With the passage of a defense bill and an agreement on a spending package, the 117th Congress is wrapping up an extremely productive two years in office. This Congress, when Democrats held narrow margins in both houses, stands in sharp contrast to the last era of unified control of government, when Republicans controlled both chambers in 2017-2018. That era, remembered for late Sen. John McCain’s thumbs-down rejection of the repeal of part of the Affordable Care Act, ended with an extended government shutdown.
The difference this time? Preparation, pragmatism and professionalism.
Democrats were ready to act on consequential legislation when they took control of Congress and the White House two years ago in part because they had put in the time hashing out their party’s policy priorities during the long presidential nominating season. Exchanges in televised debates sometimes felt interminable, but they paid off, as did behind-the-seasons discussions on issue after issue.
Of course, very narrow margins meant that some ambitious ideas had to be scrapped. The votes just weren’t there. But on health care, climate, income inequality and more, a lot of the work had already been done.
Contrast that with the Republican presidential debates leading up to the 2016 primaries, notable mainly for personal attacks and unprecedented crudeness. Granted, that prepared the party for a presidency of personal attacks and crudeness. But not for public policy initiatives.
Democrats in both chambers also wanted to get things done and were willing to cut deals as necessary to do so. To their credit, a solid minority of Senate Republicans shared that pragmatism. The result was bipartisan deals on infrastructure, guns and marriage rights. The pragmatic spirit extended to the agreement on the spending package, which included critical reforms to the Electoral Count Act.
The change to the 19th century electoral law governing presidential election procedures came about as a result of former President Donald Trump’s attempts to stop the 2020 vote from being certified, culminating in the Jan. 6 siege at the Capitol. The reforms won’t fully prevent trouble — a determined party propelled by anti-democratic forces can always find ways to act if given the chance.
But the changes will make it harder to undermine a presidential election. The old Electoral Count Act was a sloppy statute, and the new one will be far less ambiguous.
Democratic pragmatism and House Republicans’ inability to cut deals (even among themselves) shaped this spending bill. Senate Republicans, after all, could have blocked anything but a short-term extension of last year’s spending levels. That would have handed off the job of writing the full-year funding bill to the next Congress, where a new Republican majority in the House would presumably give the party far more leverage.
But a large-enough bloc of Senate Republicans including leader Mitch McConnell made this deal instead, presumably because they anticipated that once Republicans were in the majority in the House come Jan. 3 they would refuse any deal, risking an extended government shutdown.
The resulting agreement isn’t great for liberal Democrats, as annual spending for domestic programs funded through the bill have dropped below levels for defense spending — a line that liberals have been loath to cross.
But the bill is a win for pragmatists from both parties. There are plenty of goodies for Democrats even if they had to make concessions to get the thing passed. And in addition to plenty of military spending, Senate Republicans got provisions they supported, including more money for Ukraine and some tax provisions and even a lobster benefit for Maine Senator Susan Collins — and perhaps more importantly for them, blocked several provisions Democrats wanted.
Wanting a deal is one thing; arranging it and then seeing it through both chambers of Congress and on to the president for his signature is a lot harder. It helps to have professionals. Democrats have taken a lot of grief for having superannuated leaders, and that’s fair — but it’s also the case that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her team, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and President Joe Biden all know how to do their jobs.
Not just them; for this spending bill, House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro and Senate Appropriations Chair Patrick Leahy (and top Republican Richard Shelby) knew how to work together across the aisle and, perhaps even more important, across chambers. If there was a deal to be cut, these folks knew how to make it happen.
The 117th Congress certainly had its disappointments, starting with the inability to eliminate the debt limit and raising the likelihood of a showdown next year. The entire Democratic voting rights agenda was killed by filibuster, as was a potential bipartisan compromise on immigration.
Being productive isn’t good if it produces poor legislation, and people will disagree about whether this Congress’s output served the nation’s interest. But Democrats have plenty to be happy about. And they have left Republicans a good model, albeit one likely to be ignored, for how to get things done.
____
ABOUT THE WRITER
Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
