In his second term as president, Harry Truman was aggravated with the snail’s pace at which lawmakers tackled their responsibilities. It led the Democrat to come up with a memorable label to summarize his frustrations with Capitol Hill, which was then under Republican control: It was a “do-nothing Congress,” he said.
At the time, however, members at least made an effort. Nearly eight decades later, members of the GOP-led House are giving the phrase “do-nothing Congress” a more literal meaning by not showing up for work at all.
After taking off part of July and all of August, House members did some work in September, voting on measures on Sept. 19. But at that point, Speaker Mike Johnson sent lawmakers home — and they haven’t returned since.
“You can’t do legislative business if you’re not here,” Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts told The Boston Globe. “There are no negotiations going on. There are no talks. There are no hearings. Nothing. I don’t know how long he can keep his vacation going.”
As House members enjoy their sixth week off, Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters, “[T]here cannot be a regular legislative session so long as the government is closed and Americans are feeling so much pain.” In reality, however, this is the Louisiana Republican’s choice: The House could be in regular legislative session right now. He’s simply chosen to keep members away.
Johnson added that his GOP members are currently doing “some of the most meaningful work of their careers,” adding that he’s reluctant to “pull them away” from their time in their home districts.
As the House speaker sees it, it’s important for lawmakers to stay away from the jobs they were elected to do. The prolonged and unnecessary break, Americans are supposed to believe, is a good thing.
That’s not just a tough sell. As a New York Times analysis explained, it’s also a posture that has “diminished the role of Congress and shrunken the speakership at a critical moment.” The article added:
It’s an approach born of political expedience that could have far-reaching consequences for an institution that has already ceded much of its power to President Trump. And Mr. Johnson, who without the president’s backing wields little influence over his own members, has chosen to make himself subservient to Mr. Trump, a break with many speakers of the past who sought in their own ways to act more as a governing partner with the president than as his underling. The Times added that Trump has privately joked, “I’m the speaker and the president.” Johnson, in a position that has traditionally wielded enormous power, could easily reassert himself and disprove the humiliating joke. He’s choosing not to. There are plenty of theories as to why the House speaker refuses to let the chamber return to work, as the Republican-led Senate already has, and I won’t pretend to be able to read his mind. It’s worth noting, however, that if Johnson were to allow members to get back to their jobs, he’d have to swear in Democratic Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona, who intends to sign a pending discharge petition that will force a vote on releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files. The longer the speaker chooses to keep the House on ice, the longer he can push off that vote.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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