After the 2016 election, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis., welcomed “the dawn of a new unified Republican government.” Reince Priebus, who was to be President Trump’s first chief of staff, declared that it was time “to put up and show up.” Vice President Mike Pence warned lawmakers to “buckle up.” For the second time since President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the GOP controlled the House, Senate, and White House at the same time.
More than a year later, they have far too little to show for this rare conjunction of executive and legislative control. And now, they’re on vacation.
Republicans have less than six months until the midterm elections to convince voters to renew their majorities. They will point to tax cuts (bravo) and to Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch (again, bravo). But these accomplishments do not add up to a job well done. Some will even point to the limited rollback of the Dodd-Frank financial regulation, and they can legitimately point to the more extensive cutting of red tape. Each is a significant achievement, to be sure. But none lives up to the pedal-to-the-metal, no-holds-barred, Mach-10 pre-inauguration hype.
Legislative malaise is palpable on Capitol Hill. Promises to repeal Obamacare have been broken. Talk of fiscal responsibility is a bad joke. Republicans have decided they won’t even try to pass a budget this year.
A proposal to work through August recess from Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., is welcome but underwhelming. The freshman senator told Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., that he and more than a dozen of his colleagues are ready to roll up their sleeves and get down to legislating. They are even prepared “to work Monday and Friday, nights as well as weekends.”
Going to work on Monday and Friday in the last quarter of the 115th Congress doesn’t make up for its ineffectiveness in the past 17 months.
Republicans will protest at this chiding. They will bellyache about the Democrats’ obstruction. They will say that control of both chambers of Congress and the White House is not enough. They will say they need an even bigger majority in the Senate.
But if Republicans can’t do the easy little things, what confidence does the country have that they will do the difficult big things?
Consider an uninspiring episode that occurred earlier this month in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
A crop of seven nominees for circuit court judges was up for consideration. The committee rambled for the better part of two hours as one by one, Republican senators headed for the exits. By lunch time, there weren’t enough senators present for a vote, and the nominees languished needlessly in limbo for another week.
So many staffers have started rescheduling their vacation plans that it seems McConnell will cut August recess back by a couple weeks or even scrap it all together. But the prime directive of the Republican majority appears to be avoid difficult votes at all costs.
Political headwinds face the GOP in November. There are signs that the blue Democratic wave may be less overwhelming than it seemed two months ago. But the odds of losing at least one chamber are high. Republicans ought to use every parliamentary tool at their disposal, such as budget reconciliation, and take on every big issue, such as Obamacare repeal. Success isn’t guaranteed, but failure is inevitable if Republicans don’t even try.
And if they don’t even try during “the dawn of a new unified Republican government,” it might already be high noon, and November may prove to be dusk.
