Why House conservatives keep losing legislative negotiations
By Michael Jones
It’s a new year but House Republicans are up to the same tactics that by most accounts rendered 2023 the least productive congressional session in modern history.
Moments before GOP leadership called the first vote of 2024 on Wednesday on a procedural vote known as a “rule” that would have allowed members to consider three bills, word spread through the halls of the Capitol that conservatives could tank the rule in protest.
That’s exactly what happened and leadership canceled votes for the rest of the day. Read my recap of the debacle for the details.
What’s important to know is why these far-right hardliners froze the People’s House.
Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer last Sunday announced an agreement on the caps Congress is able to fund the various federal departments and programs through the end of September. This is the first step in a long process of fully funding the government that should have been completed before the holidays.
The caps deal pretty much reflects the agreement President Joe Biden and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached at the end of last May to avoid a US default and set the budget terms for the current fiscal year.
House conservatives are upset and have accused Johnson of failing to fight hard enough to secure far-right policy wins. There’s even chatter that these rebels could vote to remove the new speaker who’s not ever three months on the job the way they did McCarthy.
The far-right’s failing playbook
The caps deal also follows a pattern we’ve seen since House Republicans assumed the majority.
First, congressional Democrats, Senate Republicans, and the White House offer to negotiate a major issue in good faith in acknowledgment that the Congress is divided.
Then, House Republican leadership, under pressure from far-right members, draw unworkable red lines on policy add-ons that will never pass the Senate or be signed into law by Biden.
Ultimately, leadership realizes it has two options: Govern or cause harm to the US economy and American people. In each instance, they’ve chosen the former.
But because House conservatives are legislative obstructionists, Democrats provide the majority of votes required to avoid calamity—and the conservatives punish their leadership for it. In response, GOP leadership gives the far-right a concession to temper the revolt—impeachment proceedings, floor votes on culture-war messaging bills, opposition to additional Ukraine funding, for example).
With this context, let’s discuss three political and structural reasons this legislative playbook keeps failing House conservatives.
1. They have almost no leverage
Congress is a numbers game and Republicans narrowly control just one half of the three branches of federal government.
I wrote on Tuesday in my newsletter Once Upon a Hill about the House GOP’s shrinking majority. House Republican Leader Steve Scalise is out until next month receiving a stem cell transplant as he recovers from a blood cancer diagnosis. Republicans will be down three more votes by mid-month with the open seats from the George Santos expulsion plus the retirements of former Speaker McCarthy and Rep. Bill Johnson, an Ohio Republican who will leave public office to become president at Youngstown State University in 10 days.
This leaves House Republicans with a slim 218-213 majority until Scalise returns, giving them a nominal one-vote margin on party-line bills. Instead of recognizing that House math says Republicans will need Democratic votes to pass any meaningful legislation and will need to find compromises for their priorities, conservatives demand partisan concessions without the power to make them law.
2. TV hits don’t equal votes
Conservative politicians enjoy a unique advantage: They have access to an entire media ecosystem at their disposal to manipulate the hearts and minds of their voters. As a result, most Republican members prioritize communications staff over policy experts to help them win the messaging wars.
The problem with this approach is that governing is tedious. It requires attention to detail to turn ideas into legislation. And each time House Republicans turn the spotlight on one of their priorities, their lack of policy-making skills is also exposed in plain view.
3. They’re champions of an unpopular agenda
The downside to taking marching orders from former President Donald Trump is that his movement represents a small minority of the electorate that is outnumbered by people who want more freedoms and progress.
Voters across party lines and ideologies support abortion rights, LGBTQ+ equality, and equitable workplaces. These same voters believe assault weapons have no place in civil society, climate change is real, and wealthy individuals and companies should pay their fair share in taxes. The popularity of these issues is often overshadowed by the fact our institutions, voter suppression, and extreme gerrymandering empower minority rule.
Some people will point to the ongoing talks on border security as an example of House conservatives calling the shots. After all, they were the ones who demanded Republicans block aid to Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, and Taiwan to extract policy concessions from H.R. 2, the GOP’s signature border control bill that passed the House with zero Democratic votes and has been languishing in the Senate since last summer.
But the reason they’re likely to be successful is because most Americans perceive the border as open and want tighter laws. The issue also scores political points for President Biden and Democrats who are up for reelection and want to look tough on the issue for political points. But even in this case, House Republicans aren’t even at the negotiating table—they’ve been iced out of the talks between the Senate and the White House because they’re viewed as bad-faith governing partners.
It’s not supposed to be like this
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi often says America needs a strong Republican Party for US institutions to thrive. President Biden has often received backlash for his willingness to negotiate with the right on policy issues of consequence because he believes bipartisanship to be a virtue.
But because conservatives view Democrats as unpatriotic and non-American for their center-left values and would rather blow up our governing systems versus find middle ground, we keep finding ourselves on the brink of crisis. In the end, it turns voters off, makes our allies uneasy, and further erodes trust in our democratic institutions. And it may cost House Republicans their already-scant majority this November.
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.
