Steven Pearlstein, a former Post columnist, is the Robinson professor of public affairs at George Mason University and director of the Fixing Congress initiative at the University of Pennsylvania.
House Democrats and their leaders are in a lather because two of their caucus’s most centrist members had the temerity not to put the party — and party unity — ahead of the interests of their constituents. Imagine!
The “defectors,” Reps. Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, defied party norms and provided the votes needed to pass a rule that allowed Republican leaders to put a package of bills on the House floor. The package included two legislatively meaningless but politically charged resolutions meant to jam Democrats over socialism and anti-Israel activities on college campuses — the kind of partisan gamesmanship that now consumes the congressional workweek. The package also included a bipartisan bill to delay implementation of whale protection regulations that threaten the livelihoods of Northeast lobstermen like those in Golden’s district.
Members of the House majority are expected to vote for such rules and members of the minority against. But in recent years, far-right Republicans have repeatedly brought the House to a standstill by refusing to go along until GOP leaders agreed to change the underlying legislation to their liking. When a few Republicans threatened to do so again this week, Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez, in a clever bit of old-fashioned horse-trading, provided the necessary votes because the whale bill was included in the package.
Democrats were furious for several reasons.
The first was that two of the bills — the ones having to do with socialism and Israel — were brought up simply to force vulnerable party members to cast politically risky votes weeks before the midterms.
Moreover, Golden’s whale bill was strenuously opposed by environmental groups whose members are big Democratic donors.
But perhaps most significant is that with their party likely to regain the majority this fall, House Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Katherine Clark are desperate to prevent their rank and file from even thinking about the kind of renegade tactics that the House Freedom Caucus has used so effectively. Given this fixation on party discipline, some sort of punishment for Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez is inevitable.
Leaders of both parties, however, have nobody but themselves to blame for such acts of defiance. Over the past 30 years, members of their caucuses have been increasingly shut out of the legislative process.
There was a time when members could be reasonably confident that if they did their homework and built bipartisan support, their bills and amendments could get a hearing and a vote in committee and a vote on the House floor. And in return for that freedom to represent their constituents as they saw fit, members agreed to let party leaders manage a complex legislative process by loyally voting the party line on rules and other procedural issues, even if they disagreed on the underlying policies.
But that implicit bargain no longer exists.
These days, party leaders are determined not to allow any legislation to be considered by committee or brought to the House floor that might expose division within the caucus, undermining the unity needed to crush an opposition party that poses an existential threat to America. Or legislation that might require vulnerable members to choose between the party’s more radical base needed to win primaries or the more centrist voters needed to win general elections. Or legislation that might offend special-interest groups or major campaign donors. Or bipartisan compromise that might give members of the other party the opportunity to claim credit for legislation most voters support. (Golden’s whale bill, for example, was co-sponsored by New York Republican Mike Lawler, who tops the Democrats’ target list this cycle.)
This hyper-partisan mindset now dominates the thinking in both parties. It is the mindset that has robbed members of the independence and initiative needed to do their jobs representing their constituents. And it is the mindset that has prevented Congress from even discussing, let alone resolving, the most urgent issues facing the country, creating a vacuum that an autocratic president and activist Supreme Court have been all too willing to fill.
What ails Congress — what ails American democracy — is surely not too little party unity and discipline but too much of it. It is the problem, not the solution. What the country needs — what Democrats who want the opportunity to govern need — is more members like Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez with the independence and courage to stand up to party leaders, take seriously their jobs as legislators and engage in the kind of bipartisan dealmaking that, in an evenly and bitterly divided country, is necessary to get anything done.
Party leaders who demand blind loyalty aren’t leaders — they’re bullies. Real leaders win respect and loyalty by returning that respect and loyalty. And the way leaders do that is not by guaranteeing members legislative outcomes they demand but by giving them a genuine opportunity to propose, debate, amend, vote on and pass legislation that’s important to them and their constituents. That’s the best way, the only way, to fix Congress and save American democracy.
Oh, in case you’re wondering, Golden’s whale bill passed the House by a vote of 219-196.
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