The Fate of the 116th Congress
What’s in store for the Democratic House majority
By Nate Lapointe
The Progressive Teen Contributor
IN THE WAKE OF THE BLUE WAVE OF 2018, WE HAVE THE MOST DIVERSE CONGRESS IN HISTORY: one with an emboldened Democratic majority poised to exercise power in Congress for the first time in years. The presence of a Republican majority in the Senate and President Trump in the White House inevitably begs the question: what will this new Congress do? The answer, unfortunately, is not much. Figuring out why means looking at both the structure of our government and the current political environment.
It’s a trope at this point: every American election, presidential and midterm alike, is hailed as “one of the most important elections in American history,” despite the impact of this election being dubious. While the Democratic loss of the Senate in 2014 has had implications up to the present day, it’s hard to point to legislative consequences of the congressional elections of 2004, 2012, or 2016.
If we’re being honest about our government, we have to acknowledge that Congress has given up progressively more power to the President over the last 60 years. Over that time, Congress has gradually allowed for the creation of the “imperial presidency”, where the president is the focus of all national politics, both foreign and domestic, and is able to exercise significant power over the government without legislation. Outlets as diverse as the New Republic and National Review come together to lament the imperial presidency; the virtue of the imperial presidency is going to be a subject for debate for much of the immediate future.
The imperial presidency is important right now because it’s one of two reasons that the 116th Congress will be one of the least productive in history. The other reason is a fact of our times: Partisanship is the strongest force in our politics right now. A deep dive into the causes and damaging effects of contemporary partisanship is necessary, but because there have been about 12,000 of those written in the last two years, a brief description should be sufficient. Since 2008, the Republican party has rapidly shifted right on the issues while it has stopped trying to expand its appeal beyond its electoral base. Because the Republicans were able to consolidate their power in the House through gerrymandering and their candidates often only need the support of the base to win, they have no incentive to moderate their stances or reach across the aisle and compromise with Democrats. Seeing that the Republicans are moving further right and openly shunning compromise, Democrats do the same: recognize compromise as infeasible and shift to the left.
To see this trend of polarization in action, we just have to look at Congress’s response to the Affordable Care Act. For 8 years, Republicans have consistently run by saying the phrase “repeal and replace,” despite their lack of replacement. When controlled by Republicans, the House voted dozens of times to repeal the bill. In the end, not a single Republican in the Senate or House voted for the ACA, and the furious opposition to the ACA was a significant part of the Tea Party wave in 2010. In 2017, the ACA was saved from repeal only because a few Republican senators broke ranks and voted for its favor — a rare instance in history.
Combined, these two trends mean that there’s not going to be much legislation from Congress. Given that Republicans can accomplish a significant portion of their agenda through executive action, congressional Republicans lack the incentive to pass legislation that they would be forced to compromise on. The same is true for Democratic priorities like a “Green New Deal” to address climate change or HR.1, the Democrats’ bill to expand voting rights and target corruption, which are unlikely to pass the Senate. That said, Democrats still ought to introduce and pass such legislation in order to show the voters what the Democratic Party stands for, even if these bills will die in the Senate. Despite the lack of opportunities to pass legislation, control of the House means that Democrats do still have one way to exercise power: oversight.
Before the 2016 election, when it was widely assumed the Hillary Clinton would win, Republicans in the house were absolutely thrilled; a Democratic president meant that they could use House committees to call investigations on anything that even remotely looked like scandal. They planned an aggressive use of their oversight powers, in order to make sure that the next occupant of the White House knew that Congress would be watching and keeping them honest.
Then Trump won and the aggressive use of oversight the Republicans promised just didn’t happen. Where there’s a Republican in the White House, Republicans trust him to be honest, even when he lies more than any president in modern history. Now that the Democrats have control of the House, they also have oversight power. This is where a lot of attention will be focused during this session. After they took the house, Democrats pledged to provide comprehensive oversight of the Trump administration, which is sorely needed given the scale of questionable behavior in his cabinet and by the President himself. The oversight powers Democrats wield will be their most useful tool until after 2020, save for a potential impeachment vote. While House leaders have backed away from impeaching Trump in recent days, it’s still a possibility.
The biggest effect of the blue wave in 2018 is that the Democrats will be well positioned to hold the House in 2020. Incumbency has its advantages, and the prevailing political wind is blowing to the left. If a Democratic President takes the oath of office in January 2021 with a Democratic House and Senate, we could see the most productive Congress since 1933.
