An attempt at a short post just to make sure I remember how this thing works. If there are particular aspects of government (in particular the executive or the legislative) that you think I should cover, please drop a note in the comments.
As we get closer to the end of the 117th Congress, news coverage will focus ever more on the upcoming November elections, where all 435 House seats and 34 Senate seats are up for grabs. I’m no pollster, so I’m going to ask a question you don’t see to often: What are all of these new people running to actually DO if they win? Why bother?
A new member of Congress, as a matter of simple math, will almost always have less experience than the person they are replacing. However, it isn’t certain that they’ll be here for the same reasons as the lawmaker they are replacing - in fact, given the trends, it’s probably unlikely. Unfortunately, they might be showing up for a better platform to be a newsmaker, auditioning as a future MSNBC host (or FoxNews, or even Newsmax!), or merely looking to stir up the pot.
But, hopefully, hopefully, they are a few with at least a little bit of the naive hope Jimmy Stewart carries when he play Congressman Smith. And the fact that Jimmy Stewart was playing a role is important too - Each Member of Congress has a role to play in the institution of Congress, even if they choose not to cooperate.
Mr. Smith goes to Washington:
OK, FINE, that is probably a different Mr. Smtih than you expected. But you have to admit he looks more like your average Member of Congress than this:
It’s my newsletter and I’ll make a dumb Mr. Smith goes to Washington joke if I want to. My longer exploration of what ails Congress is still in the works, but this helps get some of the cobwebs out.
A new Senator or Congressman has always started by muddling through, making some deals with leadership to move bills and “protect the new seat”, moving up the ranks, and slowly gaining some legislative chops. It takes effort to get there and they have to overcome the hurdles - further, not every newly elected Senator or Congresswoman wants to put in the work, assuming they’ve got the ability in the first place. None of that is new. Some of this is learning on the job, some of it is gaining trust and building relationships to trade off of, and some of it is simply moving up the ranks on Committees. You can even read a “Being an effective lawmaker” pamphlet, presuming you made it to office AND actually know how to read!
However, when it looks like Congress isn’t for legislating anymore, on the margin you start to get more people coming to Congress to do something other than legislating. I genuinely wonder what the Lauren Boeberts of the world think Congress is going to be like, other than full of old people and floor speeches.
It’s another version of “when you tax something, you get less of it.” The situation is even worse if you subsidize the performance arts aspect of Congress, as you could argue we do now. So, when you make legislating harder1, don’t be surprised that fewer people come to Congress in order to be a lawmaker, particularly as current members retire or start doing other things with their time (I’m warning you - DO NOT CLICK THAT LINK).
We don’t even have to go to the most Looney Tunes of Congress Creatures to look at some examples of how people choose to spend their time! Instead, let’s review our favorite irascible independent socialist caucusing with the Democratic party, Bernie Sanders and compare him with another Vermonter:
Sanders is instructive because he has been in the Senate since 2007, and Congress since 1991, so he’s not even that “new” to the phenomenon. Its an imperfect measurement, but in his time in the Senate Sanders has only led 8 bills that have made it through the Committee process, and only two became law. One was renaming the Danville post office…2
Leahy, on the flip side, has gotten 90 bills through, and 15 of those are laws. If you are worried that Senator Leahy, as the most Senior member of the Senate is a bad comparison, let me point you at Senators Cardin and Whitehouse. Both are pretty far to the left, and reached office at the same time - Cardin has 59 (& 8 became law), while Whitehouse moved 21 bills (& 7 became law). However, I guarantee you that most Americans are far more familiar with Larry David Bernie Sanders than other members of the Senate…
This phenomenon isn’t just on the left, either: Ted Cruz is sitting pretty at 12 bills, 2 of which were street renaming efforts, moving out of committee. And unfortunately, he’s one of the famous ones. I can’t bear to look in depth at the House of Representatives, where things are much worse, other than to note that Madison Cawthorn has introduced both the Candace Owens Act and the Donument Act.
While the wackadoos are interesting and entertaining horrifying to look at, we’ve always had some of the crazy in Congress - what is more interesting to me are the run of the mill members who are (or could) be doing the boring legislative stuff.
These new members are the ones fighting an increasingly uphill battle against polarization and all of these legislative headwinds. In the Senate it’s still early, but Senator Lujan and Hickenlooper seem to be putting in some real effort towards being serious legislators. It is by no means the only measure, but first-term House Republicans like Peter Meijer and David Valadao stood up and voted for the second impeachment of President Trump, pointing to some interest in standing within the institution of Congress rather than on it. At the same time, fellow freshmen like Adam Kinzinger and Anthony Gonzalez have already decided that one term was enough.
That said, I think there are some reasons for hope3 - one of them being that personal agency still matters, and even when incentives are pointing a bad direction, a member of Congress can decide to buck the trend.4
Given some of the unfortunate dynamics in the Republican party, House Republicans in particular have to deal with the fact that any kind of legislating from the minority runs the risk of being labeled as “traitorous”. This isn’t uncommon, but the massive split in votes for something like infrastructure between the Senate (19 of 50, 38%) and the House (13 of 213 (6%) is telling.
It is rumored he isn’t real big on hearing attendance either.
To be explored in more detail when I finally finish Part 2 of this:
To paraphrase a saying: I’ll admit that the odds aren’t good, even if the goods are certainly odd.