House of Pain without Gain – Stupidity on Steroids

House of Pain without Gain – Stupidity on Steroids

Exodus Redux

It is a legislative body the was never envisioned when the Declaration of Independence was signed. When delegates met in 1787 to amend the Article of Confederation, they “quickly decided that the fledgling country needed an entirely new system of government, one that would give the power to the states and avoid the possibility of an American tyrant similar to the one they had just escaped. One of the major debates of the [Constitutional] Convention was whether states should have an equal number of votes in Congress, or have different numbers of votes based on population size...

“So what was the New Jersey Plan? A brief New Jersey Plan summary is that the United States would have a unicameral (one-house) Congress, with each state having a single vote. It was developed in opposition to the Virginia Plan, which would have created a bicameral (two-house) Congress where both houses distributed votes to states based on their population. The Virginia Plan centered the power of the government on the larger states, while the New Jersey plan allowed the smaller states to have equal footing with their larger counterparts.” Study.com.

The result was the Congress we have today: one aimed at protecting big agricultural states with relatively smaller populations – hence two Senators per state regardless of size elected every six years – and one driven strictly by population – the House of Representatives elected every two years. The Senate had confirmation powers while the House controlled the introduction of appropriations and federal budgetary bills. You have to wonder how a state with around 600,000 people like Wyoming has the same Senate voting power of California with 40 million people. And you should be concerned that with their two-year term, representatives from the House spend 70% of their working hours raising campaign financing. Further, while travel time in the early stages of our Congress was based on relatively short travel distances, the explosion of our land mass has completely changed that dynamic.

The House is a very difficult place to work these days, as the recent gridlock shows – mostly from the ultra-rightwing “gang of eight” who have figured out how to control the entire body (pictured above), electing extremists as speaker, extorting bill passage conditioned on accepting extreme elements of their agenda and blackmailing themselves into key committee leadership position where they investigate and attack only their Democratic opponents. Even Majorie Taylor Greene was ousted from the House radical right “Freedom Caucus”… although she has not moved a whit from her often bizarre but always extremists positions.

That constant thirst for money that clearly defined the House was the weak spot. The great extremist enabler, the 2010 Citizens United vs FEC Supreme Court ruling that effectively took the cap off campaign contributions (except where directly controlled by candidates). Mega-rich contributors with extremist positions, mostly in the form of Super-PACs, lured extremist candidates who would never have been able to raise a dime early in a race pre-Citizens, to mirror those extreme views to garner massive amounts of rightwing Super-PAC contributions, often with a “we’ll never compromise” pledge.

Trump merely reflected the rising polarization of America, but the House ensured that the going forward prognosis for legislation was about to become even more profoundly dysfunctional. The result has been the recent exodus of long-serving members of Congress leaving, either short of their terms like recently ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy, or simply by electing not to run again with dozens such announcements.

Writing for the December 8th Los Angeles Times, Cameron Joseph summarizes the quagmire: “The last year has been marked by an almost unprecedented level of chaos, dysfunction and near misses on self-inflicted national economic catastrophes in the Republican-controlled House, all bookended by two separate speakership crises. McCarthy, the Bakersfield Republican who has been at the center of the House’s 2023 maelstrom, lost his grip on the gavel in October.

The disarray has led to a surge in retirements from both parties. Thirty-one House members are leaving, including 16 who aren’t running for another office. In November alone, 12 members announced their retirements — the most in any month for more than a decade, according to Ballotpedia.

“For Californians, the day-to-day burdens of the job are heavier than they are for many of their colleagues. Californians always face some of the longest commutes of any member of Congress. Forty of the state’s 52 House members are Democrats, and being in the minority is a drag — especially during the current era of hyperpartisanship. On top of that, in the span of two years California’s delegation has gone from having two of its own at the helm of both parties in the House to having none, with the exit of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) from party leadership followed quickly by McCarthy’s ignominious demotion and decision to quit… The real surprise isn’t how many California members are retiring; it’s how many are willing to stay after the last year of chaos…

“[Today, a dysfunctional House elected] little-known Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) speaker. He then cut a deal to punt a decision on a government shutdown into the new year — a similar move to that which sealed McCarthy’s fate… But Johnson’s deal runs only through late January, when Congress will once again grapple with what was once an easy vote to keep the lights on and avoid a government shutdown. In the last week, the House wasn’t voting on that issue — or high-stakes funding to help Ukraine ward off Russia’s invasion or supply more military aid to Israel. House Republicans instead moved toward an official impeachment vote of President Biden, before finally voting to kick out Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) from the House after keeping him for the last year in spite of his many alleged felonies because they needed his vote in a closely divided chamber…

“‘The travel sucks. It’s a long flight both ways. I get tired at random times of the day because of the time change,’ Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) told The Times. On one recent flight, he was delayed six hours because the plane’s toilet wasn’t working — but he flies so much, he couldn’t remember when and where it happened… Add to that a ‘Republican majority that’s doing a bunch of stupid stuff,’ and the day-to-day in Congress ‘honestly feels more stupid’ now than at any other point in Lieu’s decade in the House, he said… And he’s a member of House Democratic leadership, serving as vice chairman…. It’s hard to overstate how maddening and demoralizing the last year in Congress has been for members of both parties.” The only truly happy group seems to be that rightwing “gang of eight,” but many of their fellow Republicans fear that their extreme agenda and tactics may just threaten the GOP House majority in the 2024 election.

I’m Peter Dekom, and in light of the catastrophic Citizens United vs FEC decision, it is easy to see that those Super-PACs truly got their monies’ worth.