7 moments that defined 2023 in Congress
By Michael Jones
Congress officially wrapped its legislative year this year with little to show for Americans who aren’t perpetually online and obsessed with Beltway theatrics.
2023 was a stark reminder of the terrible gridlock a divided government can inflict when the House and Senate hold slim majorities and congressional Republicans prioritize grievance politics over fulfilling the awesome responsibility of governing that comes with holding power.
With an election year on the horizon and the fundamentals of the current Congress intact, think of the past 12 months as the first act of a two-part play that will define the future of American democracy and its place in the global world order. The holiday recess is an overdue respite from the mayhem before Act 2 begins a little over three weeks from now.
Modern politics is too unpredictable to forecast what awaits in 2023. But several moments from this year can inform which power players, storylines and legislative items will march to the forefront. What follows is a roundup of several of these instances, which I covered in real-time from Capitol Hill, and my take on why they matter in the broader scheme of things.
To be clear, this is by no means an exhaustive list. However, it’s one that’s robust enough to recap the year that was and prepare you for the one to come. Happy holidays!
1. Congress’s incomplete legislative to-do list
Lawmakers began the year with a sprawling agenda featuring five must-pass bills that govern everything from which agencies and departments get how much money and federal food and nutrition policy to how airlines are regulated and the extent to which the national authorities can spy on Americans.
Let’s start with government funding. In an ideal world, Congress would pass the 12 appropriations bills that fund the government by September 30, the end of each fiscal year. But that hasn’t happened since 1997—the year fashion designer Gianni Versace, rapper the Notorious B.I.G. and Princess Diana were killed and the first book in the Harry Potter series was published. Usually, Congress lumps the dozen funding bills into a single piece of legislation known as an “omnibus” before they head home for the holidays. This year, they punted the bills into early 2024 setting up another two funding cliffs Congress has to reconcile to avoid an election-year government shutdown.
Then there’s the farm bill, a massive law on all things agriculture that Congress passes roughly every five years. The authorizations in the most recent farm bill expired on September 30, but President Joe Biden signed an extension to the 2018 farm bill until mid-September 2024 to give lawmakers more time to pass a full farm bill to protect farmers, enhance nutrition programs and address climate change.
Congress also punted the bills that reauthorized the Federal Aviation Administration and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The former approves funding and sets policy for the largest transportation in the US government and expires in early March after Congress extended the current authorization. (The House passed its version but the Senate failed to advance out of committee for floor consideration.) FISA—a law originally passed to set parameters the US government must follow when collecting foreign intelligence but became a tool for domestic surveillance after 9/11—has also been extended into early next year as House members and senators debate the limits and methods of federal spy powers.
Lawmakers did pass the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual bill that sets policy and authorizes funding for the Defense Department, which approved a 5.2 percent raise for military service members, prevents US presidents from withdrawing from NATO without the green light from a Senate supermajority and excluded most of the harmful anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-environment and anti-DEI provisions that were initially in the House version. And Congress did manage to avoid a first-ever US default that would have likely crushed the economy when it raised the debt limit in late spring. But overall, members will return to Washington with a mess of their own making due to an inability to perform the basic functions of their jobs.
2. McCarthy’s rise and fall
No one is surprised Congress got so little done after watching Kevin McCarthy endure a 15-ballot, four-day nightmare to secure the speakership.
The House is only as strong as its speaker and McCarthy stepped into the position as arguably the weakest in modern history. But the nail in his coffin was a concession to House conservatives that lowered the threshold to remove the speaker to a single member of the House in exchange for their votes. The far-right dangled the motion to vacate throughout the year until Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz finally filed it. He, along with seven Republicans and all Democrats, voted to boot McCarthy from the dream job he spent his career and sacrificed his dignity in pursuit of. McCarthy became the first speaker to be removed from the position this way.
What ensued the following month was nothing short of a disaster: House Republicans brought Congress to a halt as it cycled through three nominees before settling on Mike Johnson, a member of junior House Republican leadership, as its next leader. During the process, Congress could not perform any legislative business and the internal backbiting among GOP members reached a fever pitch. Oh, and as of this week, McCarthy has resigned from Congress altogether—an extraordinary fall from grace for the California Republican who swore to us on more occasions than I care to count that he “never gives up.”
3. The New Three step out of Pelosi’s shadow
McCarthy’s ineptitude was especially pronounced because he succeeded Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the first woman ever elected to be House speaker and the face of the House Democratic Caucus for two decades.
Pelosi is revered for her remarkable vote-counting prowess among her elite legislative skills. Few politicians could quantify support for—or opposition against—a bill and influence their members toward their desired outcome as she could.
So it was no surprise that eyes would be on the New Three leaders who ascended to the top of the caucus—Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) and Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.)—when Pelosi announced she would no longer serve in House Democratic leadership last November and Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), the two men who stood by her side during most of her rule, followed suit.
By most accounts, the transition has been a success. Jeffries has impressed members with his message discipline, marked by alliterative turns of phrase and an unwillingness to take firm positions until he’s reached a consensus within the caucus. It’s a style that departs from Pelosi’s top-down, iron-fist-in-velvet-glove approach.
Clark has stood up a whip operation nimble enough to collect votes to avoid calamity when necessary while galvanizing enough numbers to prevent the worst Republican impulses from passing bipartisan muster. She’s also used her perch as the number-two House Democrat to champion issues that matter to American families like child care and abortion rights. And Aguilar, with his quippy sense of humor and experience on the Appropriations and January 6th Committees, reflects the preference for Democrats to make policy not headlines that’s on display during his weekly press conferences.
But while no one enjoys serving in the minority, especially in the House where members lack obstruction tools like the filibuster, it’s easier to lead a unified front when you’re in the opposition party. The true test will be how Jeffries and his two top lieutenants manage their ideological and culturally diverse caucus if they win back the House next November.
4. Johnson’s first big decisions
The interesting thing about leadership is you rarely get to pick the crises you’re called on to solve.
Case in point: One of Speaker Johnson’s first tasks was to pass billions in additional aid to Israel after the October 7th terrorist attacks by Hamas. Few causes are more bipartisan than supporting the US’s strongest Middle Eastern ally. But Johnson bucked precedent and required the aid to pay for the emergency assistance with cuts to the funding congressional Democrats gave the IRS last year to go after tax cheats.
This alienated Democrats and ensured the Democratic-led Senate wouldn’t consider the legislation once it cleared the House. It also demonstrated that Johnson would hew to the demands of hardline conservatives on his most consequential calls—a recipe for more of the inaction this Congress has been known for.
We can revisit government funding for a prime example. Instead of allowing House and Senate appropriators to negotiate a full-year omnibus that followed top-line funding levels agreed to by President Biden and then-Speaker McCarthy earlier this summer, Johnson split the 12 funding bills into two batches with separate deadlines, offering his members two chances to shut down the government if enough of their unworkable policies aren’t included in the bills.
Another defining decision of the Johnson speakership was to refuse, under pressure from House conservatives, to bring a request from Biden to provide billions of dollars of aid to Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, the Indo-Pacific and the US southern border to the House floor unless the final bill included measures from an anti-immigration bill that earned no Democratic support when it passed the House this summer.[
Congress went home without passing a bill as Senate and White House negotiators search for an agreement to unlock the national security aid, setting up yet another legislative landmine that awaits next month.
5. The House GOP’s assault on public education
As I’ve reported in recent columns, House Republicans and social conservatives have made public education ground zero for their assault against LGBTQ+ students, gun safety legislation to prevent school shootings and books that reflect the world as it is.
They’ve done so under the guise of “parental rights,” a movement that empowers mostly white and conservative parents to turn schools from safe spaces for marginalized students into surveillance hubs that rob students and teachers of their autonomy and identities.
The attacks have achieved victory in Republican-controlled states. But they’ve faced resistance in Congress because Democrats hold the Senate and occupy the White House. But if Trump were to be reelected and Republicans turn a favorable electoral map into a Senate majority, they could federalize the trans sports ban or “parental bill of rights” legislation House Republicans passed this Congress.
6. Tuberville’s abortion miscalculation
Another hot-button issue expected to dominate the campaign trail next year is abortion.
Republicans have yet to agree on a cohesive message that resonates with voters, who when given the chance, have sided with reproductive freedom over abortion bans.
This didn’t stop Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) from placing a hold on all military promotions requiring Senate approval in February in protest of a Defense Department policy that provides leave and reimburses travel costs to pregnant service members who leave states with bans to receive abortion care.
The blanket blockade kept more than 450 senior service members in positions they had been elevated from and temporarily left the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps without confirmed leaders.
And the political fallout was enormous with Democrats railing against Tuberville at every turn and his own Republican colleagues growing tired of the distraction that called the party’s support for military families into question. It got to the point to where some Republicans were willing to pass a resolution with Democrats to bypass the blockade despite their opposition to the Pentagon abortion policy.
In the end, it was all for nothing. Tuberville released his hold on all but 11 senior promotions earlier this month. And the remaining promotions were confirmed in a routine voice vote this week. As for the abortion policy that started this whole debacle? It’s still in effect.
7. Harris’s history-making tie-breakers
Remember those slim majorities I mentioned earlier?
The one-vote margin last Congress and two-vote wiggle room this year for Senate Democrats meant Vice President Kamala Harris had to remain on call most voting days to cast tie-breaking votes to advance the Biden administration’s agenda in her role as the Senate president.
Harris broke the record on December 5 for the most tie-breaking Senate votes cast by a vice president in US history when she voted to advance a judicial nomination. The previous record, set by former Vice President John Calhoun in 1832, stood for almost 200 years.
Following the history-making tie-breaker, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) took a small gold-colored gavel out of a box and handed it to Harris in front of the wooden doors of Harris’s ceremonial office.
Harris, who represented California in the Senate before Biden tapped her as his running mate in 2020, then reflected on the significance of the votes.
“Whether it be the Inflation Reduction Act and what that meant in terms of an historic investment in addressing the climate crisis, and what it has meant in terms of capping insulin at $35 a month,” she said. “What it has meant supporting small businesses and small business owners. And of course today what it has meant in terms of confirming our 161st judge to the federal bench. So I am truly and honored and proud.”
Michael Jones is an independent Capitol Hill correspondent and contributor for COURIER. He is the author of Once Upon a Hill, a newsletter about Congressional politics.
