The GOP has control of the House for the first time since the 116th Congress convened in January of 2019. But the 2022 midterm elections weren’t as nice to them as they had hoped, and while the Democrat trifecta is officially broken, a Republican majority in the House must still contend with Democrat control of both the Senate and the White House. After four years of watching their political opponents push progressive legislation right through any protests they might raise, House Republicans find themselves now with that same power. The question is: Will they wield it well?
Off to a Rocky Start
Despite January almost being over, the House has barely more than a dozen days in session under the belt – and very little was accomplished during the first half of those, thanks to the historic battle for the speakership. Once they sorted that issue out, the Republican majority hit the ground running in week two.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was elected speaker on Monday, Jan. 9 after 15 votes over several days. From there, a rules package was agreed upon, and Rep. Adrian Smith’s (R-NE) Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act – which would strip from the IRS most of the funding for additional agents made available by the Inflation Reduction Act – cleared the House by party-line vote.
A day later, the Republican majority established the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. On Jan. 11, they passed Rep. Ann Wagner’s (R-MO) Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, the purpose of which is quite plain from the name, as well as a resolution expressing the “sense of Congress” condemning the recent attacks on pro-life facilities, groups, and churches. Thursday, Jan. 12, saw the passage of the Protecting America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve from China Act, which prohibits the sale and export of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to China.
When Unity and Chaos Coexist
Kevin McCarthy (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The third week was uneventful, but the House passed two almost unanimously bipartisan bills on Jan. 24, starting the third week off with a bang. The Chance to Compete Act increases the scrutiny of candidates in the federal hiring process. Both sides came together to pass it 422-2, with a similarly bipartisan group not voting. The Settlement Agreement Information Database Act of 2023 requires executive agencies to submit information regarding settlement agreements to a public database. It sailed through with an impressive 425-0, with two Republicans and seven Democrats not voting.
Seven bills were passed to the Senate on Wednesday, but each focuses on the sort of regulatory policies most voters and the general public don’t tend to find very interesting, from changing air notices at the FAA to the way the SBA collects data. The big news of the day for the House GOP came in the form of resolutions. One, a concurrent resolution that is on its way to the Senate, condemns Iran for human rights abuses. Two others, however, were all about committee elections. The clash between majority and minority parties over committee assignments took over the news after Speaker McCarthy publicly rejected California Democrats Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff – two of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ (D-NY) choices for the House Intelligence Committee.
Thursday, Jan. 26, brought more committee elections, and then the House closed out the week by passing the Strategic Production Response Act. Just one Democrat – Rep. Jared F. Golden of Maine’s second district – joined the Republican majority in passing this bill 220-205. Six more Democrats and two Republicans abstained from voting. The act would limit the drawdown of petroleum in the SPR until the Department of Energy develops a plan to increase the percentage of federal lands leased for oil and gas production.
Republican Majority Picks Stick Over Carrot
After a rocky start that seemed to indicate a Republican majority fighting as much against itself as the Democrats, a considerable amount of work has been done. And while some of the bills to come out of the House this week were clear bipartisan efforts, a few were pushed right through near unanimous opposition from the minority party. Given the Democrats’ control of both the Senate and the executive branch, the handful of bills that passed by party-line vote or close enough are doomed to die in committee, and the point is purely symbolic.
But the symbolism is powerful indeed: a unified GOP with no qualms about using its majority to hammer bills through. The Democrats rarely failed to use their numbers to pass legislation over the protests of Republicans, no matter how extreme the ideology or how doomed in the Senate it would be. After this week, it seems safe to say the GOP’s message has been received loud and clear.
