Despite getting shellacked in November for the third consecutive congressional election, the minority House Democrats are poised to wield some weighty influence on key votes in the coming two years.
With bills in the House requiring only a simple majority for passage, the House minority is typically viewed as irrelevant — a portrayal that has increased as the parties have become more disciplined in recent decades.
But given House Speaker John Boehner’s ongoing challenge to keep his conservative flank in line, he may be forced to turn to Democrats for help in delivering votes on legislation that is divisive to his conference.
“When Republicans are split so badly that they can’t carry a majority on a floor vote, a substantial number of Democrats will get to choose whether to help the measure over the top and sort of marginalize the most conservative Republicans, or to … [withhold] their vote and embarrass them,” said Ramesh Ponnuru, a political expert with the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning Washington think thank.
An example of the former scenario was December’s $1.1 trillion spending bill. With 67 of 229 voting Republicans rejecting the measure, Boehner and his leadership team needed dozens of Democrats to help pass the measure and avoid a government shutdown. The bill narrowly passed 219-206, with 57 Democrats voting yes.
Conservatives opposed the measure partly because they said it included too many concessions to Democrats. But with so many conservatives threatening to oppose the bill, House leaders felt they needed to include the provisions.
“You’ve got a significant block of Republicans who sort of view their role differently than the majority of the House Republicans and can deny the House majority the ability to work its will,” Ponnuru said. “Ironically what this means is, the legislative outcomes are a little bit to the Left than they otherwise would be, because you’ve got to cobble together a majority that doesn’t include those conservatives.”
Just how many conservative Republicans will defect on key budget-related matters — such as the coming debt ceiling debate — is uncertain. But with 24 Republicans unsuccessfully opposing Boehner for re-election for speaker on Tuesday, it’s a faction leadership can’t ignore.
Yet thanks to the 13 seats the Republicans picked up in November’s congressional elections, the GOP now holds 245 seats in a 435-member chamber where only 218 are needed to pass legislation. And the party enjoys its biggest cushion of the past eight decades. That means Boehner can afford to lose up to 28 Republicans and still pass legislation without any Democratic votes.
“I do think he has somewhat more room to maneuver than he did four years ago or even two years ago,” said Bill Galston, a political expert with the Brookings Institution, a liberal-leaning Washington think tank. “His caucus is larger, and simple arithmetic will tell you he can afford to lose more votes.
“So it’s going to take not just a band of dissidents but a real split in the party to make him lose control.”
Galston added that with the GOP now in control of the Senate, “the level of frustration in his caucus may go down” because Senate Democrats will have significantly less power to kill House-passed bills.
“And [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell is going to be the kind of partner who will always urge the House to pay attention to the consequences [of their actions as it relates to] the Republican Party [presidential] nominee in 2016,” he said. “So if I were Boehner I wouldn’t be unhappy about his situation.”
Still, while the House GOP ranks have swelled, so too has its conservative flank, meaning a sizable split in the House GOP on key issues is possible.
“I’ve been [in the House] for two years, and we lack a leadership and we lack vision of where the country’s going,” Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., who challenged Boehner for speaker told Fox News on Monday. “And I hear it from members. It’s not just me feeling this.”
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., when asked if he expects House Republican leaders to increasingly turn to Democrats for help in passing major bills, said “there will be opportunities certainly to work together.”
“I have great respect for John Boehner,” Hoyer told reporters Tuesday. “I’ve talked to [Senate Majority Leader Kevin] McCarthy within the last week, and he has expressed — and I expressed as well — a hope that we could work together and find common ground.”
