came up here how few days we’re in,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) — who’s up for reelection in 2024 — told Raw Story.
And Republicans aren’t giving Schumer and co. any soft pillow to land on, especially ones who know what a productive Senate functions like.
“Oh, you know, I like to work,” Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) – a freshman senator who served as a Hill staffer before climbing the local electoral ladder back to Washington – said through a laugh. “I think the American people deserve us to come up here and do our job. Pass the things that we're supposed to. Work together to make that happen… We need to be voting and we need to be talking, we need to be working and we need to be achieving solutions and actually getting things done.”
These past few weeks things have been frantic on Capitol Hill, but veteran senators say it didn’t have to be this way.
“Baloney, we didn't run out of any time. We had plenty of time on the calendar,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) told Raw Story.
Incensed – and with a light legislative load – Murkowski pulled a calendar out of the large binder she was holding just steps away from the Senate floor.
“It's just that when you look at these days on the calendar – look at this! Look at all of these red days,” Murkowski tutored. “Those are all days that we are in when you have an advertised no vote Monday, I get it. But then what we do is we kind of cheat and we don't start Tuesday until five o'clock. So then don’t tell me we’re in that Friday. That Friday everybody's gone, because they leave on that Thursday at 1:45. No, I am not a big fan.”
Murkowski’s not up for reelection, but she is known as a serious workhorse. In a perfect world – for an Alaskan, mind you – the Senate would never work a three-day week.
“I would love a schedule where we put in five honest to God business working days. And do that for a couple of weeks and then take a week,” Murkowski said. “Everybody else can leave Monday morning. I have to leave Sunday night at about five o'clock. So yeah, I can't I go anywhere other than the hub, Anchorage, because it takes me a day to get to other parts of the state. It's just, I don't know. It's my Alaska pet peeve.”
The senator’s pet peeve point of privilege aside, Murkowski says the ways of Washington are broken, because while these hectic end-of-year work periods are the norm inside the Beltway, they also screw over Americans – including their representatives in Washington – from coast to coast.
“The only time that we pass any legislation is the last couple of weeks in December. Tell me that that's a good idea?” Murkowski told Raw Story. “I think it empowers leadership. I think it disempowers your committees. I'm a big believer in committee and committee work, but in order for the committee's to work, the members have to be here. I think what we are doing is we are empowering staff, and I think we are empowering leadership.”
As for the Senate being dragged down by dysfunction in the House? Senior senators brush that dirt off their shoulders.
“Naw. It’s another day at the office. Nothing fundamentally different. It's just you have to deal with the fingerprint that we call a different Congress, so the dynamic’s different,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) told Raw Story. “You just figure out how to be productive or you get frustrated. I prefer trying to find a way to be productive.”
Easy for Tillis to say. Unlike Tester, he doesn’t have to face voters again until 2026.
