The 114th Congress convened this week with unified Republican control. Republicans broke the record of the 71st Congress (1929-30) by one seat, and will have 247 members in the House of Representatives. They now control 57 percent of the House and 54 percent of the Senate.
The 2014 midterms saw the poorest turnout of voters in 72 years. Only the 1942 midterm election was worse, with less than one-third of the nation voting. The New York Times scolded Washington for the anemic turnout in 2014:
“Republicans ran a single-theme campaign of pure opposition to President Obama, and Democrats were too afraid of the backlash to put forward plans to revive the economy or to point out the significant achievements of the last six years. Neither party gave voters an affirmative reason to show up at the polls.”
However, the men and women that a relative sliver of the population elected are going to show up this January and, for better or worse, they will have the 2016 presidential election in mind. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., now the majority leader, made that patently clear in a recent interview: “I don’t want the American people to think that if they add a Republican president to a Republican Congress, that’s going to be a scary outcome.”
“Don’t be scary” is not my idea of an inspiring governing philosophy, but it seems to be McConnell’s.
Obama held out an olive branch to Congress in his final press conference of 2014, saying, “I’m being absolutely sincere when I say I want to work with this new Congress to get things done, to make those investments, to make sure the government is working better and smarter. We’re going to disagree on some things, but there are going to be areas of agreement and we’ve got to be able to make that happen.”
However, House Speaker John Boehner had warned that the president would “poison the well” if he went ahead with an executive memo on immigration reform. Obama heard the speaker’s argument and rejected it, having waited in vain multiple times for Boehner to fulfill repeated pledges to act on immigration reform.
Here’s some of what to expect in the new Congress:
Every committee in both the House and Senate has investigative powers. With Republicans now in control of Congress, they can literally “double down” on investigations.
The first action of the new chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, was to issue a subpoena (identical to others issued previously) to Attorney General Eric Holder over the 2012 Fast and Furious “scandal.” Boehner has also made it clear he intends the Select Committee on Benghazi (created after 13 public hearings had already occurred) to continue its work.
Republicans will also try to make significant reforms to, and potentially gut, the Affordable Care Act. The Republicans’ first bill on health care will likely try to change the definition of a “full-time” workweek from 30 hours to 40 hours. If passed, employees will have to work 40 hours or more at companies to trigger the ACA mandate that those companies provide health care, instead of 30 or more.
However, with this higher floor, Tim Jost, a health care law scholar at Washington and Lee University School of Law, gives this bill another name: “I call this the ”˜send people home a half-hour early on Friday and deny them health insurance’ bill.” The law could cost 500,000 workers their health insurance, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, and increase the federal deficit $73.7 billion over the next decade as people move to Medicaid and health care exchanges, according to a joint congressional committee.
Republicans leaders have leaked to the press a strategy to be confrontational with President Obama, to send him bills they know he’ll veto, in an attempt to pass their “The ”˜No’ Party” label to the Democrats. Obama has acknowledged this, and said he will veto attempts to overturn either Obamacare or Wall Street financial reform.
So expect veto battles. One of the first up will likely be the approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline, a significant part of the Republicans’ job plan despite only creating 35 full-time permanent jobs, according to a State Department study. The president issued a veto threat on Jan. 6.
We can also expect a battle over immigration reform. The Wall Street Journal reports that Republicans plan to introduce a slew of immigration bills. Some will reflect business requests to Republicans to make immigrant labor available, but others may try to hold up the funding of the Department of Homeland Security to stop enforcement of the president’s executive action.
That’s the way it is. By Tax Day on April 15 ”“ 100 days into the 114th Congress ”“ we will have a better sense if this Congress is one of collaboration or confrontation.
— Donna Brazile is a senior Democratic strategist, a political commentator and contributor to CNN and ABC News, and a contributing columnist to Ms. Magazine and O, the Oprah Magazine.
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
