FIVE POINTS: Popular does not equal good
[Short newsletter this week, most of this is just expansions of tweetstorms, I wrote the whole thing on the subway, so excuse any typos --Matt ]
1. Two more big symptoms this week of congressional deliberation dysfunction. First, Congressman Tiberi (R-OH) announced he will be resigning sometime before the end of January. This is remarkable because Tiberi is a member of the House Ways and Means committee, which has jurisdiction over the upcoming tax reform, which likely won't be done until after he's gone. Second, it looks like the concurrent budget resolution might not go to a conference committee. Instead, House concerns about the Senate version were negotiated into a compromise and amended into the Senate version last night. The House may now simply adopt the Senate document.
What both these developments illustrate is the continued rise of leadership-led policymaking and the decline of participation of backbench members in deliberation through the formal institutional mechanism. Thirty years ago, you’d be nuts to leave Ways and Means just as tax reform was heating up. Now? Tiberi may have more influence at the Ohio Business Roundtable, since all signs point to the tax bill being written through a private, leadership-directed process. Likewise, formal conferences between the House and Senate are almost non-existent now. One of the key features of those conferences was that the conferees were almost always from the committees of jurisdiction. The leadership may have had influence, but they were not part of the formal process.
James Waller (@jiwallner) has been on this kick for quite some time, but the decline in backbench participation in the deliberative process has all sorts of ramifications for the institution worth spelling out. Here are just a few:
It degrades institutional knowledge. Backbench members who see know ability to have input in policymaking devote less staff to legislation and more to constituent work, which creates a feedback loop in which they are more dependent on leadership policy direction. Likewise, it increases the relative power of the influence industry. Finally, it gives members less reason to stick around Congress, and dissuades quality candidates from running for Congress. Why come to a place where you’ll have no power? I don’t blame Congressman Tiberi for leading; he’ll probably have more influence on the outside, and he won’t have to put on a fake smile just to go to the grocery store.
It emboldens majority factions and the minority. When you don’t take the slow, laborious route of moving policy through the committee system and through an amendment process on the Senate floor and through a conference committee, you don’t secure as much buy-in from either majority backbencher or minority policy makers. This leaves them little incentive but to peruse their policy goals as oppositional actors. Cutting out the minority produces animosity in the House and filibusters in the Senate. That can, in theory, be dealt with. Cutting out majority backbenchers can create factions seeking leverage on both the floor and within caucus politics.
It creates high stakes moments and less durable policy. Doing the heavy lifting of policy development in secret, leadership-driven negotiations and then trying to ram them through on the floor with a close-amendment process tends to create a series of high-drama, all-or-nothing confrontations, where people who haven’t been cut into the legislation seek to stop it at all costs. You see this repeatedly right now. The various health care bills suffered this fate. Tax reform may see the same. Bills that are methodically dragged though the committee process and open to deliberation and amendment the whole way are less subject to this sort of high-stakes drama. And there’s no doubt they create more durable policy; most major congressional legislation passes with big supermajorities; it is not normal to do major policy by razor-thin partisan margins, be it the ACA or current tax reform.
This is ultimately going to empower the president. When you gut congressional capacity and centralize power in the leadership, you may gain some short term internal efficiency within the institution. But eventually, unifying policy direction under a central leadership figure is invariably going to result in that policymaking direction shifting from the congressional leadership to the White House. It may not seem like it now, given how incompetent the White House policymaking show has been under Trump, but it will happen. And there will be Wilsonian believers in parliamentary government who will cheer it on when it does. It’s a problem, and it’s one Congress would be wise to avoid. Strengthening their committee system and returning deliberative power to the backbenchers will cost efficiency, but it will solidify Congress as a transformative institution of real policy development, and prevent it from becoming a rubber-stamp arena legislature that implements party and executive policy.
2. I loved Josh Huder's article this week on congressional capacity. I highly recommend you check it out.
3. The coming thin House margin may have dramatic effects. One aspect of their 2018 election that is flying under the radar right now is that, within the range of possible outcomes, it seems highly likely that we are going to to end up with a House of Representatives that is closely divided. Right now, the Republicans have 240 seats and the Democrats have 194 seats (GOP previously-held UT-3 is currently vacant; PA-18 (Murphy (R)) and OH-12 (Tiberi (R)) will be vacant shortly). We are still over a year out from the election, but based on historical midterm results and current politics, it’s hard to imagine the Republicans losing less than 10 seats. It’s also pretty hard to imagine the Democrats winning more than 35 seats. That means there’s a pretty strong chance the House majority is going to have less than 230 seats.
That would be pretty unusual. When the Democrats controlled the House from 1955 until 1994, they *never* had fewer than 230 seats. Neither the GOP nor the Democrats have had less than 230 since 2005. The only period when we did see majorities less than 230 was the GOP from 1997 until 2004. Those small majorities were pretty unified. From 1997 through 2000, they were in a divided government opposing President Clinton. And in the latter period, they were subject to relatively successfully unifying efforts of the Bush administration during the post-9/11 era. In general, there are probably features of having a small majority in the House that promote party unification.
In normal times, a small House majority might simply make the pain of growing the vote on an given policy issue tougher. But these are not normal times. What might be different about a small House majority now? With a small Republican majority, all sorts of problems might occur, starting with the Speaker vote. Any GOP losses in 2018 are unlikely to come from the House Freedom Caucus, meaning they will both be a larger proportion of the conference, and it will take fewer hard liners to control the balance of power. With a 220-215 majority, any handful of majority party members could jam the Speaker vote. That is enormous leverage. And since 2010, we’ve seen increasing willingness from GOP members to take the Speakership fight out of the conference and onto the House floor.
Second, leading the conference could become much more precarious. With a narrow majority and emboldened party factions looking for leverage, every special rule could become an adventure, with no clear path to stability. Not only will the House Freedom Caucus happily use this leverage, but every other member will quickly learn the power of their vote. Remember the Democrats in the Senater in 2009, with exactcly 60 voters? Everyone become the kingmaker. Think about the Senate Republicans now. Every vote is an adventure of cobbling together 50 members. That could become as huge headache in the House. Especially since this time around, they won’t have earmarks to smooth out the process of buying-up votes.
A small Democratic majority would probably be highly-united by opposition to President Trump. But in order to get that majority, they will probably have to pick up some seats where Trump isn’t exactly complete poison. That could easily result in the rise of a serious moderate faction with little interest in participating in the symbolic or substantive attacks on the President. And it won’t be lost on the Progressive Caucus or Congressional Black Caucus that they also will hold the balance of power in a thin-margin House. Again, we haven’t had a small majority in the House in over a decade. A lot has changed since then, and most of it is not conducive to easily governing a party caucus.
4. Check out this congressional data contest. The Library of Congress is running a prize contest for the development of digital applications that make use of congress.gov data. I highly recommend you check it out; congress.gov is an amazing resource for legislative information, and the development of further applications that make use of its data would be awesome.
5. Can you think of an album where the most popular song is literally the worst song on the record? I posed this question on Twitter earlier today after a 7am conversation with @tompepinsky and got a variety of responses. Obviously, the question is highly subjective: there are lots of ways to define “most popular,” and “worst” is almost totally in the eye of the beholder. And you get a lot of contrarian bias, overplayed syndrome effects, and too-cute-by-half arguments. Stairway to Heaven is not worse than Battle of Evermore or Four Sticks. A Little Help From My Friends is not worse than Within You, Without You. I could make a case for Smells Like Teen Spirit, but that’s because I’m an irrational lover of side 2 of Nevermind. Whole Lotta Love is my least favorite song on Led Zeppelin II, but I’m sure almost everyone likes it at least better than the Lemon Song.
Some actual possible contenders: The Sweater Song (Weezer Blue Album), Connection (Elastica), Get Off This (Kerosene Hat), Everybody Hurts (Automatic For the People), Brick (Whatever and Ever Amen), Train in Vain (London Calling), Semi-Charmed Life (Semi-Charmed Life), D’yer Ma’ker (House of the Holy), Yellow Submarine (Revolver), Rainy Day Women #12 and #35 (Blonde on Blonde), Big Me (Foo Fighters), and Jeremy (Ten). Jonathan Bernstein made the awesome point that Money For Nothing is probably the worst song on Brothers in Arms, which itself is the most popular Dire Straits album, and also probably the worst.
Any other great answers you can think of?
See you next time (probably end of next week). Thanks for reading!