Republicans are coming to Washington not to legislate or to govern, but to fight.<\/b>
\nThe last time Republicans won control of the House of Representatives with a Democrat in the White House, the two parties clashed so ferociously that Congress nearly crashed the economy with a first-ever debt default. But with the GOP\u2019s majority-making victory, those bitterly partisan confrontations of the Obama era might seem like halcyon days compared with what\u2019s to come.
Republicans will assume control of the House in January, at a moment of deepening political turmoil. Trust between the parties is lower than it\u2019s been in decades. A would-be assassin assaulted the husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi last month. A majority of the GOP\u2019s House conference refused to certify President Joe Biden\u2019s 2020 victory, and party leaders have vowed to immediately disband the committee investigating the January 6 Capitol sacking that occurred just hours before that very vote. Republicans will launch their own investigations, into not only the actions of Biden\u2019s administration but also the business and personal life of the president\u2019s surviving son. Politically motivated impeachments of President Joe Biden and members of his Cabinet could be inevitable. \u201cThere are going to be fulsome investigations, and we will not take anything off the table,\u201d Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the House\u2019s third-ranking Republican, told me before the midterm elections.
Yet Republican leaders will be presiding over a majority sure to be far smaller than they were hoping for or expecting. When I spoke to Stefanik in the run-up to Election Day, she was confident bordering on cocky. \u201cThis is going to be a historic red wave, so buckle up, Russell,\u201d she assured me. What transpired in last week\u2019s election was instead barely a trickle. Stunning most pundits as well as Republicans, the race for the House majority was so tight, the vote-counting took a week to make clear the GOP\u2019s slim victory. The Republican margin in the House could be so small as to make it nearly impossible for Kevin McCarthy, who is likely but not guaranteed to become speaker, to govern.
Democrats, meanwhile, will have one last opportunity in the next six weeks to pass legislation, in a lame-duck session of Congress. After that, Biden\u2019s progressive agenda is dead\u2014at least for the next two years. Lacking a majority in the Senate, Republicans will have to strike deals with Biden and the Democrats just to keep the government running, let alone to make their mark on policy. Few lawmakers in either party have much hope for a grand bargain. McCarthy is more of a campaigner than a legislator, with little record of bipartisan dealmaking. He\u2019ll have to corral a caucus that includes many Republicans who are far more loyal to former president Donald Trump than to him; some of them, such as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, began making demands for more power weeks before the election and are sure to reject any hint of compromise with a president they consider illegitimate. \u201cGovernance will be a challenge,\u201d Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma told me. \u201cEverything over the next two years will have to be a deal of some bipartisan agreement. Achieving those always creates some frustration on the two wings of the political spectrum, because you can\u2019t have absolute victories.\u201d
Cole, a 20-year House veteran long allied with the Republican leadership, sounded a more optimistic note about the incoming majority. Compared with the Tea Party class of 2010, which helped the GOP capture the House during Barack Obama\u2019s first term, he noted, this batch of newly elected Republicans is more diverse in terms of race, gender, and ideology. Many of them represent districts that Biden won, and more of them have previous legislative experience, which could lead to more pragmatism. \u201cI would hope that we don\u2019t fall into the trap that I would argue the Democrats fell into [under Trump] and turn ourselves into the impeachment caucus,\u201d Cole said.
That might all prove to be wishful thinking. Although Biden struck several significant bipartisan deals during his first two years, most of those were with Senate Republicans, and they passed over the objections of House GOP leaders, including McCarthy. Many House Republicans seem focused on investigating over legislating. The next two years will also play out against the backdrop of the 2024 presidential campaign, and now that Trump is running again, he will likely oppose any agreement that Republicans hammer out with the incumbent. Stefanik evinced little interest in bipartisanship when I spoke with her, insisting that Republicans would dictate the terms of the policy debate. \u201cWe\u2019re going to pass good legislation and send it to the president\u2019s desk, and he\u2019s going to have to choose [if] you work with us or not,\u201d she told me.
The first major test for House Republicans may come over the same issue that defined their confrontations with Obama a decade ago: the debt ceiling. McCarthy and other Republicans have already said they will again try to use the required lifting of the nation\u2019s borrowing limit as leverage to force fiscal restraint. Fearing the economic fallout from another round of brinkmanship, Democrats have begun talking about raising the debt ceiling\u2014or eliminating it altogether\u2014in the lame-duck session, before Republicans formally take power. The GOP would surely criticize Democrats for such a move, but many in the party might quietly accept it as a gift. \u201cThat,\u201d Cole conceded, \u201cwould make it easier.\u201d
As for what Republicans actually want to do with their newly acquired power, Stefanik pointed to the \u201cCommitment to America\u201d agenda that McCarthy unveiled in September. It\u2019s a broad-brush list of priorities that is light on legislative detail. The GOP wants to lower inflation, fight crime, and secure the border. But absent good-faith negotiations with Democrats, any bills they pass won\u2019t become law. An effort to tackle border security, for example, could be an invitation to reengage in talks over a larger immigration-reform package of the kind sought by the two parties for decades. Again, Stefanik wasn\u2019t interested: \u201cYou have to secure the border before you even talk about broader visa reforms.\u201d
Such a response could become familiar over the next two years. Republicans are coming to Washington not to legislate or to govern, but to fight. That\u2019s one promise, at least, the new House majority should find easy to fulfill.<\/p>\n