Legislative tools once thought to be assets of the House minority party only are now being wielded by members of the majority Republican conference. Members and strategists say it is less a reflection of weak leadership and more due to their frustration that they cannot advance the Republican Party’s agenda more quickly.
The use of the discharge petition, a proposal that requires 218 signatures from representatives to force a vote on a specific bill, thereby circumventing leadership, is just one of several tools that have seen an unprecedented rise in the 119th Congress.
Most of this can be attributed to the House GOP’s razor-thin majority, forcing leadership to navigate loud personalities and multiple ideological caucuses that all have different ideas on how to approach the party’s priorities.
But the rise in discharge petitions to circumvent leadership, particularly from centrist members, has stoked questions as to whether House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) tight grip on his conference is slowly loosening. The speaker has already faced numerous battles this year from his right flank, leading to an increased number of votes being held up as a bargaining chip.
But discharge petitions, though a minor concept outside of Washington, can be “barometers of commitment in the institution,” said Philip Wallach, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute strategist studying congressional dysfunction.
Rank and file disgruntled at pace
With centrists now stepping up to the plate to circumvent leadership, does that mean Johnson’s hold on his conference is weak? Strategists argue no — instead, it is indicative that rank-and-file members are disgruntled that the chamber is not moving as fast as they would like on widely supported measures.
“This is one of those cases where members are clearly frustrated that a lot of their legislation, including broadly bipartisan bills, are getting stuffed in a drawer and don’t see the light of day,” said Casey Burgat, associate professor and director of legislative affairs at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management.
“They only have a few limited mechanisms to force votes on things, and that is because they are frustrated with leadership bottling them up,” Burgat continued. “Right now, that’s the discharge petition.”
The speaker has a handful of petitions looming over his head. While discharge petitions are mostly filed by Democrats, GOP lawmakers have taken up the mantle in recent weeks. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) brought forward a petition on the longtime issue of banning congressional stock trading, one that has long split both parties in Congress. She told the Washington Examiner she is still encouraging members to sign the petition, but she is in talks with leadership about moving the legislation forward.
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“I do expect something — to do nothing is absolutely ridiculous,” Luna said of House leadership.
This is not the first time this Congress that Luna has aimed to force a vote on an issue. Luna, though not a centrist, has broken with her former colleagues of the Freedom Caucus to advance policies such as proxy voting for new parents. She said the usage of the tool comes from frustration with certain legislation not coming up for a vote, but insisted it is not a rebuke of leadership.
“This has been a toolkit tool that we’ve been able to use for a while,” Luna told the Washington Examiner. “People just were told not to do it, but if we voted on it as a conference together, those are the House rules. I’m playing by the rules.”
Another use of this measure came earlier this year for the bill to release all of the files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) successfully got the 218 signatures needed for the discharge petition to force a vote on their bill, but only after the government shutdown ended and Johnson swore in Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ), making her the decisive 218th signature. Johnson had faced accusations that he was deliberately stalling Grijalva’s swearing-in to delay the Epstein vote.
Johnson gained another thorn in his side this week when two Republicans, Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Jen Kiggans (R-VA), unveiled different but similar bipartisan discharge petitions to force a vote on the Obamacare subsidies set to expire at the end of this year. While most conservatives, including leadership, are against any form of extension, centrists such as Fitzpatrick and Kiggans believe this is an issue Republicans need to address, whether they like it or not.
“Too many people inside this echo chamber are not connected with their districts,” Fitzpatrick said. “It’s an existential matter for people back home that we care about, where this is a very real problem.”
He added on Thursday that lawmakers are trying to do things through the “normal course.”
“You try to do things through regular order,” Fitzpatrick said. “All those remedies are exhausted. Then you got to go this route, unfortunately.”
Burgat noted that centrist lawmakers are taking a more civilized approach to Johnson, alerting him that they respect him but “you’re forcing our hands.”
“If you gave us the vote, this would pass overwhelmingly. You have chosen not to do that. We only have a few levers available to us for leverage, and we’re going to do that,” Burgat said, agreeing with Luna that this is the “institutional way” of handling matters rather than the disruptive, chaotic methods used by further right members.
But that does not mean Johnson has his leadership fully locked down. Despite the broad powers of the speaker, “leaders are only as powerful as the rank and file allow them to be,” Burgat noted. If Johnson can avoid getting “rolled by his own members” all the time and keep rank-and-file members mostly comfortable about what is scheduled for votes on the House floor, he should be able to face petitions such as Luna’s, Fitzpatrick’s, and Kiggans’s without it being a true sign of weakness in his leadership.
But, Burgat said, “as we’ve seen, there are at least a few number of bills that enough Republican members think that it is doing more harm to them electorally, to them as Republicans politically, that they’re willing to join up with Democrats to show action on this.”
Wallach said he thinks the talk about Johnson losing control is getting “a bit carried away.” He pointed to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who threatened to sign every discharge petition, Republican or Democratic, because she is annoyed with the legislative process.
“As a duly elected Member of Congress, I believe my colleagues should have the ability to bring legislation to the floor for a vote,” Greene wrote on X. “Every Member deserves the right to represent their district and receive a recorded vote on their bills. This is a result of House leadership blocking Members from governing.”
DISCHARGE PETITIONS ON OBAMACARE SUBSIDIES IN LIMBO AS DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP MULLS NEXT STEPS
Wallach said Greene’s move was a “bold statement.” However, members such as Greene and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who have been vocal about Johnson and what they believe is a lack of leadership, are leaving Congress, taking their unique ways of doing things with them.
“It’s not clear that anybody else would take that position up,” Wallach said. “But it would only take a handful of Republicans to adopt that position to totally blow things open, given the current numbers.”
